Boris Karloff:
a brief biography
Concordia
Merchant Taylors’ School
he day before
Frankenstein
opened in November 1931 Boris
Karloff was one of a myriad of character
actors in Hollywood. The night after
the opening he was a star, and would
remain one for the rest of his life.
Yet being a star hadn’t been the be all and
end all for Karloff. For his main ambition had
always been the same – to be a professional
actor. Financial security was nice, of course,
but he had endured over two decades as an
actor without it. But this was the life he had
chosen – to the consternation of his family.
Boris Karloff was bornWilliamHenry
Pratt on the 23rd November 1887 in
Camberwell, South London. The youngest
of the nine children of Edward and Eliza
Pratt Billy, as he was known, was expected
to follow his father and the majority of his
siblings into Government Service.
Billy’s father, Edward Pratt, had had a
volatile career in India, working in various
roles within the Customs department,
collecting tax on salt and opium. In 1879,
having been forced to retire, Edward brought
his family to England. He remained an
embitteredman and in December 1889,
when Billy was just two years old, Edward
and Eliza legally separated.
Of Billy’s 7 brothers 4 followed in the
father’s footsteps, as he later recalled:
“Two were in the Indian Civil Service
[Edward and Frederick], two were in the
Chancellor’s Service in China [John and
Richard] and I was supposed to go to the
Chancellor’s Service in China with them…
I didn’t want to.” Billy had other plans. “I
was a lazy little devil at school because I
knew exactly what I wanted to do, go on
the stage,” he said. “I was not going to pass
any examinations if I could possibly help
it. I wanted to be an actor.”
He would not be the first actor in the
family. His favourite brother, George, had
also trodden the boards, billed under the
stage name of GeorgeMarlowe. “Despite
the fact that George was an extraordinarily
handsome man, he never went very far on
the stage,” Karloff later explained, “which
was the reason he gave it up for a city job.
T
But I tried to emulate him.”
Billy’s love of acting had begun at an
early age. After his mother and siblings
moved to Enfield they attended St. Mary
Magdalene’s church onWindmill Hill. Here
Billy joined a drama group and at Christmas
1896, at the age of nine, made his acting
debut appearing in one of the plays — a
version of
Cinderella
. “Instead of playing
the handsome prince, I donned black tights
and a skullcap and rallied the forces of evil
as the Demon King,” he recalled. That role
proved to be the catalyst. “From then on,”
he proclaimed, “I resolved to be an actor.”
Despite brotherly attempts to dissuade
him from an acting career Billy’s mind was
set. Even his schooling at such notable
institutions as Enfield Grammar, Merchant
Taylors’ and Uppingham could not divert
him from seeking a life on the stage.
In 1909, aged 21, he used a £150 legacy to
leave the country. He emigrated to Canada
andmade his way to Vancouver, working
along the way. When he arrived in the
city he had only five dollars in his pocket.
Within days he was down to 15 cents. “There
wasn’t a hope of stage work,” he explained.
“There was little doing in the theatre at
that time and, in any case, managers were
not interested in gangling youths with no
experience. The dire necessity of eating was
soon apparent.” He took what work he could.
“Men were wanted to dig a race track and a
fair ground,” he said, “and the pay was one
and threepence an hour.”
He later found work as a real estate
broker. He also found himself a wife. On 23
February 1910 Billy married a fellow English
émigré, Jessie Grace Harding. His new
bearing in life, however, had little effect on
his ultimate ambitions and his search for
an acting job continued. He eventually was
offered a place with the theatrical troupe the
Jeanne Russell Players and left his wife in
the city while he made his way to join the
company. “I had finally become an actor, but
I mumbled, bumbled, missed cues, rammed
into furniture and sent the director’s blood
pressure soaring,” he admitted. “When the
curtain went up, I was getting 30 dollars a
week. When it descended, I was down to
15 dollars.” Thus began almost a decade of
the theatrical work with various companies
as Billy – now calling himself Boris Karloff
(he later erroneously claimed the surname
came from ancestors on his mother’s side)
– learned his trade. Years later he arrived in
Los Angeles and began to look for work. “I
made the rounds of the only possible outlet,
the film studios,” he said. “I appeared before
the camera for the first time in a crowd
scene being directed by Frank Borzage at
Universal City.”
For over a decade Karloffmade a living,
initially as an extra and then as a character
actor. Sometimes the work was so scarce he
would have to return to manual labouring
to earn a crust. Two more wives came and
went (he had divorced Grace in 1913) and in
1930 he married librarian Dorothy Stine. The
couple would have one child – a daughter
named Sara Jane – who was born on 23
November 1938 (her father’s 51st birthday).
One day in June 1931 Karloff entered
the commissary at Universal Studio where
he was making the picture
Graft
. That
day would change his life forever. “I was
having lunch,” Karloff explained, “and
James Whale sent either the first assistant
or maybe it was his secretary over to me,
As Rob Dow in J.M. Barrie’s
The Little Minister
(1912)
