House Of Wax (1953)

[harmonica]

Director:Andre De Toth
Writer(s):Charles Belden, Crane Wilbur
Actors:Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk,
Carolyn Jones, Charles Bronson



The movie is not great, when it was released it was.It's an interesting and watchable 50's horror movie.It's worth watching it for Bronsons first interesting performance.

[chaney]

Character actor Paul Picerni had nice things to say about Charlie in his autobiography. He did say, however, that Charlie got too intense in their fight scene and threw him down so hard that he had to go to the hospital for x-rays on his back. Seems most of the actors who knew Charlie in the 50's were complimentary, the 60's bewildered, and those in the 70's on unimpressed for the most part.

[maphillips3]

Hey Chaney, just wondering if their any quotes you can dig up, because in another topic, we discuss this, and always was interested in what people had too say about him.

[chaney]

Here's a section from Picerni's entertaining book "Steps to Stardom" on Charlie:

Charles Buchinsky was a character. One day he and I were having lunch in the Green Room, a dining room for actors and directors. On the walls there they had pictures of all the great Warners contract players, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, John Garfield and so on. If you remember John Garfield, you know that he played romantic leads even though he was rather off-beat-looking. Charlie looked up at Garfield's picture and said to me, in a very quiet, serious tone, "Someday I will play romantic leads like John Garfield." And I said to myself, "This guy's kidding himself!" Charlie had a crewcut, sunken cheekbones - he wasn't very attractive at all. For the role of a character like Igor in HOUSE OF WAX, he was perfect, but for romantic leads - forget it! Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. Charlie later changed his last name from Buchinsky to Bronson, and, of course, did become a leading man and play romantic leads.

There's quite an extensive section where Picerni describes their fight, saying, "Charlie was like Jack Palance at the time, he was really living the part, and he was bangin' my head on the floor!"

Later, Picerni comments on Charlie as a guest star on "The Untouchables", where Picerni found his own fame:

Charles Bronson was on THE UNTOUCHABLES a few times; I had first worked with him, of course, on HOUSE OF WAX, back when he was still calling himself Charles Buchinsky. On the sets he was very quiet, almost somber. Between his looks and the way he kept to himself, I think some people did think he was still just a dumb polack from the Pennsylvania coal mines. But Charlie was actually a very bright fellow, and a sweetheart of a guy. We became friends over the years - I liked Charlie a lot.

[maphillips3]

Thanks Chaney! You are always an endless amount of information on Charlie!

[harmonica]

Great information, thanks Chaney.

[maphillips3]

I just read that Vincent Price, and Charlie didn't get along. Does anyone know about their problems?