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‘Wolf Man’ reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience By Susan King
And says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright" — ——— Screenwriter "The Wolf Man" revolves around an everyman, Filled with self-loathing for what happened to him, Talbot fears not only what he might do to his friends and family but also being hunted down and killed. Siodmak "understood drama and pathos," says "The original title was 'Destiny' because he believed it was the story of an outsider whose destiny was cursed by forces he could not control," Nasr says. "There was going to be no way out for him." Even the pentagram in Talbot's hand signifying a werewolf is a "very obvious substitute for the Star of David, and if you had that symbol you were going to be cursed," Nasr says. "That is not how Siodmak felt as a Jew but how he felt others perceived him. From 1925, Universal had been the major monster movie factory in But the new regime, realizing that horror films were big box office, resurrected the genre in 1939 with "Son of Frankenstein" and soon began to make sequels to its popular characters. "The Wolf Man" was the first original monster movie the studio produced in the 1940s. Though its other famous monsters were based on books and plays, "The Wolf Man" came from the imagination of Siodmak.
The studio had produced a werewolf movie, though, in 1935 called "Werewolf of By 1941, Universal resurrected the idea. Siodmak was under contract to the studio and given the task. "It was all the magical kind of thing where all the elements came together in one film," Essman says. Siodmak established the werewolf lore on screen, including pentagrams, wolfbane, the full moon and that a werewolf can be killed only by a silver bullet. Director The film made a star out of Chaney, son of the Man of a Thousand Faces, who starred in Universal's "The Hunchback of Though he hated the grueling hours in the makeup chair, Chaney Jr. relished the role of Talbot. "He called it his baby," says the actor's grandson, In fact, he was the only actor to play the role at Universal, resurrecting Talbot four more times at the studio. Years later, he played a werewolf in the 1960 monster/horror comedy "House of Terror," and in 1962 Chaney reprised the Wolf Man for a "
The scene was shot in the shadows, so it's really a fake dog that attacks Chaney in the close-up. So there were no hard feelings between them. In fact by the time the film was completed, Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Interested in a private Judaic studies instructor — for free? Let us know by clicking here.
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. © 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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