“It is not true that I was born a monster. Hollywood made me one” --from “KARLOFF, the man, the monster, the movies”, by Denis Gifford (1973).
More to the point, it was Canada that made Boris Karloff. Here are the opening lines of Gifford’s book, “ Boris Karloff was born in 1911 in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. He was 24 years old at the time.”
Gifford goes on to explain that the person who was to become known far and wide as movie monster Boris Karloff was actually born William Pratt in 1887 in London, England. And, it was at the age of nine that Billy Pratt discovered what he wanted to do with his life: “ I got my baptism of blood in the parish play. For two nights we put on CINDERELLA. I played The Demon King. It must have been a prophecy. I knew right then and there that this, the theatre, was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
However, the journey from Pratt to Karloff was a long one, and required a trip from England to western Canada. After finishing his formal education young Pratt took some college entrance exams but his interests lay elsewhere. He wanted nothing but a theatre career. His family strongly disagreed, so much so that he was ultimately forced to leave his homeland.
In Karloff’s words, “I was fast becoming a disgrace to the family. In those days black sheep were exported to Canada or Australia. A coin was flipped and Canada lost.”
He sailed from England to Canada in the spring of 1909, spent some time in Ontario, went to Banff, Alberta and on to Vancouver, B.C., where he encountered a theatrical agent by the name of Kelly. Nothing much happened until one day, early in 1911, when Pratt (Karloff) was working in the woods near Kamloops, B.C., he received a telegram from the agent urging him to join a theatre company in Nelson, B.C.
“I left my axe sticking in a tree,” he later said.
And so it was, on a train from Kamloops, to Nelson, that Boris Karloff was born.
In Gifford’s book, the man recounts how it all came to be, “I cast around for a name because I felt the name Pratt was not the best stage name one could choose. I remembered the name KARLOFF from far back on my mother’s side and I took Boris out of the air. The combination has been extraordinarily lucky for me.”
And so it went -- Billy Pratt to Boris Karloff -- all because a young man from England flipped a coin and wound up in Canada. The rest is the stuff of movie legend.