For all his film acting credits, Boris Karloff insisted that true horror was best served over the radio. The question put to him by Gladys Hall, the author of this article from the June 1936 issue of RADIO STARS was this: "Do you believe horror can be done on the air? I mean, as effectively, as chillingly as the thrills and spine-shudders you give us on the screen?" Karloff replied: "More effectively. Why not? For isn't horror more horrible as an audible sensation, really? I mean, if you only hear a thing--a cry in the night, a moan, a wail--isn't it more horrible than if you can see what is making the moan or the wail or the scream?" Putting it in that context, it's hard to argue his point.
At the time of this interview, Karloff was living with his wife, Dorothy, at 2320 Bowmont Drive, in Coldwater Canyon above Beverly Hills and was a resident from about 1934 until 1945. He bought the property from former owner Katherine Hepburn, who is rumored to have sold it because she claimed it was haunted.
After moving from the East Coast, Hepburn moved into the home with her friend, Eve March and a housekeeper. In his book, "The Movieland Directory", E.J. Fleming writes: "One night March watched the door latch open and close by itself, and the next day Hepburn and March watched a ghostly man walk from the pool into the apartment, closing the door behind him." The first time Hepburn’s younger brother Richard stayed overnight, he told her that a young man "stood over his bed all night staring down at him. He was too afraid to move until sunrise". One wonders who this apparition might have been since the house was built in 1927 and less than 10 years old at the time.
While Karloff lived there, he kept a barnyard of animals, including dogs, ducks, chickens, a cow and a 400-pound pig he affectionately called Violet. An avid gardener, he also maintained a well-kept rose garden where it is said that he scattered the ashes of a few friends. Without sounding too morbid, I suppose it would have been a good source of bone meal, which is one of the nutrients that roses thrive on.
In his excellent book, "Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration", noted horror historian Greg Mank wrote:
"For Karloff, home was his Mexican farmhouse — a bizarre aerie, high amidst the oak trees and honeysuckle of Coldwater Canyon, in the mountains above Beverly Hills. Twenty-three twenty Bowmont Drive, with its pool and beautiful, rambling gardens, previously had been the address of Katharine Hepburn. The actress sincerely believed a ghost haunted the house, moving the furniture, jiggling the latch on Ms. Hepburn’s bedroom door and looming over the guest bed — so terrifying Hepburn’s brother Richard that he couldn’t sleep ‘one single night’ during his visit. After Kate’s friend Laura Harding tried to have her dogs ferret out the ghost — to no avail — Hepburn vacated, and Boris and Dorothy had moved into the haunted hacienda in the spring of 1934. ‘We felt rather sorry for the ghost,’ said Laura Harding — after all, the spirit had likely met its match in the star who’d played Frankenstein’s Monster! Perhaps Boris scared away the ghost, or maybe they were kindred spirits, for the star loved his ‘little farm'."
In this magazine interview, Karloff also had another surprising thing to say: "One of the future developments of radio may be to establish long-wave contact with--the world beyond." Read the article for him elaborating on the topic and more.
This is a partial list of radio shows Boris Karloff appeared on:
- Creeps By Night
- Info Please
- Inner Sanctum
- Jack Benny
- Kraft Music Hall
- Lights Out
- Master Storyteller
- Reader's Digest
- Spike Jones