Boris Karloff

His parents were Edward John Pratt (1826/7–1897), of the Indian Civil Service, where he worked for the salt revenue service, and Eliza Sara (born 1848), née Millard.

Both his parents died when Karloff was young, and he was primarily raised by a half-sister and his elder siblings.

His brother, Sir John Thomas Pratt, was a British diplomat.

Karloff's father Edward John Pratt was Anglo-Indian, with a British father and Indian mother, meaning that Karloff was at least a quarter Indian, while Karloff's mother also had some Indian ancestry, thus Karloff had a relatively dark complexion that differed from his peers at the time.

His mother's maternal aunt was Anna Leonowens, whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) were the basis of the musical The King and I.

Pratt was bow-legged, had a lisp, and stuttered as a young boy.

He learned how to manage his stutter, but not his lisp, which was noticeable throughout his career in the film industry.

Pratt spent his childhood years in Enfield, in the County of Middlesex.

He was the youngest of nine children, and following his mother's death was brought up by his elder siblings.

After first attending Enfield Grammar School, he received a private education at Uppingham School and Merchant Taylors' School.

Following this he attended King's College London, where he took studies aimed at a career with the British Government's Consular Service.

William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), known professionally as Boris Karloff and occasionally billed as Karloff the Uncanny, was an English actor.

William Henry Pratt was born on 23 November 1887, at 36 Forest Hill Road, Dulwich, Surrey (now in London), England.

However, in 1909, he left university without graduating and drifted, departing England for Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer, truck driver and did various odd jobs until happening upon stage acting, which led to a later film career.

Pratt began appearing in theatrical performances in Canada in 1911 and during this period he chose Boris Karloff as his stage name.

Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Company in 1911 and performed in towns including Kamloops (British Columbia) and Prince Albert (Saskatchewan).

His presence in Regina, Saskatchewan at the Regina Theatre on the night of the Regina Cyclone in 1912 is a commemorated event.

Karloff always said he chose the first name "Boris" simply because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that "Karloff" was a family name.

Karloff's daughter, Sara, publicly denied any knowledge of Slavic forebears, "Karloff" or otherwise.

It has been speculated by film historians that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character named "Boris Karlov" in the novel The Drums of Jeopardy by Harold MacGrath.

After the devastating tornado in Regina on 30 June 1912, Karloff, who was in the midst of an engagement at the Regina Theatre, and other performers helped with clean-up efforts.

He later took a job as a railway baggage handler and joined the Harry St. Clair Company that performed in Minot, North Dakota, for a year in an opera house above a hardware store.

While he was trying to establish his acting career, Karloff had to perform years of manual labour in Canada and the U.S. in order to make ends meet.

Among this work, he spent one year laying track, digging ditches, shoveling coal, clearing land, and working with surveying parties for the B.C. Electric Railway Company, at the rate of $2.50 per day.

From this grueling work with the BCER and other employers, Karloff was left with back problems for the rest of his life.

Because of his health, he did not serve in World War I.

During this period, Karloff worked in various theatrical stock companies across the U.S. to hone his acting skills.

Some acting companies mentioned were the Harry St. Clair Players and the Billie Bennett Touring Company.

However, the novel was not published until 1920, at least eight years after Karloff had been using the name on stage and in films.

His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film Frankenstein (1931) (his 82nd film) established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939).

(Warner Oland played "Boris Karlov" in a film version in 1931.) Another possible influence was thought to be a character in the Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel The Rider which features a "Prince Boris of Karlova", but as the novel was not published until 1915, the influence may be backward, that Burroughs saw Karloff in a play and adapted the name for the character.

One reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to the Pratt family.

Whether or not his brothers (all dignified members of the British Foreign Service) actually considered young William the "black sheep of the family" for having become an actor, Karloff apparently worried they felt that way.

He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932), and voiced the Grinch in, as well as narrating, the animated television special of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), which won him a Grammy Award.

Aside from his numerous film roles (174 films), Karloff acted in many live stage plays and appeared on dozens of radio and television programs as well.

He did not reunite with his family until he returned to Britain to make The Ghoul (1933), extremely worried that his siblings would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame.

Instead, his brothers jostled for position around him and happily posed for publicity photographs upon their reunion with him.

After the photo was taken, Karloff's brothers immediately started asking about getting a copy of their own.

The story of the photo became one of Karloff's favorites.

For his contribution to film and television, Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 8 February 1960.