The Wolf Man (1941)

The first film I ever saw with Lon Chaney Jr's wolf man was House of Dracula, 1945. The scene where Chaney has himself locked away in jail to prevent another death became indelibly etched in my memory since childhood. But it took years before I could track down that it was the later film the scene was from. I would have sworn it was in the original film, or at the very least in the sequel Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, 1943. But in the days before video tape I simply never managed to catch the last of the classic Universal horror films on TV. It wasn't until I eventually saw House of Dracula on video that I was able to relive the scene that had transfixed me as a child.

As an adult, however, it is the film score to Chaney's 1941 masterpiece The Wolf Man that has always given me thrills. I was never so happy as when William Stomberg and John Morgan released their suite of Frank Skinner, Hans J. Salter, and Charles Previn's music for the film on Marco Polo in 1995. At last, a full-blooded replication of that fantastic three-note opening and the alternately sweeping and brooding score that followed, that made me feel as if I were present in Universal's recording studio that day in 1941. One thing I did, using iTunes, is to put together all of the tracks in a single suite. There is also source music available from the Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man soundtrack which utilizes the very same music.

As a minor curiosity, one of the fascinating things for me, as someone who studies music, is hearing brief bits of famous music in previous works by other composers. It always makes me wonder if it was something that a composer had heard at one time and subconsciously remembered that explains why it turns up later. I was reminded of this when I recently listened to a cue from Max Steiner's score for Son of Kong, 1933, in which the three-note Wolf Man theme is heard eight years before the Skinner/Salter score.

The Wolf Man is now rightly seen as a classic of horror's golden age, from Lon Chaney Jr's bravura performance, the presence of the absolutely gorgeous Evelyn Ankers, Jack Pierce's makeup, right down to the terrific score by Salter and Skinner. It has been, and always will be, one of my favorite films of all time.