Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born on 28 October 1902 in Lewisham, London, and died on 26 December 1986. A British actress whose career spanned theatre, film, and television across several decades, Lanchester trained in dance as a child, studying in Paris under Isadora Duncan. When World War I forced the school to close, she returned to the United Kingdom and began teaching dance in the Duncan style to children in her south London neighborhood, earning additional income for her household.

Following the war, Lanchester founded the Children's Theatre and later established the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub where modern plays and cabaret performances were staged. She revived Victorian songs and ballads in these venues, some of which she carried into a revue called Riverside Nights. Columbia Records invited her into the studio to record four of her cabaret numbers as 78 rpm discs, with piano accompaniment by Kay Henderson. The recordings included "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father" and "He Didn't Oughter" on one disc, made in 1926, and "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin" and "The Ladies Bar" on a second disc, recorded in 1930.

Her first film appearance came in 1924 in the amateur production The Scarlet Woman, written by Evelyn Waugh, who also appeared in the film. In 1928 she appeared in three silent short films written by H. G. Wells and directed by Ivor Montagu: Blue Bottles, Daydreams, and The Tonic, each of which featured brief appearances by Charles Laughton. Lanchester had first met Laughton in 1927 while both were appearing in Arnold Bennett's stage play Mr Prohack, and they married two years later.

Lanchester's Broadway career extended from 1931 to 1941. She appeared on Broadway in Payment Deferred, in which she played Laughton's daughter, though she did not reprise the role in the subsequent Hollywood film version. She also starred on Broadway in They Walk Alone. In addition to her stage work in New York, Lanchester and Laughton appeared together in the Old Vic season of 1933–34, performing works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Wilde, and in 1936 she played Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook in J. M. Barrie's play at the London Palladium.

Her film career advanced steadily through the 1930s. She appeared opposite Laughton as Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933, with Laughton in the title role. After Laughton began working in Hollywood, Lanchester joined him there, making appearances in David Copperfield and Naughty Marietta, both in 1935. That same year she took on the title role in Bride of Frankenstein, the part with which she became most widely identified. She and Laughton returned to Britain to film Rembrandt in 1936 and Vessel of Wrath in 1938 before resettling in Hollywood.

Through the 1940s, Lanchester took on a range of supporting roles. She received top billing for the first and only time in her Hollywood career in Passport to Destiny in 1944. She appeared in The Spiral Staircase and The Razor's Edge in 1946, played the housekeeper in The Bishop's Wife in 1947 alongside David Niven, Loretta Young, and Cary Grant, and took a comedic role as an artist in the 1948 thriller The Big Clock. Her part as a painter specializing in nativity scenes in Come to the Stable earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1949.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Lanchester simultaneously maintained a stage presence at the Turnabout Theatre in Hollywood, where she performed a solo vaudeville act alongside a marionette show. Her film appearances during this period included The Inspector General with Danny Kaye in 1949, Mystery Street in 1950, and Frenchie in 1950 with Shelley Winters. A brief cameo as the Bearded Lady in 3 Ring Circus in 1954 was followed by a more substantial role in Witness for the Prosecution in 1957, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's play in which she appeared again with Laughton. The film earned her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Witness for the Prosecution was the last of twelve films in which Lanchester and Laughton appeared together. Laughton died in 1962.

Following her husband's death, Lanchester resumed an active film career. She appeared in the Disney productions Mary Poppins in 1964, Pajama Party in 1964, That Darn Cat! in 1965, and Blackbeard's Ghost in 1968. She sang a duet with Elvis Presley in Easy Come, Easy Go in 1967. The horror film Willard in 1971 was a significant commercial success, and one of her final screen appearances came in Murder by Death in 1976. Lanchester also made notable appearances on television, including a guest role on I Love Lucy in 1956, an appearance on NBC's The Ford Show Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford on 9 April 1959, and guest roles in episodes of The Eleventh Hour in 1964 and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in 1965.