Born This Day In 1879 --- Ernest Thesiger


I knew a 16mm collector once that actually met Ernest Thesiger. It was during a trip to England, sometime in 1960, and a friend took this guy to Thesiger’s house! Now it’s one thing to have met Vincent Price, or Christopher Lee, or even Boris Karloff, if you were one of those kids lucky enough to visit that soundstage where they made those Mexican horror films he did --- but Ernest Thesiger? That’s like having a one-on-one encounter with Tod Browning, or James Whale --- these are people we’ve read so much about, but there’s just no personal anecdotes to be had on them. The collector told me that Ernest was "a strange sort". Well, yeah! Wouldn’t it have been a little disappointing if he’d been normal? To say the least, I was impressed by his account. And who could fail to be impressed with the work of this most individual of actors? He turns up in a lot of things (The Robe, Adventures Of Quentin Durward, etc.), but James Whale (pictured here with Thesiger) knew best how to harness that incredible talent. We don’t know how familiar these stills might be to you seen-it-all horror fans, but they’re pretty fresh to us (and who can fault us for posting an image of Thesiger with Dwight Frye), so we’re providing them here. Happy 127th, Ernest Thesiger!