Yes, horror fans, it was on this day in 1913 that Peter Cushing was born, which means this would have been his 107th birthday.
Born in Kenley, England, Peter Wilton Cushing began his acting career on the stage in 1935, as a member of the Worthing Repertory Company, but in 1939 he journeyed to Hollywood, where he made his screen debut in a bit part in that year’s release of The Man in the Iron Mask, directed by James Whale—best known to horror fans as the director of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein.
He returned to the stage in England in the 1940s, and in 1956, Hammer Films cast him as Baron Victor Frankenstein in the studio’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was also his first Hammer collaboration with old friend Christopher Lee; together, they would create horror-movie magic in the studio’s series of Dracula films—beginning in 1958 with Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula)—with Lee as the titular count and Cushing as his vampire-slaying nemesis, Van Helsing.
Beyond Hammer, Cushing became a science fiction icon with his appearances as the eccentric time traveler Dr. Who in the 1960s films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.—loose adaptations of serialized stories that first appeared as episodes of the long-running British TV series Doctor Who—and as the villainous Grand Moff Tarkin, commander of the Death Star and Darth Vader’s boss, in 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (a role he later “returned to” through the magic of CGI in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story).
And then, there was a film he was with involved that never got past its preproduction period, but whose behind-the-scenes story has intrigued horror fans for decades: Vampirella, an adaptation of the Warren Publishing series about an outer space vampire living on Earth. Announced by Hammer Films in 1975, the production was to star b-movie actress and Playboy model Barbara Leigh as Vampirella and Peter Cushing as her sidekick, the often inebriated stage magician Pendragon. By 1976, however, the project was dead.
It’s a story told in full detail in From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), a nonfiction history of Vampirella that takes an extensive look at her early days, from the debut of her series in 1969 to the death of Warren Publishing in 1983. In addition to telling the tale of Hammer’s unproduced film, I provide an in-depth guide to all her Warren stories; a checklist of all her Warren appearances (plus the publications from Harris Comics and Dynamite Entertainment that reprinted her Warren adventures); an overview of the six novelizations by pulp sci-fi author Ron Goulart that were published in the 1970s by Warner Books; and a look at the awful 1996 direct-to-cable-TV movie that was made, starring Talisa Soto and Roger Daltrey. There’s also a peek at Mr. Cushing’s personal copy of the ’70s Vampirella screenplay; a foreword by Official Vampirella Historian Sean Fernald, a frontispiece by Warren artist Bob Larkin, and photographs from the personal archives of Forrest J Ackerman.
From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures is available right now in print and as a PDF e-book, so visit its product page for ordering information.
Happy birthday, Mr. Cushing, and thanks for the great movie memories!
