ROLES FOR KARLOFF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

ROLES FOR KARLOFF

WORLD'S WICKEDEST MEN AN ARDUOUS SEARCH Who were the world's wickedest men? to this question are! anxiously sought by young Carl Laemmle, ■ producer of Universal films, who is trying to find a character bad enough for Boris Karloff. Mr. Laemmle has read the Newgate Calendar and the lives of the Roman Emperors without discovering a villian inhuman enough for the ex-Monster of ''"Frankenstein." He ruled out Ivan the Terrible as a possible Karloff part because Ivan was too religious, and disqualified Cesare Borgia and Crippen for similar reasons. '•*/• • ' H. G. Wells' " The Invisible Man,'-' recently planned for Universal production, has been postponed because Mr.' Laemmle feels that although the leading character is eerie he is not really evil in the Karloff sense. " • ... " The latest suggestion -is 1 that' Karloff shall play a modernised filuebeard, whose story has been handed to a * Universal scenarist to see if he can repaint the wifekiller black enough for admission to Universal' s gallery of horrors. A story about a mad electrical genius, entitled " The ,Wizard," is also being considered. Meanwhile Karloff has completed his gruesome part of a revivified Egyptian mummy in " The Mummy," and until Mr. Laemmle finds him . a new crime worth committing he must,rpmain out of work.