Elsa Lanchester was born 28 October 1902.
Lanchester was a great actor. I love her work as an old woman as much as I do when she was young. Frankly, I’ve always had a crush on her. It started before I knew what a crush was. It was just very clear to me that The Bride was the ultimate woman. She even hissed like a cat and at that age, I still thought boys were dogs and cats were girls.
Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton when she was 27 until his death. That should tell you all you need to know about her as an actor. She was serious. She’d act in pretty much anything. But her filmography is interesting. She is listed third or fourth in most film credits. She wasn’t a day player. But she also wasn’t a star. She only got top billing in one film, Passport to Destiny. It’s not much of a film but she’s excellent in it. And the picture of her dead husband is Laughton!
Over the years, I’ve come to think of all old films as psychotronic. But Lanchester’s role in psychotronic films goes beyond that. Like a lot of serious actors who didn’t puff themselves up, she was in a lot of psychotronic films. For example, she performs “Yoga Is as Yoga Does” in the Elvis film Easy Come, Easy Go.
And one of her last roles was playing a parody of Miss Marple in Murder By Death. She’s absolutely adorable.
But we know Elsa Lanchester because of The Bride of Frankenstein. In it, she plays The Bride but also Mary Shelley. Admittedly, these aren’t large roles. But they are iconic! And as longtime readers will know Bride is the Alpha horror film for me. It made me so afraid that I vomited. But that was all Boris. It was no Elsa.
Now, of course, I think it a very sweet film. And she is a big part of that. I just wish she hadn’t hissed at Boris.
Elsa Lanchester via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
She said she found Laughton more attractive than the conventional “handsome” types, and so who knows what their life was like? (She was gorgeous, but not in a conventional “pretty” type.)
Laughton was pretty gay, but most people are on the Kinsey scale of being not 100% gay or 100% straight, we just find what we’re most comfortable with, so who the fuq knows what their living arrangement was. Whatever it was, I think it’s less offensive than Howard Hawks having his fashion-expert wife discover Lauren Bacall, then getting pissed that Bacall shacked up with Bogart, when Hawks wanted to bone Bacall.
That’s a lot grosser than whatever kind of relationship Manchester/Laughton had. Whatever it was. And, whatever it was, they really supported each others’ careers.
Lanchester was very funny. She could read a line wryly with the best of them. It’s a shame movies didn’t do more good versions of the best Shaw plays (you know I love Pygmalion) because I think she could have absolutely killed those!
She was a wonderfully varied actor. But you are right: she was gorgeous. Of course, what seals it for me is the gap in her front teeth. It’s just adorable!
As for her relationship with Laughton, there are so many ways that people make relationships work that I don’t especially care. I saw an interview with her where she talked about him. And she was clearly extremely fond of him. I do think she also admired him. But they were the same age so I doubt that was the basis of their relationship.
I agree with you about Shaw but Wendy Hiller was absolutely fantastic in Pygmalion!
PS: I love in Murder By Death when Maggie Smith says of Lanchester’s character, “I like her. I really like her!” I can’t help but see as a meta-comment: admiration for a fellow British acting legend.
https://youtu.be/LHadKz5umA4?si=u8iRjtHUyD8NWj40&t=84
Oh, I believe it! Maggie Smith was no dummy.
Hiller in Pygmalion was great! But there’s at least three or four more good Shaw plays that have never been made into good movies. I think the problem was there was an expensive version of “Androcles and the Lion” that stunk, and bombed, so Hollywood got wary. (With, ugh, Victor Mature!) Also, at heart, Shaw was a satirist, and Hollywood’s never been great at satire. Ealing Studios was good at it, though. I wish they’d had a try.
Also: Hollywood is stupid. One film does badly, make a grand generalization and never make another films like that. One film does well, make 40 more just like it. It’s all the same stuff.
For sure! And as a fellow student of movie history, you know it’s ALWAYS been like this. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was… they never ask themselves, am I right, am I wrong; never say to themselves, “my God! What have I done!” (Letting the days go by…)
The only thing I can add is that time isn’t holding up; time isn’t after us.
For the record, I believe the line is actually “time is inestuous.” I think that is a word coined to indicate “not like an estuary.” Like “The Sea Refuses No River” or “time is an ocean, not a garden hose.”
Interesting! I’ll buy it.
Bear in mind that as a child, I thought “About a week ago” in the song “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” was actually just scatting, “Ali-be-beh-bo.”
In church, as a kid, we would sing “There Is A Balm In Gilead” and I always heard it as “there is a bomb in Gilead”… I mean, given typical Mideast news footage, it makes sense.
But with really great songs or films, I think there’s something strong enough about the material that multiple interpretations for multiple listeners/viewers are fine. Good ol’ Bobby probably had different ideas in his head about what “Desolation Row” means than I do. Does that matter? I don’t think it does.
You know that exact mis-hearing is a joke in The Life the Brian!
I have only watched “Desolation Row” once. I cannot get my head around how such a brilliant writer could create something so lame…
I’m sorry! I don’t mean any dumb video Dylan made! I mean the song. I like the song. It’s one one those long-ass cryptic Dylan songs you can basically interpret any way you want to, and whichever way you interpret it is probably better than what Dylan meant, and that’s fine with me.
I think it’s a really cool song. The flamenco guitar is tops.
That’s my fault. I’ve been lazy. That’s why I so love Blood on the Tracks for songs like “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.”