John Carradine

John Carradine had his roots in Shakespeare, whose tragedies and histories he memorized as a schoolboy. Hitchhiking west to break into films, Carradine wrestled a contract out of 20th Century Fox, but generally did his best work for other studios, notably with director John Ford in "Stagecoach" (1939), "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1940), and the Academy Award-winning "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940). A free agent during World War II, Carradine played Nazi thugs and mad scientists with equal aplomb while inheriting the Dracula cape from Bela Lugosi for "House of Frankenstein" (1944) and "House of Dracula" (1945), cementing a lifelong association with fright films. In his later years, Carradine appeared in Joe Dante's whip-smart horror satire "The Howling" (1981) and Francis Ford Coppola's lyrical "Peggy Sue Got Married" (1986). By the time of his death in 1988, Carradine had long been immortalized in the hearts of horror film fans for making light of humanity's dark side.