William Castle

Did you know?!

1. About the name

   Castle's birth surname was Schloss, which means castle in German. Because people struggled to say his birth name, he later put his surname into English and used that as his professional name.

2. A change of course

   Castle got Orson Welles' phone number and talked him into leasing the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut, because Welles was going off to start filming Citizen Kane.

3. Own stunts

   Castle bought military surplus airplane wing de-icers with vibrating motors, and a crew traveled from theater to theater attaching them under some seats. The buzzers went off as Vincent Price warned the audience to scream for their lives.

4. A role that slipped away

   Castle mortgaged his home a second time and bought the movie rights to an Ira Levin novel before it came out, hoping to direct a prestigious A-movie. Paramount, then under Robert Evans, insisted on Roman Polanski, so Castle produced the film instead.

5. A first

   Castle took his most notable acting part in 1975, playing the director of the doomed "Waterloo" epic in The Day of the Locust. It was the last role he performed.