Tag Archives: Franz Waxman

Happy Birthday, Claude Rains!

The Unsuspected

Original poster.

“The Unsuspected” (Warner Bros., 1947) is a mystery/thriller that starts out silly and eventually becomes preposterous. If you’re willing to make allowances and give your credulity a stretch, it is also very entertaining. As is usually the case, Rains is better than the picture is, and the role is unworthy of his talents. Yet he plays this sort of velvety rubbish better than anyone, and it’s a big, juicy part. One can’t help wishing he had better material to work with; there is nevertheless the unique pleasure of seeing a great actor whip up a feast from table scraps. Rains plays a radio celebrity with a weekly broadcast on which he tells lurid stories of murder and mayhem. (“I give you . . . ‘The Tragedy of the Missing Head.’ “) At the beginning of each broadcast, his announcer (Art Gilmore — one of the busiest voice-over artists in the forties and fifties: he’s also heard on the radio in the first scene of “Rear Window“) introduces him as “Your genial host: the renowned writer, art collector and teller of strange tales, Victor Grandison.” Franz Waxman’s score is hilarious.

Rains handles this sort of melodramatic nonsense so elegantly and makes the balderdash sound so eloquent, it’s easy to forget that the material is not merely second rate, but very hard to put across at all. He makes it seem effortless. Try speaking some of this stuff yourself, and you’ll see what he was up against.

An hour into the picture, Victor Grandison has already murdered three people that we know about. Presumably, there are others. Currently, he’s working on two more. There’s his ward, Matilda, a multi-millionairess debutante orphaned in childhood. She dotes on dear old Grandy. If she predeceases him, her fortune is his. She was lost at sea (plane crash); that was months ago; everyone’s forgotten her. And now she washes up. Alive. Touch of amnesia, though. Enter Mr Steven Howard (Michael North); says he’s her husband. She can’t remember him, but she’s falling under his spell. Handsome devil; mysterious — dangerous, perhaps. He’s in for a nasty bump on the head. Matilda, the dear child — a shame, really, most unfortunate. Oh, why did the wretched girl go and lose her heart to Mr Howard? Why does he keep poking about in other people’s affairs? Who is he, what’s he after? Well, no matter: at this moment, Mr Steven Howard is locked inside a trunk, unconscious, and about to be dumped into a landfill. And now, dear old Grandy must stage Matilda’s suicide — and quickly, too — finish the business before tonight’s broadcast. Watching Claude Rains cajole Joan Caulfield into drinking the fatal Champagne always makes me think of the old Flanders and Swann song, “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear.”

As you must expect in a Production Code picture, things go terribly wrong for our criminal. And it all leads to this thrilling conclusion.

The Passionate Friends

Poster from French release.

Rains gave one of his finest performances in David Lean’s “The Passionate Friends,” but the picture has never found a wide audience. Perhaps the plot’s structure was too complicated for audiences in 1949. Perhaps it still is. After a brief opening narration, there’s an extended flashback sequence in which a second flashback sequence, also of considerable length, is nested. This creates, in the first twenty minutes or so, a chronological ambiguity that is more than a little disorienting. The mild confusion it creates is appropriate to the story, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it put many people off. And the leading lady, Ann Todd, is a semi-forbidding presence — frosty as Garbo but without the mystique.

Rains plays Howard Justin, a wealthy, powerful man; Ann Todd (Mrs David Lean at the time) plays his wife, Mary. Theirs is a reasonably stable, loveless marriage of convenience that has lasted more than ten years. Early in their marriage, Mary drifted into an affair with her old flame, Steven Stratton (Trevor Howard). Misery all round. Mary ended it quickly. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since. The infidelity episode is told in a flashback. Now the story moves to the present: it is nine years after the crisis. No further indiscretions have disturbed their chilly domestic calm. Mary is in Switzerland on holiday. Howard, detained by pressing business, will join her in a few days. Her first morning at the hotel, Mary is at breakfast when Stratton enters the café. They’ve had no contact for nine years and now Fate (or a missed flight connection) has thrown them together. His suite is next door to hers: he’s flying home that evening. He is mellower, easier; he’s happily married, a proud father. The sexual tension between them has disappeared, friendly goodwill and mutual interests remain. They decide to spend the day together. In the afternoon, while they’re picnicking across the lake, Howard arrives at the hotel — a day early. Mme Justin is out; she will return presently: very well, he’ll have lunch in the café, he and Miss Layton (Betty Ann Davies) will work until his wife shows up.

To a large extent, Claude Rains’ reputation is based on the range and complexity of emotions he is able to express with his extraordinary voice. One doesn’t think of him without thinking of The Voice. But this next clip demonstrates that he is also devastatingly effective when speaking not a word. David Lean’s direction of this sequence is wonderfully imaginative and cinematic.

Extraordinary how eloquently Lean’s staging of the episode conveys, wordlessly, the tidal wave of jealousy that crashes over Howard Justin when he sees his wife with his former rival. Nine years earlier, when Mary cuckolded him, he could readily forgive her and rise above his humiliation. But now, when she has not cuckolded him, when he only imagines she has, he finds the humiliation intolerable, unforgivable. What has happened to make it different this time? The sight of Stratton’s luggage outside the room next to Mary’s gives him a jolt, but a minute later, when he sees Mary come into the room, race out to the balcony and wave at the departing speedboat, the sight shatters him. When she turns her back on the lake, and comes back into the room — clever David Lean, to have those curtains hide her face! (“Beauty’s veil doth cover every blot”) — the tears in her eyes drive him into a frenzy. The first time I saw “The Passionate Friends,” I took these few extraordinary minutes as a particularly well-acted episode of a husband who, after being confronted with several pieces of damning evidence, arrives at the perfectly reasonable, yet totally wrong conclusion that his wife has betrayed him. That is, unquestionably, what happens in the scene, but the betrayal that drives him wild is not the most obvious one; it’s crueler and more subtle. But I was not fully aware of it until I saw their next scene together.

It is a month or so later, they’re back in London, living separately. Mary comes to his house one night. The divorce is still in the works. Howard has sworn to ruin Stratton: he’s prepared to be liberal with her, but her seducer must be punished. This scene contains what I consider to be some of the greatest acting Claude Rains ever did.

Mary begs Howard to believe that she and Stratton have done nothing wrong, and we know she’s telling the truth. But Howard doesn’t accuse her of adultery. It isn’t her sexual infidelity that he finds too hard to bear, it is his realization that she has starved him emotionally; until he saw her race out to that balcony, he had never seen her so unguarded, so lively, so passionate. And then those tears . . . affection, tenderness, love. And none of them for him. It is not only her body she has given to another man, but her whole self. And what has she given him? He says she has given him “the love you’d give a dog, the kindness you’d give a beggar, and the loyalty of a bad servant” — an accusation that cannot be gainsaid. (The excellent screenplay is by Eric Ambler.) Rains very rarely played anything of such naked emotional intensity. “The Invisible Man” is one of the only other pictures in which Rains cuts loose with such unhinged, volcanic fury. But the Invisible Man is already an emotional wreck when first we meet him: the wonder of that performance is Rains’ ability to sustain and increase the intensity over the course of the entire picture. “The Passionate Friends” presents a different challenge: an unflappable, highly polished man of the world who is pushed to the brink of madness by jealousy — and because the actor is Claude Rains, we see the precise moment that the madness strikes him. I cannot help thinking that Rains’ personal animosity toward Ann Todd is partly responsible for the stunning emotional violence he brings into this scene. He was enormously fond of David Lean, admired and respected him, but also really loved him. Ann Todd’s unprofessional conduct on the set drove Rains to distraction, but worse, he found her brutal treatment of Lean unconscionable. According to Rains, when she divorced Lean, she took every penny he had. Rains never forgave her.

Enoch Arden

If I had to choose, I’d say that Rains’ performance in “Deception” is my favorite of his movie roles. But I believe there’s one performance I love even more than his Alexander Hollenius: it’s his recitation of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden,” with piano accompaniment written by Richard Strauss, which Rains recorded in 1962 with Glenn Gould. As Rains proved in his movie debut as the Invisible Man, he was capable of giving an unforgettable performance without being seen; he proves it again with his stunning performance of “Enoch Arden.” 1962 was the same year he gave a fine performance as Mr Dryden, a minor role in “Lawrence of Arabia.” He lived for another five years, but apart from a few television appearances, a cameo as King Herod in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and one excruciating courtroom drama, “Twilight of Honor,” “Enoch Arden” is really his swan song. And what an unforgettable performance to go out on!

Rains in ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ filmed the same year he recorded ‘Enoch Arden.’

“Enoch Arden” is the story of a sailor, lost at sea and given up for dead by those he left behind: his wife, Annie, a young daughter, a younger son and a newborn baby boy. Within a year of Enoch’s departure, the baby dies and his family begins to drift into poverty. Ten years pass — “And no word from Enoch came.” Enoch and Annie’s childhood friend, Philip Ray — a prosperous miller — eventually persuades Annie (whom he has always loved from afar) to marry him “[a]nd lift the household out of poverty.” A year later, Annie gives birth to Philip’s son. And now, after more than a dozen years have passed, Enoch returns. He’s a broken man, unrecognizable. Finding his old house abandoned, he goes to a local tavern, where he collapses. While Enoch is recuperating, the “good and garrulous” landlady, Miriam Lane, tells him

. . . with other annals of the port,
Not knowing — Enoch was so brown, so bow’d,
So broken — all the story of his house.
His baby’s death, her growing poverty,
How Philip put her little ones to school,
And kept them in it, his long wooing her,
Her slow consent, and marriage, and the birth
Of Philip’s child.

Enoch does not reveal his identity, but becomes obsessed with the thought of seeing Annie one more time. “If I might look on her sweet face again/And know that she is happy.” So he goes over to Philip’s house one November night and peers through the window. Here is Tennyson’s description of what Enoch sees:

And on the right hand of the hearth he saw
Philip, the slighted suitor of old times,
Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees;
And o’er her second father stoopt a girl,
A later but a loftier Annie Lee,
Fair-hair’d and tall, and from her lifted hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring
To tempt the babe, who rear’d his creasy arms,
Caught at and ever miss’d it, and they laugh’d:
And on the left hand of the hearth he saw
The mother glancing often toward her babe,
But turning now and then to speak with him,
Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong,
And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled.

Claude Rains takes it from here. “Enoch Arden” is another rare example of Rains’ unleashing a torrent of emotion, astonishing both for its energy and complexity. It’s no trick for an actor to shed tears on cue, nor to express rage at the top of his lungs. To do both together, while making sure that every word is clearly enunciated, each individual thought is specific and distinct (as opposed to producing a generalized wash of unhappiness), and to produce a believable result (i.e., the underlying technique must be invisible), but one that is better than merely believable — this is extremely difficult to do. It requires what the great Shakespearean director, John Barton, refers to as “Passion and Coolness.” Most actors will settle for one or the other. Actors like Claude Rains do both at the same time and, being the magicians they are, they don’t let you see how they do it.

Here is the finale.

Frightfulness: Funny Halloween Fare

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Bride of Frankenstein

Vintage poster. The original title was minus the article. I don’t know when it got added. E.E. Clive is erroneously listed as C.C. Clive.

Among its many distinctions, James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” (Universal, 1935) is one of the few examples in movie history of a sequel that is much better than the original picture. I think it’s going too far to say that it’s a great picture, but it’s entertaining, commendably short and very very funny. Since the story treats of mad scientists, monsters and grave robbers, it’s unquestionably a horror picture, but it is primarily a comedy. For my money, Ernest Thesiger steals the whole show. I can’t even type his name without giggling at the memory of him.

Ernest the Great, Queen of the Night

Every word that comes out of his mouth is droll; every cartoon face he pulls is hilarious. I don’t know if there’s another actor who makes me laugh as much as Ernest Thesiger does. Thesiger is so outrageously queeny, he makes Quentin Crisp seem like Charles Bronson by comparison. As I’ve often mentioned in the past, I’m usually put off by camp. But Thesiger’s camping is a brand that I love. His range is rather narrow, but it’s deep and rich: he specializes in desiccated aristocratic crackpot degenerates, mincing reprobates, malevolent tipplers, and ancient imps; these rascally old gentlemen, whether they’re burying the dead (as in “Scrooge” (1950)) or digging them up (as in “Bride of Frankenstein”), are always hugely entertaining. Thesiger makes me laugh just by the way he pronounces the word “gin.”

Oh, he was a mad old thing . . . Born on January 15, 1879, Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger, CBE, was the grandson of the Baron Chelmsford, and the nephew of General Frederic Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, who, one week after Ernest’s birth, led his troops into a disastrous fight against a Zulu army at the Battle of Isandlwana, a crushing victory for the Zulus — and the British army’s all-time worst defeat at the hands of a technologically inferior indigenous force. When the Great War began in 1914, Thesiger enlisted, with the fond hope of being assigned to a Scottish regiment, because he wanted to wear a kilt. He was wounded in battle almost at once and sent home. Shortly after he recovered from his wounds, a dinner party guest asked him for an account of his time in France. He replied, “Oh, my dear, the noise! And the people!” Three years later (1917), in an improbable move, he married Janette Mary Fernie Ranken — the sister of his close friend, William Bruce Ellis Ranken. Apparently, Thesiger and Janette wed largely out of their mutual adoration of her extraordinarily handsome brother. Upon hearing the news, brother William expressed his opprobrium by shaving off all his beautiful chestnut hair.

Charcoal sketch of Ernest Thesiger by John Singer Sargent.

Thesiger originally intended to be a painter; he haunted the studio of John Singer Sargent, who was his close friend. While still a young man, Thesiger switched from painting to acting and befriended Mrs Patrick Campbell and George Bernard Shaw, with whom he worked closely. He made his movie debut in 1916, in a spoof of “Macbeth” as it might look if presented by an American company: Thesiger played one of the Weird Sisters . . . in drag. Throughout his long life (he died in 1961, on the eve of his eighty-second birthday), Thesiger moved in several literary, theatrical and artistic circles. Shaw wrote the role of the Dauphin in “Saint Joan” for him. Maugham was also a good friend, and once wrote to him, “. . . I am always writing parts for you, Ernest. The trouble is that somebody called Gladys Cooper will insist on playing them.” In 1925, he appeared in Noël Coward’s “On With the Dance” . . . again in drag. A year or two after he appeared in “Bride of Frankenstein,” he published a book entitled “Adventures in Embroidery” about needlework, which was his hobby. It appears that the book was not a bestseller. Nor, I think, was his early memoir, “Practically True.”

Here are three of Thesiger’s most amusing moments in “Bride of Frankenstein.” (Franz Waxman’s spooky score is also hilarious.)

‘Do you like gin? It is my only weakness.’

‘Have a cigar; they are my only weakness.’

‘Oh, he’s quite harmless — Except when crossed!’

The Old Dark House

Original poster. J.B. Priestley’s and Melvyn Douglas’ names are misspelled.

James Whale’s “The Old Dark House” (Universal, 1932) also features a funny performance by Ernest Thesiger. This time, he plays the cadaverous lord of the manor, Horace Femm(!), who looks to me to be the model for the acerbic food critic, Anton Ego, in “Ratatouille.” His sepulchral attire and the black rings round his eyes also remind me of the butler in Chas Addams’ cartoons.

Following the success of “The Invisible Man,” Universal’s front office was anxious for Claude Rains to play Horace Femm in “The Old Dark House,” but James Whale insisted on his old friend, Ernest Thesiger. It would have been interesting to see Rains in the role, but it’s hard to believe anyone could bring more eccentric lunacy to the part than dear old Ernest. Rains was a great actor, but not a natural eccentric: in this case, therefore, I think Whale was right to insist on Thesiger.

Late Night Supper with the Femms

I find Horace Femm’s sardonic observations about piety extremely appealing. And funny, of course. A year later, when the Production Code was enforced, this scene would never have made it past the censors. Why is “Have a potato” so funny? I have no idea, but I laugh out loud every time I hear him say it.

Drinks with Ernest

I love Melvyn Douglas’ line: “Correct, Mr Femm: War generation, slightly soiled — a study in the bittersweet — the man with the twisted smile.” The scintillating script is by Benn W. Levy.

Bedtime with Miss Femm

As this next clip will demonstrate, Miss Rebecca Femm (Eva Moore) is not the most welcoming hostess in the British Isles. In fact, she reminds me of a witty remark made by Dame Edith Evans. When asked why she had never played Lady Macbeth, Dame Edith replied, “I could never impersonate a woman who had such a peculiar notion of hospitality.” Eva Moore was the mother of Laurence Olivier’s first wife, Jill Esmond.

“You r-r-r-revel in the joys of fleshly love, don’t you!” God, I think that’s hilarious. In “The Old Dark House,” piety is presented as a symptom of madness; in the case of Rebecca Femm, it appears to be no other thing but the desperate means by which a lubricious old lesbian hopes to repress the carnal desires that torment her and keep her awake a-nights. She claims to despise soft, white skin and long, straight legs, but she can’t keep her crooked fingers to herself.

The Body Snatcher

Vintage Poster.

The best thing to be said for “The Body Snatcher” (RKO, 1945) is that it gives Boris Karloff a chance to show what a fine and subtle actor he was. Karloff is always good, even in the worst pictures, but I’ve never seen him give a better performance than he does in this one. He’s cabman John Gray, whose sideline is providing cadavers to Dr Wolfe “Toddy” MacFarlane’s (Henry Daniell) medical college.

The picture has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere and some intermittently excellent dialogue, but it is hobbled by almost uniformly terrible acting. Daniell is as swishy and creepy as ever, but he’s better than usual, except for the stupendously terrible love scenes with his unexpected wife. It’s a dreadful thing to see Henry Daniell pitch woo to a fetching lassie — far more alarming than to see him saw up a cadaver. And less credible, too. Dr MacFarlane’s wife (Edith Atwater) tells him she is “fey” (which, in Scottish superstition, means she has the gift of prophecy) and he agrees. In the circumstance, the term is infelicitous.

Edith Atwater, Henry Daniell: 'Your a fey creature, Meg, with mad ideas . . ." Look who's talking.

Edith Atwater, Henry Daniell: ‘You’re a fey creature, Meg, with mad ideas . . .’ Right back at ya, Queenie!

New Cadaver

The young medical student, Donald Fettes, is played by the resolutely American Russell Wade. He left show business in the late forties to pursue a career in Palm Springs real estate. In the fifties, he developed the El Dorado Country Club and was the president of what became the Bob Hope Golf Classic. One assumes he was better in that line of work than in the acting game. Donna Lee is the street singer.

The murder of the street singer is echt Val Lewton; Robert Wise directed, but the moment is pure Lewton. Deep, deep shadows and not a soul in sight, then a sound effect that tells the story. The majority of Lewton’s pictures are based on the central premise that we’re most frightened by the things we can’t see.

Toddy and Gray

This next scene contains my favorite line in the picture.

“Look! Look at yourself! Could you be a doctor, a healing man, with the things those eyes have seen? There’s a lot of knowledge in those eyes, but no understanding.”

Hotel a la Swing

Here’s a curiosity: it’s from a two-reeler called “Hotel a la Swing” (Warner Bros., 1937), in which a troupe of out-of-work actors takes over the management of a hotel that is nearing bankruptcy, and through their ingenuity, turns the place into a success.

Holiday in Hades

This sequence is supposed to be happening in the new rooftop garden cabaret. If you want to see the whole thing, you’ll find it as a special feature on the DVD of “Swing Time.” As you will see, the chorus line in this number is ragged as hell, but it’s awfully funny when you look at it immediately after watching Fred and Ginger in “Swing Time.”

I especially like those beefy, middle-aged devils in evening dress. They’re hopelessly out of step with each other. The girl singer is Marcia Wayne. She never made another picture.

Yes, We Don’t Make Hash

This is another number from the same short subject. It has nothing to do with Halloween, other than its being, in its own way, a horror. I like the clumsy tap dancing and the xylophone music, and I feel sorry for these three schnooks. This was their big break, and nothing came of it. They went by the name Lane Tree & Edwards . . . but not very far.

You can see the 2014 Edition by clicking here: “Frightfulness II: Funny Halloween Fare, 2014 Edition.”

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