IIRC they were called “ghouls” in the original Night of the Living Dead.
As I’ve mentioned before, Romero claimed that he was inspired by Richard Matheson’s book I am Legend (which is really about vampires. It’s been filmed three times), but I’ve long suspected his real inspiration was the movie Invisible Invaders
As in NOTLD, it features dead bodies re-animated, with scenes of dark-rimmed-eyes people stumbling stiffly about while wearing business suits and the like. As suggested at one point in NOTLD, they’re re-animated by things from outer space.
As I recall, he was actually known as “Robin i’ [in] the Hood” (seriously!), which was probably worn to disguise him as an outlaw.
It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember Mary Shelly depicting the creature as having yellow, dry skin.
Tidbit I’m sure some of you know already- Universal does not own the movie rights to Dracula, Frankenstein etc. But they do own and enforce the rights to the distinctive make up and costume designs from their classic films. When the movie The Monster Squad was being made, they asked for permission to use those designs. For reasons I don’t understand, Universal said no.
ETA
Horror illustrator Bernie Wrightson has done some great work depicting the monster as described by Shelly and owing nothing to the films.
The Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan yell has become integral to the character, but wasn’t original to the first on screen versions. They had yells, but none as distinctive as the Weissmuller yell (not performed by him) and it’s hard to think of the character these days without it.
This may be the case, but there are a LOT of cases where people basically stole the design – especially that flat-topped head – without giving anything to Universal.
Agreed.
This veers somewhat from the topic, but it IS a part of the characters as depicted in the movies.
Saturday Night Live used to have a recurring bit where the Frankenstein Monster, Tarzan, and Tonto interacted using their abbreviated vocabularies.
The thing is, of course, that two of those characters weren’t so limited in their original literary incarnations. Both the Monster and Tarzan were incredible autodidacts, having taught themselves to read directly from books. They were positively eloquent when they did speak.
Here’s the Frankenstein monster’s first speech:
Tarzan was similarly eloquent, when he finally did learn to speak English (although he learned to read English, his first spoken human language was French. Look it up).
But having the Frankenstein monster not speak at all really created a screen character. Karloff thought they ruined him when he was given speech – even limited speech – in Bride of Frankenstein (The creature became mostly mute after that, although he did speak a bit in later films). Similarly, have Tarzan only have a terse vocabulary (although always better than the supposed “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” which he never actually said) projected the idea of Tarzan as Unspoiled Child of Nature, much more that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ surprisingly learned ape man did.
Tinto is the only one who really did speak in broken English in his first appearances. It wasn’t until animated adaptations in the 1970s and beyond that Tonto was given any real capability of fluid speech.
It wasn’t. Romero, in fact, refused to use The Zed Word until…I think it was Land of the Dead? One of his movies from this century, anyway.
In Dr. Seuss’s original drawings, the Grinch was black-and-white. He didn’t acquire his trademark green fur until the animated adaptation.
I know that many folks have ripped off the Universal Frankenstein design. I don’t know where Universal draws the line and sends in the lawyers.
I only learned last year that there have been four movie versions, including…
I really wish there were more Frankenstein adaptations that used the original “sophisticated sociopath” characterization of the Monster - like a Hannibal Lector who can bend pig iron with his bare hands.
Well, only assuming they’d never seen Ghost In The Shell. Sure, not identical, but sufficiently similar to belie the idea of it being an original creation.
The Lone Ranger was originally a radio program. The fact that he wore a mask was important to the plot, but the rest of his appearance was left to the listener’s imagination.
In the earliest novels, the book jackets generally depict him in stereotypical cowboy gear: brown leather chaps, brown leather vest, and a 10-gallon hat (and sometimes a brightly colored plaid shirt!)
The movies gave him a more streamlined appearance. He did not wear chaps or a vest, and he wore a more compact Stetson hat.(The white hat now became iconic.) His shirt and trousers were a light-to-medium gray color. But these were black-and-white films, so you could imagine them as any color you wanted. Lobby posters sometimes depicted him in a red shirt, or a green shirt, or a buckskin-colored shirt.
In some of the early films, he wore a two-piece mask: a cloth or leather domino mask covering the top half of his face, and a black gauze veil obscuring the bottom half of his face.
In the 1940s, comic books and book jackets usually depicted him in a red shirt, blue or black trousers, and sometimes a black vest.
It was not until 1949, and the Clayton Moore TV series, that the light-blue ensemble became his standard outfit. Many of the old novels were re-issued, with the cover paintings re-colored to reflect the new iconography.
In Johnston McCulley’s story The Curse of Capistrano, Zorro wears a purple cape, a mask that covers his entire face, and a sombrero. McCulley does not specify what kind of sombrero, but I kind of got the impression that he was thinking of a broad-brimmed mariachi-style hat.
When Douglas Fairbanks filmed The Mark of Zorro, he gave us the iconic look: all-black; a combination domino mask and headscarf; and a sombrero de Cordova.
Have a look at my story “A Light so Brilliant and Wondrous”
https://www.silverblade.net/2019/12/a-light-so-brilliant-and-wondrous/
Early western stars had various types of headgear. William S. Hart, the first big western star, used a cavalry hat, usually dark colored (movie posters displayed it as brown).
Then Tom Mix came along and popularized the white ten-gallon hat. This became the standard for cowboy heroes from then on, and even now heroes are referred to as “white hats.”
The odd thing is that William S. Hart was born in New York state and was never a cowboy or a westerner. Tom Mix spent much of his life out west and had been a working cowboy. Yet Hart was famous for his authentic western portrayals of a rough cowboy in working clothes while Mix was one of the creators of the cowboy hero that never existed in any western town, with his the spotless outfit and pristine white hat.
Braaaiiiiinnnnnssss . . . .
I just found this on Archive.org: An animated cartoon of the Lone Ranger.
The website doesn’t have any info on it, other than “from the 1930s” and “directed by Roy Meredith”, but it depicts him in standard cowboy clothes, and fairly dark colors, so I think it probably pre-dates the Republic serials (1938’s The Lone Ranger and 1939’s The Lone Ranger Rides Again).
I also found a photo of the mask-and-veil combo he wore in the serials.
Here is a photo of the costume he wore in the serials. Most of what Clayton Moore would eventually wear is now in place, except for the colors.
Hollywood tinkered with minor details of Zorro’s appearance. In 1936’s The Bold Caballero (Zorro’s first sound film, and first color film), he wears a full-face mask. In Zorro Rides Again (which, technically is about a 20th Century descendant of the original Zorro), they ditch the cape, and give him a mask-and-veil combo. In Zorro’s Fighting Legion (back to the 19th Century), they do the same, and give him hip boots. But, eventually, they generally return to Douglas Fairbanks’ look.
I had never heard of that cartoon before. At first I wondered if it might be a hoax. But evidently the original circa 1936 Pathe films still exist.
Even internet sites have almost nothing about this cartoon.
Regarding Roy Meredith himself, the most I could find was on this iMDB site
He had apparently made a Little Orphan Annie cartoon in the 1930s, as well, about 80 seconds of which remain. Aside from the two cartoons, his only credit is a 1959 series on the Civil War, about which he’d written books
It’s not even clear when he was born
[quote] |Born|1908|
| — | — |
|Died|January 5, 1984 in Brooklyn, New York, USA (heart attack)|
Trivia (3)
Birth year alternately cited as 1908 or c.1914. (Meredith’s short New York Times obituary on January 7, 1984 gave his age as 70 years.).
Worked in the film industry in the early sound era as a technician on Pathé Audio Review shorts and with the RKO-distributed Van Beuren animation studio.
Author of several Civil War-themed biography/nonfiction books focusing especially on the photography of the era (such as the work of Mathew B. Brady and his team). Later produced the television film series, The American Civil War: A Pictorial History Through the Photographs of Mathew B. Brady (1959).
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