Dwight Frye Trailers
The Many Faces of Dracula TrailerUniversal Horror TrailerFrankenstein: A Cinematic Scrapbook Trailer
Dwight Iliff Frye (February 22, 1899 – November 7, 1943) was an American stage and screen actor, noted for his appearances in the classic horror films Dracula, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.
Frye was born in Salina, Kansas. 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 also played the hunchbacked assistant in the film Frankenstein. (This character, named Fritz, is often mistakenly referred to as Ygor, a character originated by Béla Lugosi in the later film Son of Frankenstein.)
Frye had a prominent role in the 1933 horror film The Vampire Bat, starring Lionel Atwill, Melvyn Douglas, and Fay Wray, in which he played Herman, a half-wit suspected of being a killer. He also had a memorable role in the classic Bride of Frankenstein, in which he played Karl. The part of Karl was originally much longer and many extra scenes of Frye were shot as a sub plot but were edited out of the final version to shorten the running time as well as to appease the censor boards. The most memorable of these "cut 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 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. In 1924 he played the Son in a translation of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.[1] There was a Dwight Frye Fan Club at one time,[2] but it is currently dormant. He also made a contribution to the war effort by working nights as a tool designer for Lockheed Aircraft. Frye's strong resemblance to former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker helped land him what would have been a substantial role in the biographical film Wilson, 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.
Frye was interred in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
Most Popular Dwight Frye Trailers
Total trailers found: 55
08 October 1998
A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.
02 April 1937
Young Jim Stanton is a conscientious surgeon, but spends too many off-duty hours pursuing his passion for aviation to suit his stuffy father.
30 September 1937
James Cagney has a rare chance to show his song-and-dance-man roots in this low-budget tale of a New York bandleader struggling with a Hollywood studio boss.
06 November 1926
The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.
21 June 1931
Movie star Shelah Fane is seeing wealthy Alan Jaynes while filming in Honolulu, Hawaii, but won't marry him without consulting famed psychic Tarneverro first.
18 October 1930
A vicious crime lord decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command and retire to Florida after marrying his moll.
05 December 1930
A young man attempts to overcome the memory of his father, who was sent to jail for committing a murder.
30 January 1927
A silent comedy set in an actor's boardinghouse. Some plot points are seemingly inspired by the Barrymore dynasty.
20 April 1935
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive, not killed as previously believed. Dr. Frankenstein wants to get out of the evil experiment business, but when a mad scientist, Dr.
05 March 1943
Grave robbers open the grave of the wolf man and awaken him. He doesn't like the idea of being immortal and killing people when the moon is full so tries to find Dr.
28 February 1942
This Crime Does Not Pay series entry dramatizes the idea that during wartime, people should not discuss anything related to their work when in public.
10 April 1933
Suave, lip-reading DA Thatcher Colt plans to get away from the big city for a while. So he and his secretary, Miss Kelly hop on a train for an Upstate NY town called Gilead.
12 February 1931
British estate agent Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a castle in London.
25 August 1935
When reporter Dan Miller is once again late to meet his girl friend, Helen Murdock, because he is working on a story, Helen breaks up with him.
12 April 1943
When a small town doctor buries his twin brother, a practitioner of the black arts, he believes him dead; but subsequent events force him to realize that his brother has, in fact, returned from the dead as a vampire and is seeking revenge on the doctor, who had killed him in self-defense.
06 July 1940
Sgt. Renfrew and Constable Kelly go aloft to search for a plane missing with a shipment of gold from the Yukon Mine Company.
13 March 1942
Frankenstein's unscrupulous colleague, Dr. Bohmer, plans to transplant Ygor's brain so he can rule the world using the monster's body, but the plan goes sour when he turns malevolent and goes on a rampage.
15 October 1941
Fortune hunter Mary Brooks, posing as a missionary's daughter, strives to beat a couple of pilots, Terry Prescott and "Waffles" Billings, (who have turned pearl divers in order to buy a plane and join the Royal Air Force), out of their pearls, while also beating off the advances of Prince Sali who wants to add her to his harem.
15 November 1938
Agadez is a lonely French outpost baking under the desert sun and commanded by the cruel and oppressive Captain Savatt.
15 March 1940
The nefarious Dr. Fu Manchu searches for the keys to the tomb of Genghis Khan, in order to fulfill a prophecy that will enable him to conquer the world.
05 July 1938
Married book-dealers Joel & Garda Sloane try to clear a friend in the murder of a rival book-seller.
11 March 1931
At midnight on Walpurgis Night, an English clerk, Renfield, arrives at Count Dracula's castle in the Carpathian Mountains.
03 November 1933
After experimenting on himself and becoming invisible, scientist Jack Griffin, now aggressive due to the drug's effects, seeks a way to reverse the experiment at any cost.
24 February 1938
A temperamental singer's murder leaves a nightclub full of suspects.
22 December 1937
Mary Gillespie is restoring the Col. Gillespie Circus to its former splendor after her father's death.
13 July 1939
Tyrannical King Louis XIV learns that he has an identical twin brother, Philippe, who was raised from birth by his late father's trusted friend D'Artagnan and his faithful musketeers, Porthos, Athos and Aramis.
18 May 1940
A criminal uses his knowledge of the law for his not-very-legal purposes, betraying friends along the way.
15 September 1932
When Tim Barrett rides into Carabinas, his reputation as a lawman precedes him. Rescuing Polly Loomis from the unwanted attentions of a saloon ruffian, he learns her mother married ranch foreman Nick Grindel shortly before her death, and left everything to him in her will.
23 September 1936
A radio commentator named Perry Travis fancies himself a brilliant amateur detective. The cops wish he’d stick to his microphone and let them do the detecting.
21 May 1932
A lawyer is haunted by a previous case in which he manipulated evidence and convicted an innocent man.
20 November 1932
A police lieutenant and a female reporter investigate a series of murders committed by a hooded killer in an old dark house.
01 January 1991
Documentary with a treasure trove of rare footage and vintage trailers, offering a rich and unusual look at the history of Frankenstein on the screen.
08 December 1935
The second of the three film versions of the E. Phillips Oppenheim espionage thriller set largely in an old dark house where a tremulous wife wonders if her husband is really his double, a dastardly German spy.
21 December 1936
An unhappily married newspaper reporter discovers she's being used as a pawn in a scheme to discredit the political candidate she's been assigned to write about.
01 October 1938
Gangster Charlie McCormick despairs as his young brother Bobby lays near death and vows to break the quarantine of the ocean liner Pacific Queen in order to retrieve the iron lung Bobby needs.
05 December 1940
Rightful owner of the kingdom, the Duchess of Zona, is engaged in a power struggle with the evil General Gurko.
24 July 1938
A gang of 'professional torches' burn down stores for the insurance money.
19 May 1938
The survivors from a plane crash are washed up on an island where the only inhabitants are Mr. Taylor and his servant, Ping.
21 January 1933
A German village is stricken by a series of murders that appear to be the work of vampires.
03 April 1938
Jeffrey Clavering is hired in London by The Great Eastern Oil Corporation to go to Paris to prevent unscrupulous industrialist Nikolai Kamarov from gaining control of their oil fields and turning them over to a foreign power.
28 June 1943
Nazi spies use a stolen shortwave transmitter prototype to broadcast top secret shipping info to an offshore Japanese sub.
21 April 1936
A Florida-bound train is filled with romance and intrigue in this comedy. Among the passengers is a millionaire bon vivant carrying $1 million in diamonds.
16 September 1928
A boxer falls in love with a girl he meets in the park.
01 January 2000
Hosted by Christopher Lee, this documentary examines the different actors who have portrayed Dracula over the years.
15 April 1943
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process.
29 August 1941
A spy steals a secret military device, then hijacks an airliner to get away. The airliner crashes in the wilderness & the survivors are threatened by a raging forest fire.
03 September 1941
FBI agents Allan Harper and Tommy Baker are in charge of a group of subversives, spies and saboteurs that the US government is deporting to foreign countries aboard a ship.
10 November 1941
A former Navy man attempts to redeem his honor by exposing a shipping tycoon's dealings with the enemy.
23 September 1935
A crazed scientist invents a serum that induces a catatonic state in anyone who gets the injection. He uses the serum to paralyze his enemies, in order to bury them alive.
23 May 1931
A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.
07 June 1940
In this second Carter mystery, a mysterious rash of cargo ships sinking in Panama leads insurers Llewellyns of London to hire vacationer Nick Carter and his eccentric associate Bartholomew to investigate.
06 July 1932
On the night express train from Los Angeles to San Francisco everyone’s a suspect when a jewelry magnate is found stabbed to death and an escaped killer is feared on board.
23 September 1943
Mystery writer Barry Craig (Allyn Joslyn) and his wife Jane (Evelyn Keyes), prefer solving crimes rather than writing about them.
19 February 1937
Doris lives with her rough Coast Guardsman father. He has plans for her to marry an up and coming officer, but there is competition when a new, brash, Guardsman enters the picture.
21 November 1931
Tampering with life and death, Henry Frankenstein pieces together salvaged body parts to bring a human monster to life; the mad scientist's dreams are shattered by his creation's violent rage as the monster awakens to a world in which he is unwelcome.
