<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

James Whale (July 22 1889 - May 29 1957) British director and former cartoonist who arrived in Hollywood with R.C. Sherriff’s anti-war play Journey’s End (1930). He brought a black humour and pathos to such seminal Universal horrors as Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), he retired in 1941 to paint and apparently committed suicide by drowning himself in his swimming pool after suffering a minor stroke. He was portrayed in an Academy Award-nominated performance by Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters (1998).