Dwight Frye

Dwight Frye
File:Dwight Frye.png in A Strange Adventure (1932)
Born	Dwight Iliff Fry (1899-02-22)February 22, 1899 Salina, Kansas, U.S.
Died	Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1922-43
Spouse(s)	Laura Mae Bullivant (1928-1943; his death); 1 child

Dwight Iliff Frye (February 22, 1899 – November 7, 1943) was an American stage and screen actor, remembered for his appearance as the tormented Renfield in the classic horror film Dracula (1931).

Early life and career

Frye was born in Salina, Kansas. In the 1920s he made his name as a versatile stage actor, often in comedies. In 1924 he played the Son in a translation of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

He had a few minor roles in silent pictures, but with the coming of sound he soon became known for playing unsavory characters. Nicknamed "The Man with the Thousand-Watt Stare" and "The Man of a Thousand Deaths", he specialized in the portrayal of mentally unbalanced characters, including his signature role, the madman Renfield in Tod Browning's 1931 version of Dracula. Later that same year he played the hunchbacked assistant Fritz in Frankenstein.

Also in 1931, Frye portrayed Wilmer Cook (the "gunsel") in the original film version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. He had a featured role in the horror film The Vampire Bat (1933) in which he played Herman, a half-wit suspected of being a killer. He had memorable roles in The Invisible Man (1933) as a reporter, and in The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935).

In Bride of Frankenstein (1935), he played Karl. The part was originally much more substantive, and many additional scenes of Frye were shot as a subplot but were edited out of the final version to shorten the running time and appease the censors. One of these deleted scenes was that of Karl killing the Burgomaster, portrayed by E. E. Clive.

No known prints of these scenes survive today, but photographs of the scene were used to illustrate the scene's synopsis and are included in the recent Universal Studios DVD release of the film. During the early 1940s, Frye alternated between film roles and appearing on stage in a variety of productions ranging from comedies to musicals, as well as appearing in a stage version of Dracula. He also made a contribution to the war effort by working nights as a tool designer for Lockheed Aircraft.

Death

Frye's strong resemblance to former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker helped land a role in the biopic Wilson (1944), based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but he died of a heart attack while riding on a bus in Hollywood a few days before filming was to have begun. He was interred in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.

Cultural references

• Alice Cooper included a song titled "Ballad of Dwight Fry" (without the final "e") on their 1971 album Love It to Death. It is sung from the point of view of a character such as the actor might have played. The 2012 Tim Burton film Dark Shadows features a cameo by Cooper performing the song.
• The music company Wind-Up Entertainment Inc. houses one music publishing concern called Renfield Music Publishing, and another called Dwight Frye Music, which publishes artists such as Evanescence and Creed.
• Frye, along with Helen Chandler, his co-star in the 1931 film Dracula, both appear as characters in Donald Jeffries' 2007 science fiction/fantasy novel The Unreals.
• Jello Biafra mentions Frye in the lyrics to the song "Buy My Snake Oil" from his 1994 album with Mojo Nixon, Prairie Home Invasion. It goes as follows: "C'mon and buy my snake oil, til my well runs stinking dry. I'll be your Rondo Hatton, I'll be your Dwight Frye..."

External links

• Dwight Frye at the Internet Movie Database
• Dwight Frye at the Internet Broadway Database