Elsa Lanchester

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Elsa Lanchester
Lanchester in 1935
Born
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester

(1902-10-28)28 October 1902
Lewisham, London, England
Died26 December 1986(1986-12-26) (aged 84)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationActress
Years active1925–1983
Spouse
(m. 1929; died 1962)
ParentEdith Lanchester (mother)
RelativesWaldo Lanchester (brother)

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester (28 October 1902 – 26 December 1986) was a British actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.[1]

Lanchester studied dance as a child and after the

First World War began performing in theatre and cabaret, where she established her career over the following decade. She met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later. She began playing small roles in British films, including the role of Anne of Cleves with Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII
(1933). Her success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles.

Her role as the title character in

That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968). The horror film Willard (1971) was highly successful, and one of her last roles was in Murder by Death
(1976).

Early life

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London.[2] Her parents, James "Séamus" Sullivan (1872–1945) and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester (1871–1966), were Bohemians, and refused to marry in a religious or legal way as a rebellion against Edwardian era society. Sullivan and Lanchester were both socialists, according to Lanchester's 1970 interview with Dick Cavett. Elsa's older brother, Waldo Sullivan Lanchester, born five years earlier, was a puppeteer, with his own marionette company based in Malvern, Worcestershire, and later in Stratford-upon-Avon.[3] Elsa studied dance in Paris under Isadora Duncan, whom she disliked. When the school was discontinued due to outbreak of World War I, she returned to the UK. At that point (she was about twelve years of age) she began teaching dance in the Duncan style and gave classes to children in her south London district, through which she earned some welcome extra income for her household.[citation needed]

Career

After World War I, Lanchester started the Children's Theatre, and later the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub at which modern plays and cabaret turns were performed. She revived old Victorian songs and ballads, many of which she retained for her performances in another revue entitled Riverside Nights. Her first film performance came in 1924 in the amateur production The Scarlet Woman, which was written by Evelyn Waugh who also appeared in two roles himself.[4][5]

She became sufficiently famous for Columbia to invite her into the recording studio to make 78 rpm discs of four of the numbers she sang in these revues, with piano arrangement and accompaniment by

The Party (1958) at the New Theatre, London.[6]

Colin Clive, Lanchester, Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger in Bride of Frankenstein
(1935)
Potiphar's Wife (1931), a film starring Laurence Olivier. She appeared opposite Laughton again as Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), with Laughton in the title role. Laughton was by now making films in Hollywood, so Lanchester joined him there, making minor appearances in David Copperfield (1935) and Naughty Marietta (1935). These and her appearances in British films helped her gain the title role in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), arguably the role with which she remains most identified. She and Laughton returned to Britain to appear together again in Rembrandt (1936) and later in Vessel of Wrath (US: The Beachcomber. 1938).[6] They both returned to Hollywood, where he made The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) although Lanchester didn't appear in another film until Ladies in Retirement (1941). She and Laughton played husband and wife (their characters were named Charles and Elsa Smith) in Tales of Manhattan (1942) and they both appeared again in the all-star, mostly British cast of Forever and a Day (1943). She received top billing in Passport to Destiny (1944) for the only time in her Hollywood career.[7]

Lanchester in the 1940s

Lanchester played supporting roles in

Golden Globe
for Best Supporting Actress for the film.

Lanchester played the role of Aunt Queenie, a witch in

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1965).[11] Lanchester continued to make occasional film appearances, singing a duet with Elvis Presley in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), and playing the mother in the original version of Willard (1971), alongside Bruce Davison and Ernest Borgnine, which scored well at the box office. She was Jessica Marbles, a sleuth based on Agatha Christie's Jane Marple, in the 1976 murder mystery spoof Murder by Death, and she made her last film in 1980 as Sophie in Die Laughing. She released three LP albums in the 1950s. Two (referred to above) were entitled "Songs for a Shuttered Parlour" and "Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room", and were vaguely lewd and danced around their true purpose, such as the song about her husband's "clock" not working. Laughton provided the spoken introductions to each number and even joined Lanchester in the singing of "She Was Poor but She Was Honest". Her third LP was entitled "Cockney London", a selection of old London songs for which Laughton wrote the sleeve-notes.[citation needed
]

Personal life

Lanchester married Charles Laughton in 1929.[2] In 1938 she published a book about her relationship with Laughton, Charles Laughton and I. In March 1983, she released an autobiography, titled Elsa Lanchester Herself. In that book, she writes that she and Laughton never had children because he was homosexual.[12] However, Laughton's friend and co-star Maureen O'Hara denied this was the reason for the couple's childlessness. She claimed Laughton had told her that the reason he and his wife never had children was because of a botched abortion Lanchester had early in her career when performing burlesque. Lanchester admitted in her autobiography that she had two abortions in her youth (one being Laughton's), but it is not clear if the second left her incapable of becoming pregnant again.[13] According to biographer Charles Higham, the reason she did not have children was that she did not want any.[14]

Lanchester was an

Motion Picture and Television Fund filed to become conservator of Lanchester and her estate, which was valued at $900,000.[18]

Death

Lanchester died in

bronchial pneumonia. Her body was cremated on 5 January 1987, at the Chapel of the Pines in Los Angeles and her ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean.[19]

Filmography

Film roles

With Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
Colin Clive, Lanchester, Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Gavin Gordon as Lord Byron

Partial television credits

References

  1. ^ Obituary Variety, 31 December 1986.
  2. ^ required.)
  3. ^ "The Lanchester Marionettes". The British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild Festival Exhibition. London, mUK: British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild. 1951. p. 43.
  4. ^ Information about The Scarlet Woman on the Evelyn Waugh website
  5. ^ Complete film and information at the British Film Institute
  6. ^ a b c d Maltin 1994, p. 494.
  7. ^ Jewell and Harbin 1982, p. 193.
  8. ^ "Theater: Elsa's Gazebo". Time. New York City. 24 May 1948. Archived from the original on 16 May 2010.
  9. ^ "New Pop Records", time.com, 6 November 1950.
  10. ^ Elsa Lanchester at
    AllMusic
  11. ^ Favell, Jack. "A Fan Tribute to Elsa Lanchester", Turner Classic Movies; retrieved 19 May 2013.
  12. ^ Houseman, John (17 April 1983). "The Bride of Frankenstein'". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 August 2007.
  13. ^ Lanchester 1983[page needed].
  14. ^ Higham 1976, p. 27
  15. ^ Elsa Lanchester, Charles Laughton and I, (Harcourt, Brace, 1938)
  16. ^ Motion Picture and Television Magazine, November 1952, page 33, Ideal Publishers
  17. ^ Weil, Martin (27 December 1986). "Actress Elsa Lanchester Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
  18. ^ Mank 1999, p. 315
  19. ^ Mank 1999, p. 316

Bibliography

Further reading

External links