Curtis Harrington

Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director, screenwriter, producer, and occasional actor. He emerged in the experimental film scene of the 1940s and ‘50s, notably as a collaborator of Kenneth Anger, before becoming a director of mainstream horror films and television series.

The Harvard Film Archive referred to Harrington as “among the most wholly original directors to work in the Hollywood studio system,” and Screen Slate called him "a cinematic jack of all trades." He is also considered one of the forerunners to New Queer Cinema.

Harrington was born on September 17, 1926, in Los Angeles, the son of Isabel (Dorum) and Raymond Stephen Harrington, and grew up in Beaumont, California. His first cinematic endeavors were amateur films he made while still a teenager. At age 16, in 1942, he directed and co-starred in a short version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

Harrington attended Occidental College and the University of Southern California, then graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in film studies.

He began his career as a film critic, writing a book on Josef von Sternberg in 1948. An early protege of Maya Deren, he directed several avant-garde short films in the 1940s and 1950s, including Fragment of Seeking, Picnic, and The Wormwood Star (a film study of the artwork of Marjorie Cameron which was filmed at the home of multi-millionaire art collector Edward James). Cameron also co-starred in his subsequent film Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper. Harrington worked with Kenneth Anger, serving as a cinematographer on Anger's Puce Moment and acting in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) (he played Cesare, the somnambulist).

Harrington had links to Thelema shared with his close associates Kenneth Anger and Marjorie Cameron who frequently acted in his films.

During the 1950s, Harrington began working as an assistant to producer Jerry Wald. He wrote the story for Wald's 1958 production Mardi Gras, a musical starring Pat Boone. He subsequently worked as an associate producer under Wald on Hound-Dog Man (1959), Return to Peyton Place (1961), and The Stripper (1963).

After leaving Wald, Harrington was employed by Roger Corman, who assigned the burgeoning director two American films which used footage from Soviet science fiction films, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) and Queen of Blood (1966). The latter film has developed a cult following, and has been cited as an influence on Alien.

In 1967, Harrington wrote and directed Games for Universal Pictures, a psychological thriller starring Simone Signoret, James Caan, and Katharine Ross. The film earned Signoret a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

He was originally going to direct the 1970 film Wuthering Heights, but he wound up making Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and What's the Matter with Helen? with Shelley Winters.

Throughout the decade, Harrington directed a string of made-for-television horror and thriller films, including Killer Bees (1974) with Gloria Swanson in one of her later roles. Harrington he made two television movies based on screenplays by Robert Bloch: The Cat Creature (1973) and The Dead Don't Die (1975).

Harrington had a cameo in Orson Welles's long-unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Harrington directed episodes of television series such as Baretta, Dynasty, Wonder Woman, The Twilight Zone and Charlie's Angels.

Harrington's final film, the short Usher, is a remake of his earlier Fall of the House of Usher. He cast Nikolas and Zeena Schreck in his updated version of Edgar Allan Poe's story. Financing of the film was partly accomplished through the Shrecks' brokering of the sale of Harrington's signed copy of Crowley's The Book of Thoth.

The Academy Film Archive has preserved several of Curtis Harrington's films, including Night Tide, On the Edge, and Picnic.

Harrington was the driving force in rediscovering the original James Whale version of The Old Dark House (1932, Universal Pictures). Although the rights to the original story had been sold to Columbia Pictures for a remake, he persuaded George Eastman House to preserve it. On the Kino International DVD, there is a filmed interview of Harrington's explaining why and how this came about (the contract stipulated that they were allowed to save the film only, not release it, essentially to prove that there was no profit motive).

Harrington was an advisor on Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (1998), about the last days of director James Whale, as Harrington had known Whale at the end of his life. Harrington also has a cameo in the film.

Harrington was openly gay. He wrote in his autobiography that he had his first sexual experience with another male (a football player) in high school.

Harrington died on May 6, 2007, aged 80, of complications from a stroke he suffered two years earlier. His remains are interred in the Cathedral Mausoleum at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

House of Harrington, a short documentary about the director's life, was released in 2008. It was directed by Jeffrey Schwarz and Tyler Hubby and filmed several years before Harrington's death. It includes footage of his high school film Fall of the House of Usher.

Harrington's memoir Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood was published posthumously in 2013 by Drag City.