:10:03
A recording got to William Goetz at MGM,
and a contract followed.
:10:09
Louis B Mayer wanted Susanne to play
the lead in National Velvet in the 1930s.
:10:14
Ever wilful, she refused.
:10:16
Claude Rains, too, grew up
in extreme poverty, in London.
:10:19
"Born on the wrong side of the River
Thames" he'd tell his daughter, Jessica.
:10:23
The theatre provided his way out.
:10:25
The famous actor-manager
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
:10:28
paid for young Willy Rains
to take speech lessons,
:10:31
giving the lisping cockney boy
one year to lose the accent. He did.
:10:36
The velvety husk of his voice
was inadvertent -
:10:38
a result, Rains claimed,
of being gassed in World War I.
:10:41
That voice was his most notable asset.
:10:44
Rains is an actor
whom one would pay big money
:10:47
to hear recite
the Manhattan phone book.
:10:53
Following The Invisible Man, Rains
became the consummate character actor,
:10:58
making his home at Warner Brothers with
work like The Adventures of Robin Hood,
:11:02
Mr Skeffington and The Sea Hawk.
:11:05
Note how Claudin commits a faux pas by
calling Miss Dubois by her first name.
:11:10
Rains' playing is wonderfully tender,
how he bites his lip and looks contrite.
:11:15
In the original script, Claudin was
Christine's father. She does not know this.
:11:20
We'll learn more about this diverted
subplot as the picture unfolds.
:11:25
Rains was much in demand
for outside pictures
:11:27
such as Mr Smith Goes
to Washington and Notorious.
:11:30
He had previously acted
for George Waggner in The Wolf Man,
:11:33
which is surprising, in that he had turned
down in 1938 an offer from Universal
:11:38
"because Rains did not like it
as it was a Frankenstein".
:11:42
That's a quote from a memo
from Roy Obringer to Hal Wallis
:11:45
regarding Rains' contract's
allowal of an outside picture.
:11:49
If Robin Hood's Prince John
wouldn't play Wolf Frankenstein,
:11:52
Robin Hood's Sheriff of Nottingham,
Basil Rathbone, would be loaned out
:11:55
as the Son of Frankenstein.
:11:58
Rathbone, coincidentally,
covered for Rains as the phantom