Film Career
Lanchester married Charles Laughton in 1929. She made her film debut in The Scarlet Woman (1925) and in 1928 appeared in three 'silent shorts' written for her by H.G. Wells (Bluebottles, Daydreams and The Tonic) in which Laughton made brief appearances. They also appeared together in a 1930 'film revue' entitled Comets, featuring British stage, musical and variety acts, in which they sang in duet 'The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie.' Lanchester appeared in several other early British talkies, including Potiphar's Wife (1931), starring Laurence Olivier. She appeared opposite Laughton again in 1933 as a highly comical Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII. 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). She and Laughton returned to Britain in 1936 to appear together again in Rembrandt and two years later in Vessel of Wrath, a.k.a. The Beachcomber.
They both returned to Hollywood in 1939 where he made The Hunchback of Notre Dame although Lanchester didn't appear in another film until 1941 with Ladies in Retirement. 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). Lassie Come Home (also 1943) was Elsa's first Technicolor film. She then received top billing in Passport to Destiny (1944) for the only time in her Hollywood films. In this, she played a cockney charlady who scrubs her way across occupied Europe in order to assassinate Hitler. She played supporting roles in The Spiral Staircase and The Razor's Edge (both 1946) and also appeared in The Bishop's Wife the following year. She played a comical role in the 1948 thriller, The Big Clock, in which Laughton starred as a murderous, megalomaniac press tycoon. She had a substantial part as an artist specialising in nativity scenes in Come to the Stable for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award (1949).
During the late 1940s and 1950s she appeared in small but highly varied supporting roles in a number of films while simultaneously appearing on stage at the Turnabout Theatre in Hollywood. Here she performed her solo vaudeville act in conjunction with a marionette show, singing somewhat off-colour songs which she later recorded for a couple of LPs. Onscreen, she appeared alongside Danny Kaye in The Inspector General (1949), played a blackmailing landlady in Mystery Street (1950) and was Shelley Winters's travelling companion in the Western Frenchie (1950). More supporting roles followed in the early 1950s, including a 2-minute cameo as the Bearded Lady in 3 Ring Circus, about to be shaved by Jerry Lewis. She then had another substantial part when she appeared again with her husband in the screen version of Agatha Christie's play Witness for the Prosecution (1957) for which both received Academy Award nominations - she for the second time as Best Supporting Actress, and Laughton, also for the second time, for Best Actor. Neither won. However, Lanchester did win the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for the film.
Lanchester played a witch in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), and appeared in such classics as Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968). She appeared on 9 April 1959, on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. She performed in two episodes of NBC's The Wonderful World of Disney. Additionally, she had memorable guest roles in a classic I Love Lucy episode in 1956 and in episodes of NBC's The Eleventh Hour (1964) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1965).
In the 1965–66 television season she was a regular on John Forsythe's sitcom The John Forsythe Show on NBC in the role of Miss Culver, the principal of a private girls' academy in San Francisco. She continued television work into the early 1970s, appearing as a recurring character in Nanny and the Professor, starring Richard Long and Juliet Mills.
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). 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. Charles Laughton provided the spoken introductions to each number and even joined Elsa 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.
Read more about this topic: Elsa Lanchester
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