James WhaleFilmography

Born:: July 22, 1893 in Dudley, Worcestershire, England
Occupation:: Director
Biography:: British-born director James Whale started his professional life as a newspaper cartoonist before turning to acting during his time as a prisoner in World War I. From acting, he turned to set design and then to directing, and went to Hollywood in 1930 for the screen version of his stage hit Journey's End...Read More

Sort By:
Title
Release Date

They Dare Not Love

Crew: Director

Actors: George Brent, Martha Scott, Paul Lukas, Egon Brecher, Roman Bohnen

Synopsis: In this drama, which blends romance with suspense, Prince Kurt von Rotenberg (George Brent) is attempting to flee his native Austria one step ahead of German troops. In his travels, he meets Marta Keller (Martha Scott), and amidst the chaos that surrounds them, the two fall in love, even though Read More

1941
Green Hell

Crew: Director

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Vincent Price, Joan Bennett, Alan Hale, George Sanders, John Howard

Synopsis: Angry natives or a beautiful widow -- which poses the greater threat? Keith Brandon (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is an archeologist leading a team of researchers -- Richardson (Vincent Price), Loren (Alan Hale), Forrester (George Sanders), and Scott (John Howard) -- who are exploring the jungles of Read More

1940
The Man in the Iron Mask

Crew: Director

Actors: Louis Hayward, Joan Bennett, Joseph Schildkraut, Alan Hale, Warren William

Synopsis: Man in the Iron Mask is independent producer Edward Small's 1939 edition of the much-filmed Dumas classic. The title character is the rightful King of France, imprisoned by his pretender-to-the-throne twin brother (both roles are played by Louis Hayward, with an uncredited Peter Cushing doubling Read More

1939
Wives under Suspicion

Crew: Director

Actors: Warren William, Gail Patrick, William Lundigan, Constance Moore, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: James Whale's Wives Under Suspicion is remake of Whale's own 1933 production A Kiss Before the Mirror, with a few noticeable concessions for the more militant censors of 1938. District attorney Jim Stowell (Warren William) is convinced that every murder should be sentenced to the electric chair Read More

1938
Sinners in Paradise

Crew: Director

Actors: Madge Evans, John Boles, Bruce Cabot, Marion Martin, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: At one time Universal's "prestige" director, James Whale had slipped off the A-list by the end of the 1930s; even so, his films remained both intriguing and entertaining. In Whale's Sinners in Paradise, an airplane bound for China cracks up during a storm and crash-lands on an uncharted South Sea Read More

1938
Port of Seven Seas

Crew: Director

Actors: Frank Morgan, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Beal, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: James Whale directed this screen adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's French classic Fanny. Madelon (Maureen O'Hara) is a lovely young woman who lives in a seaside community, where she has fallen in love with Marius (John Beal), a sailor. Marius is called to duty and sets sail, shortly before Madelon Read More

1938
The Road Back

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Cromwell, George "Slim" Summerville, Andy Devine, Barbara Read

Synopsis: A handful of German soldiers readjust to civilian life in the bitter wake of World War I in this follow-up to the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, which like the first film was based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. After the signing of the armistice, Capt. Von Hagen (John Emery) Read More

1937
The Great Garrick

Crew: Director

Actors: Brian Aherne, Olivia de Havilland, Edward Everett Horton, Melville Cooper, Lionel Atwill, Lana Turner

Synopsis: Director James Whale, well known for his witty horror films, tackled comedy head-on in this period piece, set in the 18th Century. David Garrick (Brian Aherne) is a gifted but supremely arrogant British actor whose fame is exceeded only by his ego. After finishing a starring run at London's Drury Read More

1937
Show Boat

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan

Synopsis: This second film version of the Edna Ferber/Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Show Boat is considered by many film buffs to be the best of the three. Covering nearly four decades (was there ever an Edna Ferber novel that didn't?), the film stars Irene Dunne as Magnolia Hawks, a role she'd Read More

1936
Remember Last Night

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward Arnold, Constance Cummings, Sally Eilers, Robert Young, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: In the wake of The Thin Man, every studio in Hollywood scrambled to churn out sophisticated mystery-comedies wherein murders are solved by a wealthy, attractive, fun-loving young couple. One of the best of these Thin Man derivations was Universal's Remember Last Night, adapted from Adam Hobhouse's Read More

1935
The Bride of Frankenstein

Crew: Director

Actors: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Ernst Thesiger, Dwight Frye

Synopsis: This greatest of all Frankenstein movies begins during a raging thunderstorm. Warm and cozy inside their palatial villa, Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Shelley's wife Mary (Elsa Lanchester) engage in morbidly sparkling conversation. The wicked Byron mockingly Read More

1935
One More River

Crew: Director

Actors: Diana Wynyard, Frank Lawton, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Jane Wyatt, Colin Clive

Synopsis: A woman may be forced back into a dangerous relationship in order to save her good name in this drama from director James Whale. Lady Clare Corven (Diana Wynyard) is the wife of Sir Gerald Corven (Colin Clive), and by all appearances they're a happy upper-class British couple. But Lady Clare is Read More

1934
By Candlelight

Crew: Director

Actors: Elissa Landi, Paul Lukas, Nils Asther, Dorothy Revier, Lawrence Grant

Synopsis: After directing three of Universal's finest horror films, James Whale shifted gears with the elegant romantic comedy By Candlelight. Though quite miscast, Paul Lukas successfully conveys the role of Josef, ultra-dutiful valet to the libidinous Count Von Bommer (Nils Asther). Falling in love with Read More

1934
The Invisible Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, Henry Travers, William Harrigan, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: A mysterious stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark spectacles, has taken a room at a cozy inn in the British village of Ipping. Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone. Working unmolested with his test tubes, the Read More

1933
The Kiss Before the Mirror

Crew: Director

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Paul Lukas, Gloria Stuart, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Horror film icon James Whale directed this well-detailed thriller about a man questioning his wife's honesty after a friend begins to doubt his own. Dr. Paul Held (Frank Morgan) is an attorney who has been asked to come to the aid of his old friend Walter Bernsdorf (Paul Lukas); Bernsdorf has been Read More

1933
The Impatient Maiden

Crew: Director

Actors: Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, Una Merkel, John Halliday, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Lew Ayres and Mae Clarke, the reigning king and queen of the Universal lot in 1932, were teamed under the guidance of the studio's star director James Whale in Impatient Maiden. Anticipating his "Dr. Kildare" duties by nearly six years, Ayres is cast as inexperienced young surgeon Myron Brown. In Read More

1932
The Old Dark House

Crew: Director

Actors: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Lillian Bond

Synopsis: It's a wildly varied group that takes shelter from a raging English storm in the forbidding mansion of the Femm family. Among the reluctant guests are stuffed-shirt Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey): Philip's sensitive wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart); their mutual friend, disillusioned war veteran Read More

1932
Waterloo Bridge

Crew: Director

Actors: Mae Clarke, Kent Douglass, Doris Lloyd, Ethel Griffies, Enid Bennett

Synopsis: Mae Clarke had the best role of her career as the heroine of Waterloo Bridge, the first of three filmizations of Robert L. Sherwood's play. Douglass Montgomery (here credited as Kent Douglass) plays a young American soldier who, while on leave from World War I, meets Myra (Clarke) during an air Read More

1931
Frankenstein

Crew: Director

Actors: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: Still regarded as the definitive film version of Mary Shelley's classic tale of tragedy and horror, Frankenstein made unknown character actor Boris Karloff a star and created a new icon of terror. Along with the highly successful Dracula, released earlier the same year, it launched Universal Read More

1931
Journey's End

Crew: Director

Actors: Colin Clive, David Manners, Ian MacLaren, Anthony Bushell, Thomas Whiteley

Synopsis: R.C. Sherriff's forceful drama about men at war, a long running hit in London as well as New York, is brought to the screen in this film adaptation. Capt. Denis Stanhope (Colin Clive) is the commander of a military unit during World War I; constantly bombarded by enemy fire and hemmed in by his Read More

1930