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Background
In November 2005, my husband Dan and I became avid serial fans. We started watching
every cliffhanger we could get our hands on. One of the first serials we watched was
Mascot's The Whispering Shadow (1933), mainly because it starred Bela Lugosi. I was
surprised to see that Karl Dane was in it as well. He was an actor I had
always known, but whose voice I had not previously heard. His voice, of course,
was the source of all of his troubles at that time.
Karl was one of
the most notorious victims of the traumatic transition from silence to sound. He could not
survive the indignity, and the accompanying plunge into poverty, and he committed
suicide in 1934. Hearing his voice now for the first time made me recall that sad story, one
I originally read about
years before in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II. I liked Karl's voice. It was sweet,
endearing, and it matched his physical persona. Most importantly, despite the creakiness
of the film, and the fact that it was more than a bit dated, I loved his performance. He
was by far the best actor in the serial. Even better than Bela! Admittedly, Karl's Danish
accent was thick, and certain words were hard to understand, but the fact that a distinguished
career could be so completely destroyed because of this reason struck me as terribly unfair.
After watching the serial I decided
to read more about him, searching first for a biography. None had ever been written, and the
passages about him in the many books I searched were fragmentary at best. I quickly discovered that
hardly anything had ever been written about Karl's life.
So I started doing some digging myself, not knowing where it would lead. With the help of many
wonderful people (see My Research for details) I began
locating important pieces of information, like pieces of a puzzle, of a story that had never been
told. I discover more information every day.
So where has it all led? Life can certainly take some ironic twists. The journey that began
when I searched for a biography of Karl Dane has progressed into me actually writing the
biography I had searched for! If you are interested, please keep checking back here on my
progress. And if you have any information on Karl that might be useful in any way, by all
means please contact me.
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He was direct, friendly, totally unpretentious, and sometimes naïve, preferring to spend his spare time in his backyard wood shop or at his little house on the beach in Malibu, which he built himself. He loved to be physically active, and enjoyed swimming, golf, and tennis, and his studio bios said he actually was a physical education instructor while in his military unit in Denmark. He also adored women, and was a big flirt, usually greeting a lady he just met with a big hug and kiss on the lips. Because he was so sweet and endearing, though, such forwardness did not turn them off, but rather charmed both women and men alike. Despite his friendliness, he was actually rather a solitary, shy, and awkward person, and preferred to spend time alone, sometimes feeling that he did not fully fit into the social scene in Hollywood. This was due in part to his poor English skills: he readily comprehended what others said, but had a hard time finding the right words to make himself understood, and sometimes people got the wrong impression of him. He was a real animal-lover, and adopted some sled dogs that needed homes after the making of one of his films, The Trail of 98, a gold rush adventure. |
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