Elsa Lanchester
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
It's been a while since I posted, mainly because I made the mistake of working on about 10 blog posts at once and confusing my brains in the process, which means it's time for a photo post. While I usually say these photo-only posts are "in lieu of actual content," I just can't do that when Elsa Lanchester is involved. She is amazing. When I grow up, I want to be Miss Marbles from "Murder By Death."
Elsa was an accomplished singer and dancer, studying at Isadora Duncan's Paris school in the 1910s and appearing throughout the 1920s in dance halls and musical theatre.
The iconic role of The Bride was physically demanding for Elsa. The severe wire-supported hairstyle, stilts, pulled-back eyes, and miles of wrapping took a toll on her health. Karloff suffered similarly, losing 20 lbs over the course of the 45-day shoot.
Selected Credits: Early profile photo from Lewisham Heritage. Elsa and Colin courtesy Dr. Macro. Elsa doing her makeup from Retrozone. Elsa in wrappings from Pour 15 Minutes d'Amour.
Posted by Stacia at 11:02 PM 7 comments
Labels: random picture
7 comments:
"The iconic role of The Bride was physically demanding for Elsa. The severe wire-supported hairstyle, stilts, pulled-back eyes, and miles of wrapping took a toll on her health."
It was certainly worth it. She looked amazing, and it's the role she'll always be remembered for. There was some talk recently that some fool was planning a remake of Bride of Frankenstein. One can only hope that no-one would be silly enough to put up the money for it.
I don't know, man, someone remade "The Crazies." NOTHING is sacred anymore.
I wouldn't mind the remakes, if they were any good. But we get so many bad remakes. And poorly thought-out remakes, where the only things added to the original are unnecessary CGI, unnecessary additional violence, and inflated running times.
She will always be Katie Nanna from Mary Poppins to me.
I love her in Witness for the Prosecution!
In the Seventies, a friend of mine had some very old records of Elsa Lanchester singing music hall songs. They were wonderful. By the way: some trivia: Boris Karloff's great-aunt was Anna Leonowens, the central character in "The King and I".
mark, I never knew that about Karloff! That's fabulous.
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