S
ay the words “genre royalty” and one name is bound to come up more than any other: christopher lee.
Make that Sir Christopher Lee, as the 87-year-old icon was knighted last year, for good reason. With a career that has spanned seven decades and is still going strong, the legendary actor has played everything from swashbuckling pirates, to insidious villains, to revered political leaders. But it is his work in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres that has built his most loyal fan base. Although known to the average mod- ern moviegoer as villains Saruman, in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Count Dooku, in the Star Wars prequels, Lee remains – to horror fans, at least – closely identified with the roles he played for England’s Ham- mer Studios, particularly that of Count Dracula. He donned the fangs seven times for the company over the course of sixteen years (plus once for director Jess Franco, and later he even played Vlad the Impaler for a documentary). Of aristocratic ancestry himself, Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was
born on May 27, 1922 in the district of Belgravia in Westminster, Eng- land. His mother, Estelle Marie Carandini, was an Italian contessa; his fa- ther, Geoffrey Lee, was a lieutenant-colonel with Britain’s 60th King’s Royal Rifle Corps. When he was four, Lee’s parents separated, with his mother later marrying Harcourt Rose, a banker and relation to James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Graduating from Wellington College, where he majored in classical studies, Lee went on to serve in World War II in Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF), and as an intelligence officer with the British army. After he retired from the RAF at the end of the war, he was encouraged by his mother’s cousin Nicolò Carandini, the Italian ambas- sador to Britain, to try acting. Securing a seven-year contract with the Rank Organisation in 1946,
Lee’s first role was a bit part in the 1948 romantic mystery Corridor of Mirrors. Other small roles followed in such films as Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) and Moulin Rouge (1952) – both of which featured his fu- ture friend and regular co-star, Peter Cushing. But quality parts eluded
the 6‘5” Lee, who was frequently told that he was “too tall” and “too “foreign-looking” to land leading man roles, so he was forced to make do with bit parts. That changed when budding independent British stu- dio Hammer Films cast him in its version of Frankenstein. Finally, his height was an advantage. Released in 1957, The Curse of Frankenstein was Hammer’s first
foray into gothic horror – a genre for which it would become world renowned. Directed by Terence Fisher, the film starred Cushing (who had achieved fame in the 1954 BBC TV production of Nineteen Eighty-Four) in the role of the calculating, murderous Baron Frankenstein. As the “Creature,” Lee found himself beneath layers of patchwork makeup. Even without dialogue, the actor, like Boris Karloff before him in Uni-
versal’s Frankenstein, conveyed a sense of pathos that made the mon- ster ultimately far less evil than its creator. Featuring dismembered limbs, heaving bosoms and a liberal sprinkling of “Kensington Gore” (theatrical grue) – all in blood-red Technicolor – the film was vilified by critics but a huge box office hit nonetheless. (See Classic Cut p.98 for more on the movie.) Naturally, it wasn’t long before Hammer had its sights on updating
another horror classic.Horror of Dracula (1958) featured Lee, in what would become his signature role, as the Transylvanian Count, with Cush- ing as his arch-nemesis, Professor Van Helsing. Lee’s Dracula was a great departure from that of his screen predecessor Bela Lugosi. Vested with a blatant sexuality, his Dracula was athletic, animalistic and, per- haps most important to the story, attractive to his female victims, who anticipated his nocturnal visits. The character was further updated with the addition of fangs and red contact lenses. The film was an even big- ger smash than Curse and cemented Lee’s reputation as a horror star. Rounding out Hammer’s original trilogy of classic monster reboots was The Mummy, which again re-teamed Lee with Cushing. In the 1959
Classic Hammer Photos copyright Hammer Films Legacy Ltd.
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