 Welcome everyone, thank you for coming to the celebration of Little Shop of Horrors magazine number 38 devoted to Frankenstein, the true story. I've been a fan of Frankenstein, the true story ever since it was first broadcast on NBC TV in two parts in prime time in 1973. The scope of the movie was epic. It had the highest budget of any made for television movie up to that time, and the highest budget of any horror film up to then. But let's be clear about something right now. The title of the film was intended to be Dr. Frankenstein. That's what the writers called it, that's what Universal called it throughout its development, and it was shot under that title. A few weeks before broadcast, NBC TV decided to change the name to Frankenstein, The True Story, which frankly was ludicrous. There's nothing true about it, and it was certainly not faithful or true to the Mary Shelley novel. This movie was a seminal influence on an entire generation of writers and directors, myself included. For instance, immediately upon seeing the film, Anne Rice was directly inspired to write Interview with a Vampire. Mark Gatis, the co-creator and co-producer of Sherlock, who also plays Microsoft Holmes in that series, is another fan who contributed an essay called Queer Frankenstein, examining the gay subtext of the film. The great Oscar-nominated filmmaker Guillermo del Toro of Pan's labyrinth fame recently put Frankenstein The True Story on his top 100 favorite films of all time list, calling it quirky, brilliant, and moving. So why is this film so often ignored and forgotten? It's my mission to rectify that injustice and to present for the very first time anywhere a detailed analysis of the making of this groundbreaking milestone with over 20 brand new interviews of cast and crew, including Leonard Whiting, Jane Seymour, David McCallum, and co-writer Don Bacardi. First we have Denise Millay, who is the widow of the great musician Gil Millay, who composed the brilliant orchestral score to Frankenstein The True Story. After a successful career as a jazz and electronic musician, Gil started writing music for television programs at Universal in the 1960s. He composed the memorable electronic theme to Rod Serling's The Night Gallery, and eventually got his first theatrical motion picture assignment composing the electronic score to the Andromeda Strain, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Gil actually designed and built his own electronic instruments and recording studio for that groundbreaking endeavor. For Frankenstein The True Story, Denise accompanied Gil to London for the duration of composing and recording the score with the London Symphony Orchestra. So she has some very interesting stories she's going to share with us a little bit later. Next we have Julian Barnes, who appears in Frankenstein The True Story. Julian also starred in such films as Horror House with Frankie Avalon, The Ballad of Tam Lin with Ava Gardner, directed by Roddy McDowell, and more recently, Julian has appeared in Joe Johnston's The Rocketeer, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks, and Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim. And we also have with us the legendary artist, Bruce Tim. He painted this gorgeous inside cover foldout of the arctic climax and finale to the movie, and you'll see the original out in the gallery. Bruce is an artist, character, designer, animator, writer, producer, and actor. He's best known for his contributions building the modern DC Comics animated franchise known as the DC Animated Universe. Bruce co-created and co-produced the Emmy Award-winning Batman The Animated Series and its various spin-offs, Superman The Animated Series, and Static Shock. He was the sole creator and producer of the animated series Justice League and Green Lantern. He also produced the feature links Batman Beyond Return of the Joker. And I think it's significant that just prior to Frankenstein the True Story, Gil Malay had composed the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning TV movie That Certain Summer, considered the very first sympathetic portrayal of a gay couple on network television played so memorably by Martin Sheen and Hal Holbrook. Gil's compassion and sensitivity in writing the scores to both of these films is extraordinary. So Denise, let's go back and tell us what you recall about Gil getting involved in this movie. How did he get the job? Well, I don't know that Sid Schoenberg, who was head of television at the time, had a television at Universal. Yes, I don't think he particularly wanted Gil, thought about him, and they wanted Maurice Schoen or Michelle LeGrand, and neither of them wanted to do television in those days. And I guess Gil was the other choice. The head of production was a man named George Santoro, and he really plugged to get Gil to do the score, and Hunt, I don't think, was familiar with Gil's music, but he was open to George Santoro's suggestion, and I guess he got approval from Sid Schoenberg, so that's how it all happened. There was one story that I thought was interesting where you told me that Hunt Stromberg, Jr., the producer of the movie, wanted to hear a sample of what Gil was up to, so tell us about that. Yes. Actually, he left Gil alone, which was great, because Gil was one of those people who didn't like to be pressured and give samples of his music, like a lot of producers or directors would want to hear something beforehand. Then one day, Hunt said, gee, I'd like to hear something that you've written. And Gil wrote what I thought was one of the most beautiful themes for the movie, and that was the creation of Prima, where he used the harp. And I don't know if you're going to show that portion of the movie. That's our next clip. Thank you. You led into it beautifully, darling. Yeah, and Hunt was sold on it. He just loved it. But I have to say that Hunt basically left Gil alone. After all, you hire a person for the talents that they have, and you don't have to prove yourself. And Hunt gave Gil that credit. He hired him, and he expected him to do the best that he could. Yes. Oh, that's great. It was not a huge role, but I certainly enjoyed what I did. And as I think I told you, one of the more memorable moments was James Mason. May I tell that story? Please. It was right at the height of the Watergate scandal. And between setups in the ballroom sequence, there'd be this circle of astonishing talent, all listening to James Mason read from, as I recall the Herald Tribune, but it might have been the times every day between takes, he would read the update of the Watergates to candle in his, to the cast, to a present in his inimitable voice. Yeah, it was just one of those memories that will stay with me forever. I guess he won. Clearly has. Yes. And interestingly enough, there are, I've talked to a number of people who worked on the film who began to think that maybe he was basing a little bit of his performance of Dr. Palladori on Richard Nixon, so there is a connection. May I just add a little bit to that? Please. That entrance, you know, Margaret Layton, God bless her, a legend, was somewhat frail. And so I took it upon myself to just make sure, and I've been quite, I'm quite good at this in both stage and screen, at being a rock. You know, if somebody's not saw unhappy with this, whatever situation arises in some of the jobs I've done, I just try to be there for them as much as I can. And that was one of my chief concerns with having Margaret Layton on my arm. And of course, Michael Wilding was on the picture, and he would always come over and say... And they were married at the time. Yes. Are you all right, dear? You know, and make sure that she was doing okay. Yes. It's just a nice touching moment. No, that's fantastic. I love her so much. I believe that Stromberg not only wanted to expand Margaret Layton's role, he wanted to expand yours too. And I think that's why he put the two of you together in that moment. Did you get that impression that he had a little bit of a crush on you, Julian? You'll see a very different Julian Barnes in a few minutes. I was unaware. You are mainly known for your caricature-style artwork. But for Frankenstein the True Story, you decided to go in an entirely different direction. And do you want to tell us about that? Yeah. I've been doing stuff for Dick Clemenson's magazine for, God, it's been 15 years maybe. And he'll just email me and say, oh yeah, we're doing an issue on this particular movie or whatever. And I'll just go, oh yeah, I like that movie, I can do something with that. And in the past it's always been, like you said, usually kind of caricatures or portraits of the cast. And when I sat down to actually do something for this issue it just wasn't, I wasn't feeling it. And then also I kind of had the feeling that a lot of the other artists that he had contacted would be doing portraits of the cast and that turned out to be true. So then I thought, OK, well, what am I going to do? And the deadline's approaching and it's a fold out. It's a widescreen kind of frame thing rather than a regular, you know, a bright rectangle. It's a sideways rectangle. Horizontal. And I was like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And then I was watching the movie again on YouTube. And as we got to that sequence in the movie it reminded me that even when I was a kid, when I first saw the movie, when it first aired in 73, I remember thinking that the whole film had like this amazing epic feel to it, much unlike most of the TV productions at the time. It felt really big and like a movie. So much so that when I think of the movie, I tend to think of it in terms of it being like a widescreen picture. And when I get to that sequence in particular at the Arctic, I'm always momentarily startled that the image is square, that it's in a TV ratio rather than the 16 by 9 widescreen. And so that kind of gave me the idea. I said, oh, I've got this widescreen frame to draw in. And I've always seen this image in my head as being widescreen. So I'll do a version of that. And that's what I ended up doing. Well, you did a great job. Thank you. It's a very moving piece. Yes. Well, one of the scenes that was cut out, it was about a seven-minute sequence that opened the picture. And she starts to tell the story and their characters sort of morph and start to assume the characters of the characters that are in the film itself. And it segues into Dr. Frankenstein's brother William falling out of a rowboat in the lake and drowning. And so that's the way the picture now opens is the drowning of the brother. And it's a little, the editing is a little abrupt because it wasn't planned to really be the opening that way. That sequence exists somewhere, I hope. It's never been seen, but it must be buried in the Universal Vault somewhere. My dream is to someday they will make a concerted effort to find that and restore that at least as an extra or something. Why they cut out that prologue with Mary Shelley? And having directed a lot of movies for commercial television, the golden rule is that you gotta grab your audience by the first commercial break. Or as soon as that commercial hits, people are gonna channel surf and if they find something more interesting, they're gonna stick with it. And I think that the executives in NBC felt like seven minutes of Mary Shelley and people attuned in to see a Frankenstein movie may not go over that well in Middle America. So I think that, I'm guessing, but that's I think a reasonable assumption. What they replaced it with, by taking that out, I mean originally, the top build star is James Mason. And originally, he would have been in the very opening scene as Palladore by Lake Geneva. By taking that out, his character now was not gonna appear for the first time in the movie for a good 45 minutes or more. So they decided to do an introduction with James Mason as himself. Where he is walking through a cemetery and showing us the gravestone of Mary Shelley and explaining about the history. And then showing a lot of really enticing clips of the film and a lot of spoilers too. I mean my god, they practically gave away the whole movie. We didn't care about stuff like that back then, we didn't care. We didn't care. Spoilers, it was like, no, look, there's a crawling hand. That's right. No, I mean it was like, whoa, this is gonna be so incredible. So there's no way that viewers would not have stuck with it. Seeing that montage of clips because it was really mind blowing. Well, the great makeup artist Roy Ashton, that was his real arm. And he really did act out that moment. And he cast his own arm for the mole to make the fake arm. And so he had shaved all of the hair off of his arm. And so it was gonna be a perfect match anyway. So it was, that's how that all came about. He did the exterior of the arm, the skin and everything for the fake arm. And then Colin Childers, who was in the effects department, did all of the mechanics inside. And he told me a funny story where it was so heavy on the floor and the hand is supposed to like crawl along the floor. And when they first did it, the fingers are just scratching on the floor. I can't pull it along because it's too heavy. So they put tiny little pins into the fingers so they could grip like ice picks so it could actually get traction. And it really did pull it along. And it's very, very, very frustrating that after all these years, this incredible score that I think is Gil Millay's, I think it's his best score. And that it has not actually officially come out on CD. And it is so beyond high time that this score is released. And Denise, you have the masters all perfectly preserved, I understand. Well, they're real to real. Use your microphone, but tell. I'm sorry, they're real to real. And I don't know if Gil really had them put to digital. I'll have to take a look and see. I think he did, but. Yeah, but I'm hoping that the magazine will spur interest in those realms as well. Anybody who has any contact with soundtrack record labels, please put in a good word. And because we would love for that to happen. I mean, they went through all the, considering all of these really major directors. But they were also very afraid. I mean, when Francis Ford Coppola was campaigning to direct this movie, he had finished shooting The Godfather, but it hadn't come out yet. And no one knew whether it was going to be a hit. In fact, there was a lot of talk in Hollywood that it was a mess and that Brando was, you know, had to rely on cue cards. And so no one knew it was going to be a hit. And it took a number of months before it finally came out. And so as far as Universal was concerned, Francis Ford Coppola, he's had some movies that didn't do very well. Finnean's Rainbow, et cetera, he hasn't really had a big track record. And he went a million dollars over budget on The Godfather. And they were being very pragmatic money-wise. They were very afraid that this was going to get out of hand. And so long story short, because there are many other directors that were considered, they ended up going with a much more pragmatic choice. And Jack Smite was on contract with Universal. And he had done a number of big theatrical films in the 60s. Harper with Paul Newman, The Illustrated Man with Rod Steiger, and many others. But he had signed a contract with Universal in 1969. This was 73. And he had done like literally like 10 TV movies in a row and had brought them all in on schedule and on budget. And they had great confidence in him to be able to take on this huge enterprise and not go over budget and let it get out of hand. And then on the basis of this, he sort of was springboarded back into theatrical films. And Universal gave him Midway and Airport 75. But he did get back into theatrical because of this movie.