Flick Review < Black Friday | Arthur Lubin, 1940
Black Friday (1940)
Director: Arthur Lubin
Writers: Curt Siodmak, Eric Taylor, Edmund L. Hartmann
Cinematographer: Elwood Bredell
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges, Anne Nagel
Bela Lugosi, Anne Nagel
Boris Karloff, on the set
- In an interview, Curt Siodmak said of Boris Karloff, who demanded – and obtained – Bela Lugosi’s role in this film:
“Karloff didn’t want to play the dual role in Black Friday. He was afraid of it. There was too much acting in it. It was too intricate.”
Karloff thus ended up with the part written specifically for Lugosi, inexcusably leaving the Hungarian actor to play a then poorly cast, minor role as an American gangster, instead of being given Karloff’s dual role which instead went to Stanley Ridges. (plays a Jekyll and Hyde type)
- Of the eight films featuring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, this film and Gift of Gab (1934) are the only ones where they share no scenes together.
- When dealing with the bellhop in his room, Kingsley quotes three lines from the poem The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.”
Also:
The Book & the Movie: The Island of Dr. Moreau / H.G. Wells (1896) | Island of Lost Souls / Erle C. Kenton (1932)
Behind the Scenes | Katharine Hepburn / Cary Grant / Vivien Leigh / James Cagney / Elsa Lanchester / Busby Berkeley / Bela Lugosi / Raquel Torres / Boris Karloff / Dolores Del Rio, 1932-39
