We can trace the Old Dark House genre back at least as far as 1764 and the publication of the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, with its cursed family line, mysterious deaths and secret passages. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe brought a credible female protagonist to the fore, while another influential classic of the genre was J. Sheridan Le Fanu's The Wyvern Mystery (1869). But the movies we love find their closest ancestor in The Circular Staircase, a 1908 novel that crystallized almost everything that would characterize the genre over the next half-century...
1908
Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase is published (following its magazine serialization), kicking off a trend for modern mystery stories set around old and creepy houses. The opening line of the novel is: "This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous..."
1913
Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard's 1909 play The Ghost Breaker runs for 72 performances between March and May at New York's Lyceum Theatre. The story, about a woman who inherits a supposedly haunted Spanish castle, goes on to be filmed in 1914 by Cecil B. DeMille (now lost), 1922 (again, lost), 1940 (as The Ghost Breakers plural!) and 1953 (as Scared Stiff).
The book Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers is published, swiftly followed by a Broadway stage adaptation by George M. Cohan, which runs for 320 performances from 22 September at the Astor Theatre. Film versions follow in 1916, 1917, 1925, 1929, 1935, 1946, 1947 and 1983 (as The House of the Long Shadows). All share the same plot, in which a novelist bets he can write a book in 24 hours while holed up at a deserted resort, only to be drawn into mystery by a succession of visitors.
1914
The first Old Dark House film - Cecil B. DeMille's The Ghost Breaker, based on Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard's play - is released (but sadly it's now lost). The story is filmed again in 1922, 1940 and, as Scared Stiff, in 1953.
1915
A film adaptation of The Circular Staircase, directed by Edward LeSaint and starring Guy Oliver, Eugenie Besserer and Stella Razeto, is released. (Now considered lost.)
Australian film adaptation of Seven Keys to Baldpate released, directed by Monte Luke. (Now lost.)
1917
Director Hugh Ford's film adaptation of Seven Keys to Baldpate is released, starring the playwright himself, George M. Cohan, in the lead role.
1920
The classic German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is released on 26 February. Although not an Old Dark House movie itself, its style and structure will have a profound influence on many horror films made over the following years, including those of Universal Pictures such as The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Old Dark House (1932).
Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's The Bat opens at the Morosco Theatre on 23 August. A smash hit (based partly on Rinehart's own The Circular Staircase) it becomes, at the time, the second-longest running play on Broadway, running for 867 performances and spawning local spin-off productions and many imitators. Film adaptations follow in 1926, 1930 (as The Bat Whispers) and 1959.
1922
An original Old Dark House stage play starts a highly successful run: John Willard's The Cat and the Canary tells the story of a group of heirs coming together for the reading of a will in a spooky old mansion. The production opens at New York's National Theatre on 7 February, clocking up 349 performances, plus 40 more the year after. Official film adaptations are produced in 1927, 1930 (The Cat Creeps), 1939 and 1979.
On 9 August, Crane Wilbur's play The Monster opens at the 39th Street Theatre, New York, and runs until November. The story may be the first to introduce a 'mad scientist' character to the formula. One print ad reads: "Two travelers - a man and his girl bride - have a tire puncture near a big country mansion, on a dark, dreary night. They seek shelter in the nearby mansion - a weird abode. There they meet 'THE MONSTER' and have a series of hair-raising adventures." A film adaptation follows in 1925, while Wilbur himself would go on to direct the 1959 film of The Bat.
10 September sees the cinema release of a new version of The Ghost Breaker (previously filmed in 1914), this time as a vehicle for popular star Wallace Reid. The film is now considered lost.
Inspired by the The Bat and The Cat and the Canary, filmmaker D.W. Griffith creates the silent film One Exciting Night, exploring similar themes and borrowing one of the latter play's stars, Henry Hull. The film premieres on 2 October.
The Last Warning by Thomas F. Fallon (based on the book The House of Fear by Wadsworth Camp) runs at Broadway's Klaw Theatre from 24 October 1922 to May 1923, achieving 238 performances. In this Old Dark House story, the 'house' is a theatre house, with the cast of a play reunited inside five years after an unsolved murder that took place onstage.
1925
Roland West's film adaptation of the 1922 play The Monster is released on 16 March, starring Lon Chaney. (West later directs The Bat in 1926 and The Bat Whispers in 1930.)
The first genre spoof opens at Broadway's Selwyn Theatre on 28 April. The Gorilla: A Mystery Comedy, by Ralph Spence, achieves 257 performances and inspires a successful production in London's West End the same year. The poster promises it "outbats The Bat, outcats The Cat and Canary [and] outwarns The Last Warning".
A now-lost film adaptation of Seven Keys to Baldpate (directed by Fred C. Newmeyer) is released on 19 October.
1926
Famous British mystery author Edgar Wallace publishes The Black Abbot, about sinister happenings and lost treasure at an old abbey, which he turns into the play The Terror the following year.
A novelization of The Bat also appears, under the names of Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. (The actual ghostwriter was Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Vincent Benét.)
1927
Edgar Wallace's aforementioned play The Terror, an Old Dark House production of British origin, opens at New Brighton's Winter Gardens on 21 February, before transferring to the West End for a run of 246 performances at the Lyceum Theatre. It's also filmed the following year.
The first film adaptation of The Cat and the Canary is released on 9 September. Director Paul Leni was one of the top German Expressionist filmmakers, making his Hollywood debut.
J.B. Priestley's novel Benighted, the basis for the 1932 film The Old Dark House, is published in October.
13 November sees the release of a film adaptation of The Gorilla: A Mystery Comedy (with the title shortened to The Gorilla) directed by Alfred Santell. Walter Pidgeon, in one of his early roles, plays 'Stevens'.
1928
Sh, the Octopus, written by Ralph Murphy and Donald Gallaher, runs for 47 performances at the Royale Theatre, Broadway, from 21 February. Little seems to have been written about its plot (at least online) but Bruce G. Hallenbeck's book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008 quotes a few theatre reviews that suggest it was set in a lighthouse and mixed elements of humour and horror. The 1937 film Sh! The Octopus uses the lighthouse setting but its story draws more on The Gorilla.
On 6 September, the first Old Dark House movie with a soundtrack is released: Edgar Wallace's The Terror (about a killer who infiltrates a manor called Monkhall) is now lost but its accompanying Vitaphone record survives, and is described at Vitaphone Varieties.
1929
Another Old Dark House movie with a soundtrack is released on 18 April: Benjamin Christensen's The House of Horror comes with a Vitaphone record featuring voices, sounds and music. Unfortunately, the film and its soundtrack are now lost. Read more about the plot, in which a brother and sister investigate a creepy mansion full of antiques, at Vitaphone Varieties.
Armitage Trail (author of Scarface) publishes the novel The Thirteenth Guest, about the reading of a will in which the family fortune is left to a mysterious guest who never arrives. The book is filmed with Ginger Rogers in 1932, and again in 1943 as The Mystery of the 13th Guest.
Another film adaptation of Seven Keys to Baldpate - the first fully 'talking' Old Dark House picture, in fact - is released on Christmas Day. Richard Dix takes the lead role, with Reginald Barker directing.
Sources: Information for this list was gathered from Wikipedia and the Internet Broadway Database. Images are from Wikimedia Commons, except for the book cover of The Bat, which is from Amazon.
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