Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
The Black Cat (1934, dir. Edgar Ulmer) “I don’t know. It all sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me.” “Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not. There are many things under the sun.”

The Black Cat (1934, dir. Edgar Ulmer)

“I don’t know. It all sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me.”

“Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not. There are many things under the sun.”

Ennio Morricone - Main Theme (The Thing: Music From the Motion Picture)

Vampyr (1932, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer) (via)

Vampyr (1932, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)

(via)

John Carpenter - Main Theme (Halloween: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

“My dad, when I was 13 or 14 years old, taught me how to play 5/4 time on bongos. So years later I thought I’d go on the piano and just do octaves and go up. And it just came. 5/4 is nuts, you know. Where does it end? What’s going on? You can’t find the start and stop of it; it’s off.”

(via)

Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene)  (via)

Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene) 

(via)

Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning) Art direction by Charles D. Hall (via) “When I am given a new role in a horror film, I have a character to create just as much as if I were playing a straight part. Whether one thinks of films like Dracula as ‘hokum’ or not does not alter the fact; the horror actor must believe in his part. The player who portrays a film monster with his tongue in his cheek is doomed to fail. In playing Dracula, I have to work myself up into believing that he is real, to ascribe to myself the motives and emotions that such a character would feel. For a time I become Dracula - not merely an actor playing at being a vampire. A good actor will ‘make’ a horror part. He will build up the character until it convinces him and he is carried away by it. There is another reason why I do not mind being “typed” in eerie thrillers - with few exceptions, there are, among actors, only two types who matter at the box office. They are heroes and villains. The men who play these parts are the only ones whose names you will see in electric lights outside the theater. Obviously you will not find me competing with Clark Gable or Robert Montgomery! Therefore, I have gone to the other extreme in my search for success and public acclaim.” -Bela Lugosi, Film Weekly, July 1935

Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning) Art direction by Charles D. Hall (via)

“When I am given a new role in a horror film, I have a character to create just as much as if I were playing a straight part. Whether one thinks of films like Dracula as ‘hokum’ or not does not alter the fact; the horror actor must believe in his part. The player who portrays a film monster with his tongue in his cheek is doomed to fail.

In playing Dracula, I have to work myself up into believing that he is real, to ascribe to myself the motives and emotions that such a character would feel. For a time I become Dracula - not merely an actor playing at being a vampire. A good actor will ‘make’ a horror part. He will build up the character until it convinces him and he is carried away by it.

There is another reason why I do not mind being “typed” in eerie thrillers - with few exceptions, there are, among actors, only two types who matter at the box office. They are heroes and villains. The men who play these parts are the only ones whose names you will see in electric lights outside the theater. Obviously you will not find me competing with Clark Gable or Robert Montgomery! Therefore, I have gone to the other extreme in my search for success and public acclaim.”

-Bela Lugosi, Film Weekly, July 1935

Bela Lugosi taking a cigar break on the set of Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning) (via)

Bela Lugosi taking a cigar break on the set of Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning)

(via)

Buffy Sainte-Marie - The Vampire

”[Frankenstein director James] Whale and I both saw the character as an innocent one. Within the heavy restrictions of my make-up, I tried to play it that way. This was a pathetic creature who, like us all, had neither the will nor the say in his creation, and certainly did not wish upon itself the hideous image which automatically terrified humans it tried to befriend. The most heartrending aspect of the creature’s life, for us, was his ultimate desertion by his creator. It was as though man, in his blundering, searching attempts to prove himself, was to find himself deserted by his God.” -Boris Karloff, 1932 (via)

”[Frankenstein director James] Whale and I both saw the character as an innocent one. Within the heavy restrictions of my make-up, I tried to play it that way. This was a pathetic creature who, like us all, had neither the will nor the say in his creation, and certainly did not wish upon itself the hideous image which automatically terrified humans it tried to befriend.

The most heartrending aspect of the creature’s life, for us, was his ultimate desertion by his creator. It was as though man, in his blundering, searching attempts to prove himself, was to find himself deserted by his God.”

-Boris Karloff, 1932

(via)

Frankenstein (1931, dir. James Whale)

Frankenstein (1931, dir. James Whale)

Vince Guaraldi - Great Pumpkin Waltz (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966, dir. Bill Melendez) “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966, dir. Bill Melendez)

“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”

Christopher Olsen in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Christopher Olsen in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

(via)

Krzysztof Penderecki - Polymorphia for 48 String Instruments (The Exorcist: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 

Polymorphia was originally composed in 1961 by the avant-garde Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. It was also later used, in addition to several other Penderecki compositions, in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. 

Marilyn Monroe & Eli Wallach on the set of The Misfits (1961, dir. John Huston) Photo by Erich Hartmann.

Marilyn Monroe & Eli Wallach on the set of The Misfits (1961, dir. John Huston)

Photo by Erich Hartmann.