Bride of Frankenstein
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:21:01
As usual with John Fulton,
the optical work is flawless.

:21:06
Joan Woodbury, formerly Nana Martinez,
:21:08
was at the start of her career
portraying the queen.

:21:11
In short order,
she was a busy B-picture ingénue.

:21:14
The king is the image of Henry Vlll,
16th-century English sovereign.

:21:18
Henry defied the Catholic Church
to divorce Catherine of Aragon.

:21:23
The rutting monarch is portrayed
by English actor Arthur S Byron.

:21:26
No, not Sir Joseph Whemple in The
Mummy - that was Arthur "Pops" Byron.

:21:31
Elsa Lanchester's husband,
Charles Laughton,

:21:33
had just copped an Academy Award
playing Henry for Alex Korda.

:21:37
Norman Ainsley
is the drowsy archbishop.

:21:39
The religious parody is probably
institutional, not canonical.

:21:43
The screenplay even indicated
the cleric's mitre askew

:21:46
at a "deliberately nonepiscopal angle".
:21:49
Peter Shaw plays the devil - not as
a cloven-hoofed satyr, as in the script,

:21:53
but as an urbane Mephisto.
:21:55
Franz Waxman provides an off-kilter
quotation from Faust by Charles Gounod.

:21:59
He would again write musical miniatures
for Todd Browning's The Devil-Doll.

:22:19
Monte Montague is the stunt double
as the mini monarch is airlifted to his jar.

:22:23
If you slow down the soundtrack,
:22:25
you can hear an engineer say
"And the king gets picked up by the ears."

:22:29
Montague was the sleepy policeman
in The Invisible Man.

:22:32
Bride received its only Academy Award
nomination for Best Sound Recording.

:22:37
Kansas DeForest
plays the tiny toe-dancer.

:22:39
Josephine McKim, in blonde wig and fins,
was a 1932 Olympic swim champion.

:22:44
She was also Maureen O'Sullivan's
nude body double

:22:47
in the erotic underwater pas de deux
with Johnny Weissmuller

:22:50
in 1934's Tarzan and His Mate.
:22:53
In the right front bottle, seen from behind,
is Billy Barty as the baby,

:22:57
seated in a highchair, rending
a flower to bits and waving his rattle.


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