Doing the monster mash at Malibou Lake 1

This lakeside fol-de-rol is featured in the fun new book, Location Filming in Los Angeles, by arts·meme pals Mark Wanamaker, Karie Bible and Harry Medved. The book describes how Universal shot the controversial scene on location at a lake in Malibu State Park eighty years ago this September.

We learned this on Frankensteinia:

On this day, September 28, and on the 29^th, in 1931, director James Whale and his crew, with actors Boris Karloff, Michael Mark, and 7-year old Marilyn Harris, shot the controversial drowning scene at Malibou Lake (not ‘Malibu’), about 30 miles west of Universal studios.

Karloff was uneasy with the scene, but Whale insisted it was necessary. A few weeks later, preview audiences were appalled and the scene was removed.

Ironically, the resulting jarring cut, just as The Monster reaches for the little girl, suggests a fate worse than drowning for poor Maria.

The scene, thought lost, was found in the late ’70s and restored to the film.

Pierre also gave permission to publish his great find, a photo, above, of the two Brits, director James Whale and actor Boris Karloff, on a smoking break in Southern California.

What a get-up Karloff’s got himself up in!

_{little maria photo: bison archives, mark wanamaker
ciggie break photo: frankensteinia, pierre fournier}

Like this? Read more:

• James Dean, moody, on location in Griffith Park
• Frankenstein’s gonna kill me said five-year-old Mel Brooks
• Daughter of Frankenstein