Electrifying: Frankenstein revisited

By Cindy Landrum  

FEBRUARY 10, 2011 1:54 p.m. (0)

It was Strickfaden’s weird electrical devices – machines that sparked and screeched with each pull of the lever, machines that groaned and buzzed as they transformed invisible electricity into crude kinetic sculptures – that brought Frankenstein to life.

“He was brilliant,” said Doug Norwine, a saxophonist who lives in Easley and works as the director of music and entertainment for Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas where he authenticates memorabilia.

Norwine owns the largest collection of Strickfaden memorabilia, including original machinery from the 1931 original “Frankenstein” movie, sketches and prototypes of what the original lab was to look like, what remains of the original Jacob’s Ladder, a Magna Lux used in the Wizard of Oz, and Tesla machines.

Some of the memorabilia is expected to be on display when “Young Frankenstein,” the musical, opens on Tuesday at the Peace Center.

The musical, a theatrical version of Mel Brooks’ 1974 parody of the Frankenstein films, runs through Feb. 20.

Brooks was fascinated with Strickfaden’s work and personally visited his garage shop in California while he was writing “Young Frankenstein.”

The crackling, spark-inducing machines were used for the final time in Brooks’ movie.

“Mel Brooks said the Frankenstein series fascinated and scared the hell out of him,” Norwine said. “He said he had to have the original lab equipment to make his movie authentic.”

Strickfaden’s skills fell out of favor after the movie as Hollywood began creating similar special effects through animation and computers.

Norwine’s fascination with Frankenstein began when he was 7.

His father told him two stories – “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Frankenstein.”

It wasn’t until 1957 and Shock Theater that Norwine actually got to see the original “Frankenstein” movie and all its black-and-white incarnations.

“A whole new generation got to see it,” Norwine said. “A whole generation got to rediscover the genre of universal horror.”

In the early horror films, the monsters were the good guys, while their handlers were the misanthropes, he said.

“Frankenstein was a monster kids could identify with. He was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. The monsters were victims and kids could relate to that,” Norwine said. “They represented our own insecurities. They were misunderstood, just like us.”

Strickfaden died in 1984. Moments after he died, a huge electrical storm hit and all the power in Los Angeles went out for a half hour, Norwine said.

Norwine started his Frankenstein memorabilia collection as a boy by writing to Boris Karloffand asking for his autograph. He got one.

Norwine got his Frankenstein sketches from Strickfaden’s daughter, Marilyn Throssell.

Throssell told Norwine that instead of her father getting her dolls for her birthday or Christmas, he gave her winding capacitors.

Ed Angell, a friend of Strickfaden, had inherited Strickfaden’s electrical equipment. “He knew that I was a Kenny Strickfaden fan and a fan of Frankenstein and he called and told me he had all this stuff,” Norwine said. “I rented a U-Haul and went and got it.”

Norwine said Strickfaden was a key, but many times overlooked, player in the popularization of films from the golden age of horror.

“The horror movies of today are too much like the real news,” he said. “The old films created pathos and you could identify with the monster. That’s missing from today’s films.”

Frankenstein allowed people to leave the theater a little scared and a little nervous, but stimulated, Norwine said.

“Those were the days when horror was fun,” he said.

Alfred Hitchcock and the other producers of horror didn’t rely on blood and guts to scare their audiences, he said.

“Think back to Hitchcock, even with “Psycho,” how much blood did you see? Virtually none. You didn’t see the hack-them-up stuff used today,” he said. “They could use not a drop of blood, but they could scare the hell out of you.”

Norwine is still looking for what he called the holy grail of “Frankenstein” memorabilia – the bolts from Frankenstein’s neck.

Jack Pierce, the make-up man who created Frankenstein’s look, gave one of the pieces to Boris Karloff. Karloff’s flat was broken into in London and nobody knows where the piece is.

Nobody has any idea what happened to the other one, he said.

“If you have the electrodes from the original Frankenstein, you better have a good story,” he said. “There is such a proliferation of fakes now. It better come from a direct source and it would have to be compared to the original movie. But that would be the Holy Grail.”

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