:57:03
and his face eaten away
by the ravenous insects.
:57:06
Modern writers always seem to need
an event to trigger the phantom's tragedy.
:57:10
In 1936 Phantom was being planned
for Boris Karloff,
:57:14
who had had enough of the eight-hour
ordeals of Jack Pierce's make-up chair.
:57:19
WP Lipscomb's modern script posited
the phantom as a Parisian music master
:57:23
whose disfigurement was psychological.
:57:26
William Lipscomb was an English actor,
poet and playwright turned screenwriter.
:57:31
He wrote early talkie
Sherlock Holmes films in England,
:57:34
and came to Hollywood
to adapt his play Clive of India.
:57:38
He wrote scripts for A Tale of Two Cities
and Garden of Allah for David Selznick,
:57:42
Les Misérables and Cardinal Richelieu
for Zanuck, among many others.
:57:47
At Universal, he did B-movies with English
Empire themes, like The Sun Never Sets.
:58:01
Lipscomb's script was set
in contemporary Paris.
:58:04
The conductor of the opera
is found murdered,
:58:07
and in his hands is left a manuscript,
"Thine is the Glory".
:58:11
A remark is made
by those reading the music
:58:13
that it appears to have been written
by a soul in torment.
:58:17
Soon we meet
a mysterious music master.
:58:20
He wears a mask and tells Christine,
a young singer,
:58:24
that it is a terrible scar
left by the war, which no one must see.
:58:27
The war, of course, is World War I.
:58:30
Christine tells her music master
:58:32
that her family is Swedish,
and therefore very superstitious.
:58:36
Before his death, her father had told her of
the "angel of music" that he would send,
:58:41
necessary to her becoming
an accomplished singer.
:58:44
Her voice is fairly mediocre,
and the master explains
:58:47
that her voice needs
to come from another world.
:58:50
She's a very modern girl in modern Paris,
:58:52
and of course she has
a modern boyfriend, Raoul.
:58:58
She pursues Raoul through the streets
of Paris, losing him in a store,