Life offers us very few tipping points, but when we come to these forks in the road, our lives can be changed forever. These are the fulcrums at which our whole existence can teeter in one direction or another. Maybe it's a chance meeting that opens us up to an eternal love. Or, perhaps, it's a failed job interview that forces us down some other, better path.

For filmmaker James Whale, a crucial tipping point was the moment he decided to direct Frankenstein. He was an ascending studio director in the early '30s, and the world was his oyster. But the project that turned him from a workaday filmmaker to a bona fide legend was, of course, Frankenstein. Whale and audiences alike were lucky that this was the project he chose from the many he was presented with.

So, why? Why did James Whale accept this particular project, of the many he was offered?

Whale would later explain the tale in the New York Times:

"I chose Frankenstein out of about 30 available stories because it was the strongest meat and gave me a chance to dabble in the macabre. I thought it would be an amusing thing to try and make what everybody knows to be a physical impossibility believable for 60 minutes. A director must be pretty bad if he can't get a thrill out of war, murder, robbery. Frankenstein was a sensational story and had a chance to become a sensational picture. It offered fine pictorial possibilities, had 2 grand characterizations, and dealt with a subject which might go anywhere— and that is part of the fun of making pictures."

We're lucky to live in a timeline where Whales chose Frankenstein. The captivating classic couldn't have been as good with any other filmmaker at the helm.