Orphaned at 11, Castle dropped out of high school at 15 to work in the theater.
25 Facts About William Castle
2.
William Castle came to the attention of Columbia Pictures for his talent for promotion and was hired.
3.
William Castle learned the trade of filmmaking and became a director, acquiring a reputation for the ability to churn out competent B-movies quickly and on budget.
4.
William Castle eventually struck out on his own, producing and directing thrillers, which, despite their low budgets, he effectively promoted using gimmicks, a trademark for which he is best known.
5.
William Castle married Ellen Falck, with whom he had two children.
6.
At 13, William Castle saw the play Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, and was entranced.
7.
William Castle watched performance after performance, eventually managing to meet Lugosi himself.
8.
William Castle spent his teenage years working on Broadway in jobs ranging from set-building to acting, which proved good training for the future filmmaker.
9.
William Castle obtained Orson Welles' telephone number and persuaded Welles to lease him the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut.
10.
When Nazi Germany sent Schwanneke an invitation to a Munich performance, William Castle seized the opportunity for an outrageous publicity stunt.
11.
William Castle left for Hollywood at 23 to work for Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures.
12.
William Castle was one of the few people Cohn liked.
13.
William Castle learned the film business and graduated to directing inexpensive B-movies, the first being The Chance of a Lifetime, released in 1943.
14.
William Castle directed four movies in The Whistler series, and gained a reputation for making films quickly and under budget.
15.
William Castle worked as an associate producer on Orson Welles' film noir The Lady from Shanghai, doing much second unit location work.
16.
William Castle financed his first movie, Macabre, by mortgaging his house.
17.
William Castle came up with the idea to give every customer a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd's of London in case they should die of fright during the film.
18.
William Castle stationed nurses in the lobbies with hearses parked outside the theaters.
19.
William Castle came up with "Coward's Corner," a yellow cardboard booth, manned by a bewildered theater employee in the lobby.
20.
At the height of his popularity, William Castle had a fan club with 250,000 members.
21.
William Castle made a deal with Paramount Pictures, then under Robert Evans, who insisted on hiring director Roman Polanski.
22.
William Castle had a cameo, playing the grey-haired man standing outside the phone booth where Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, is attempting to get in touch with the obstetrician.
23.
William Castle died on May 31,1977, in Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack.
24.
William Castle is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
25.
Two of his films were remade by his daughter Terry Ann William Castle, who co-produced House on Haunted Hill in 1999 and Thirteen Ghosts in 2001.