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October 28, 1902– Elsa Lanchester was born into an eccentric English family. Her parents were true Bohemians, refusing to legalize their union in a conventional way just to satisfy the era’s conservative society.
When she was just 11 years old, Lanchester enrolled at Isadora Duncan‘s School Of Dance in Paris, but the start of WW1 prevented her from graduating & she was sent back home to England.
Even as a young teenager, the war in Europe meant that she was obliged to find work & so she became a dance instructor. When she was just 18 years old, Lanchester was one of the founders of The Children’s Theater Of London where she became a drama teacher. She also helped start an artist collective, Cave Of Harmony Productions, where she & her friends performed songs & sketches at cabarets.
Lanchester made her film debut in One Of The Best (1927) working with another young actor, Charles Laughton. They married in 1929. In 1931, the couple came to the USA so that Laughton could to take a role in a Broadway play. The pair traveled frequently between England & the USA, eventually becoming American citizens in 1950.
In Hollywood, Lanchester had a long career in films & TV, playing eccentric characters with humorous quirks. She and Laughton enjoyed working together & did 12 films including The Private Life Of Henry VIII (1933), Rembrandt (1936), & Witness For The Prosecution (1957), which brought her an Academy Award nomination. They did a picture together titled The Big Clock (1948), which despite the rumors, is not about me.
Lanchester would have her defining iconic role as the Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), directed by the amazingly talented, openly gay, James Whale. In that classic film she also plays Mary Shelley, the young woman who wrote the original Frankenstein novel in 1818. This movie’s bride remains, without a doubt, the most famous female monster in film history. One of my favorite films, gay director/screenwriter Bill Condon’s Gods & Monsters (1998), based on the terrific novel by my friend Christopher Bram, pays homage to the creators of that 1935 production, with Rosalind Ayres smartly portraying Lanchester.
Except for specializing in the idiosyncratic, Lanchester was fortunate to not be stuck in a stereotype & she found work in films in a wide variety of roles & genres: dramas, noir, comedies, but René Clair’s charming The Ghost Goes West (1935) is a favorite, along with: Ladies In Retirement (1941), Tales Of Manhattan (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), the only good version of gay writer W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1946), plus the thriller The Spiral Staircase (1945).
In 1950, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the Loretta Young nun flick Come Back To The Stable. She is especially delightful as a witch in the thinly disguised gay allegory Bell, Book & Candle (1958), based on gay playwright John van Druten’s popular play.
Her husband was gay. Lanchester wrote that she learned Laughton was a homo in 1931, 2 years after their wedding, when they came home one night to find a policeman at their door with a young ruffian who had tried to get money from Laughton after the actor had cruised him earlier that day in Hyde Park. Lanchester didn’t care. The couple had a 30+ year, happy, very modern marriage with each of them taking casual lovers, Lanchester with members of both sexes, while being honest & upfront about their needs & feelings with each other.
In 1960, Laughton & Lanchester bought the house on the beach in Santa Monica next door to pioneering gay couple, writer Christopher Isherwood & artists Don Bachardy. The 2 pairs became best friends. During that period, Lanchester still was being cast in supporting roles, performing in her own distinctive batty style. She found a home at Disney Studios with films: Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) & Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968). She even made an Elvis flick, Easy Come Easy Go (1968).
In the 1970’s, she returned to horror films with Willard (1971), about a rat that was not named Romney & a box-office hit at the time. She was also in Terror In The Wax Museum (1973), reuniting with other Hollywood stars from the Golden Era: Ray Milland, Maurice Evans, & John Carradine. She played a role spoofing Agatha Christie‘s Miss Marples in Neil Simon’s brazenly funny Murder By Death (1976). Lanchester’s final role was in the comedy Die Laughing (1980), a fitting title. She had worked as an actor for more than 6 decades.
Lanchester wrote a book about her relationship with her famous actor husband, Charles Laughton And I (1938), where she was discreet, of course. But she did publish a memoir Elsa Lanchester Herself (1983) where she writes about Laughton’s gayness. She reported that they never had children because Laughton was homosexual. Laughton’s pal & occasional costar Maureen O’Hara (God rest her soul), a friend & co-star of Laughton, refuted this. She claimed Laughton had related to her that the reason the couple never had children was because of a botched abortion Lanchester had early in her career. Lanchester didn’t deny the accusation, but she did say of O’Hara: “She looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, or anywhere else.”
Lanchester left for this world in 1986. She was 84 years old when she took her final curtain call. Her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean by Bachardy (Isherwood had died earlier that year).
With her role in Bride Of Frankenstein, Lanchester will forever be a Gay Icon. Parodied perfectly by Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein (1974), but never ridiculed, her bride is simply one of the most unique, strangest, powerful & troubling portrayals in film history.
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Madison Hildebrand
