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Dwight Frye:
The Man Behind The Insanity
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Added new film “Wayne Murder Case” Dwight D. ”Buddy” Frye, son of Dwight Frye, Passed Away
on March 27, 2003
While reading Dracula,
I got the urge to watch the Mel Brooks film Dracula: Dead and Loving
It. I loved Peter McNichol's Renfield, and wondered where he got
the inspiration. After some research, I found out about Dwight Frye's
performance in the Tod Browning movie. Curious, I rented Tod Browning's
version, even though I knew I'd be watching it in class less than a week
later. I didn't care, I just had to see Dwight's Renfield.
Although disappointed at pretty much everything else with the movie, I loved
Dwight Frye. Even though his part had mostly been written for comic
relief, he still managed to find the pathos that I had loved in the original
novel. He also managed to drag in a
whole lot of subtext. Yikes! Francis Ford Coppola's Bram
Stoker's Dracula left most of the homoerotic subtext out, focusing almost
exclusively on the heterosexual content. Coppola even invented a crappy
"past life love story" to emphasize it. In Tod Browning's film, it's all
about the sub/dom relationship between Renfield and Dracula. Some of
the most sexualized moments in the film are between Renfield and Dracula.*
The whole intense stare shot-reverse-shot gets me every time.
::shudders:: Anyway, so in the movie, Renfield
is the one to visit Dracula in Transylvania, not Jonathan Harker.
Although this gives a good explanation for Renfield's deterioration (and gives
Dwight massive screen time) it lessens Jonathan's role. Luckily, an
extraordinarily boring man played Jonathan so it was all okay. So
Renfield goes to Dracula's castle and is seduced into becoming Dracula's
slave. During the scene, Dwight flashes
his patented "Oh Shit" face which will appear several more times in
his career. The "Oh Shit" face is one of the pictures on the
left. You can probably guess which one. As Dracula's slave, Renfield
protects the coffins on the overseas journey and rants about needing lives
and generally acts like a whipped puppy. When the ship lands, he
delivers one of the most famous laughs in history. "Eh eh eh eh Eh
eh." Creepy and kind of funny at the same time. It was
Dwight all over. Renfield is sent to an insane
asylum and then the film shifts to a bunch of bad actors for a while,
occasionally coming back to Renfield when they need comic relief. Then
Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing shows up and the acting gets better.
Dwight and Edward would work on several films together, but more on that
later. Since Dracula's off paying
attention to women now, Renfield rebels against his master and warns Van
Helsing and the boring people about Dracula's plans. His loyalties
continue to sway throughout the entire movie until Dracula finally throws him
off a huge staircase. Yeah Drac, clutching Renfield like that isn't
homoerotic coding at all . . . Thus is Renfield's tragic movie
end. I guess the censors just weren't ready for Renfield to have his
face beaten bloody and his back and neck broken. Go figure. As you can tell, I have a lot
of Dwight Frye pictures from Dracula and the rest of the pictures,
including some of Edward Van Sloan and Bela Lugosi are linked below. Attack on the Staircase Dwight's performance just really
stuck in my mind and I wanted more information. I found out that the man
had done over fifty movies! It was a good number considering his career
was cut tragically short by a fatal heart attack in 1943. Too young to
serve in World War I and too old by World War II, Dwight spent his evenings
working as a tool designer. That was the profession listed on his death
certificate. After Dracula, Dwight
found himself typecast in the roles of lunatics, madman, half-wits and
deformed assistants. He was an almost constant presence in the old
Universal horror series. He worked with legends such as Boris Karloff,
Bela Lugosi and director James Whale. Dwight made several movies with
Whale including the classics Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. But Dwight wasn't just limited to
horror. He also featured in mysteries, comedies, a western, and wartime
cautionary tales. This site started to get a little
big on its own, so I've created separate pages for the other Dwight Frye
films I've seen. Send
feedback to joeanne_b@hotmail.com Here are some more good Dwight
Frye sites: * I just wrote a
whole paper on this so I don't want to hear any whining from overly sensitive
types. It's a comment on the relationship between the characters, not a
comment on the actor. Some people will say, "Duh" but you'll
be surprised at the stupidity out there.
Dracula is copyright of
Universal and Dwight Frye of Dwight Frye. No infringement of copyright
is implied or intended. Please do not use pictures without my
permission. All pictures were
screencapped by me. |
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