Universal Studios Monsters - 1931 - Frankenstein

Frankenstein was not the automatic next choice for Universal despite the unprecedented commercial success of Dracula (1931), and their fortunes remained precarious. In addition to a rifeness of nepotism (at one point it seemed as if new Laemmles were arriving from Europe daily) the studio did not have an arm of theatres awaiting new productions, so Universal were reliant on independently-owned outlets for most of their business, which put them at a major disadvantage from competitors. Feeling a little stuck with the new horror genre, Carl Laemmle Sr did not see a sequel as the most obvious next step, so looked around for another property to film. His attention rested on Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, but he knew that the book would be difficult to make sense of on film, particularly on a restricted budget. Robert Florey created the first draft and, with dialogue contributions from Garrett Fort, stripped the novel back to the mere premise of Shelley’s ideas, basing it