Friday, September 28, 2007

Boris Karloff (PHOTO)

Found this neat photo on Jay Stephen's excellent MONSTERAMA blog, and thought it would make a good companion post with the Comic Book Confidential clip from yesterday. Not only does it feature Boris Karloff holding a cute little girl (I wonder if he threw her into a lake after this photo was taken?) but it also features a metal spin rack loaded with pre-code horror comics from EC, Atlas, and Fawcett. The easiest issue to completely identify is the Beware! Terror Tales #6 which would mean this photo was taken in 1953, but to me Boris looks much older in the photo than he actually was that year. Plus the display card on top of the spin rack clearly shows the Comics Code stamp though none of the comics in the rack have the code on their cover. Anyone know what's going on here?

POST UPDATED w/ COMPARISON PHOTO TRICKERY REVEALED:
MYSTERY SOLVED! My friend Dr. Phibes found the original version of this photo online which clearly shows someone out there is a wicked little photoshop devil!

9 comments:

Mr. Karswell said...

Pretty sure The Haunt of Fear is #17 from Jan-Feb 1953.

DGB said...

Karloff would have been 66 in 1953 and living with back pain since Frankenstein so he might have looked older than his years in a candid shot. Also, when did EC start reprinting its comics? Could these be reprints?

Mr. Karswell said...

You may be right about Karloff although in '53 he made Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and he definitely doesn't look this old in that movie.

I'm not so sure about the reprint idea either, mainly because I don't believe Atlas or Fawcett ever reprinted either of those titles back then that we can clearly see in the photo.

Anonymous said...

Karswell, I just e-mailed you another photo from this shoot. It may be of interest to you.

Mr. Karswell said...

It's not another photo from the shoot, it's the same photo with some tricky ps additives. Kudos to whoever pulled this great stunt, possibly it was Jay Stephens.

Anonymous said...

Good to see Boris raising his kids right,i wonder if he ever DID read comics?

Anonymous said...

man thats awesome!!!! fooled everybody

Anonymous said...

THIS IS UNREAL.....SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS ALL QUITE THE BLOG EVENT OF THE DECADE EARLIER THIS EVENING!

Mr. Karswell said...

Yeah yeah yeah, but we won't get fooled again!