Elsa Lanchester: Becoming the Bride Pt. 1

You may not know her name, but her image is famous. As the love interest for Dr. Frankenstein's monster in "The Bride of Frankenstein," Elsa Lanchester became a film icon, but her life story is as interesting as any cinema fiction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm probably I'm Tracy Wilson, and today we are talking
about figure in film history that is very near and
dear to my heart. Uh. And you may not know

(00:22):
her name off hand, but you have seen her and
you know her face. Uh. I think you maybe know
her hair. You do for her famous role, and you
probably have heard her famous scream because after she appeared
as the love interest for Dr. Frankenstein's monster in the
Bride of Frankenstein, Elsa Lanchester really became a film icon.

(00:43):
But her life story is so fascinating and insane in
a good way. Um, that it's really better than many
of the fictional stories she was part of. But she
it really is an icon of horror. Uh. And particularly
you know in those were in the fall and Halloween time.
There are often lots of showings of The Bride of

(01:05):
Frankenstein that go on where you can go see it
in the theater, sometimes remastered. I always try to catch it. Uh.
And for the purposes of this podcast, we're primarily focusing
on Else's early life leading up to her legendary role
in James Wales's follow up to Frankenstein. She was just
such a character that we would like run on for
literally days and days and days if we tried to

(01:26):
cover her entire life in depth, because she had a
very long career, she had a lot of interesting friends,
she did a lot of interesting things. But as it is,
we still have to do a two parter even just
covering kind of her early life leading up to her
launch into Famous Frankenstein's Monster's Bride. H And I just
I she's one of those people that when I talked

(01:48):
to people about her as I do, uh, and I
start telling them things about like her childhood, they give
me this look like this cannot be a real thing,
because it's pretty radical, especially considering when up Yeah, so, yeah,
she was born more than a hundred years ago, and
some of the things that happened to her as a kid,
even if it were happening today, and some of those

(02:10):
things like that do happen today, it would still be
considered unconventional. Uh. So we're going to kick off with
sam Elsa Lanchester, and first we have to talk about
her parents. Her mother was Edith Lanchester, and she was
one of a family of eight children, and she was
born in eighteen seventy three in Brighton. Her father was
James Sullivan and he was an Irish policeman's son. Edith

(02:34):
and James met at a meeting of the Social Democratic Party.
They were both socialists and their politics were a really
huge part of their life together. Yeah, and the pair
never married, which is kind of interesting. And again keep
in mind we're talking about the Lady eighteen hundreds, early
nineteen hundreds. They did not believe in marriage, um. And
this actually proved to be a little bit problematic for Edith.

(02:57):
Her father and her brother's in when she had decided
that she was going to live, you know, basically in
a marriage type situation with James, but they were not
going to get married, her father and brothers kidnapped her
for her radical beliefs and they even um had a
certificate of insanity at the ready during this kidnapping, and

(03:18):
on it they cited quote over education as the cause
of her lunacy, like this woman clearly has learned too
many things and it's given her crazy ideas. So in
this context, a little bit problematic involved being kidnapped and
institutionalized by your family, Your family and they took her
to a mental asylum and this really was basically it
all boiled down to the fact that she did not

(03:39):
want to get married and they could not comprehend how
that could be a real life choice. Uh. And there
were protests on the part of um friends of Edith
and James that were part of their political group, and
James Sullivan worked really, really hard, and there was lots
of paperwork and lots of hearings, and he find only

(04:00):
was able to secure Edith's release, and the case actually
became quite famous. It was known as the Lanchester kidnapping
and it was reported in international papers. And this incident
really severed ties between Edith and her family for many
many years, understandably uh. And it also interestingly led to
the reform of the so called lunacy laws in Great Britain,

(04:22):
because this was a woman who could speak very well
on her behalf. She clearly was not in any way
insane UM and yet she had been, but because of
loopholes in the legal system, they were able to say
that she was and have her committed. So it really
led to a good bit of her reform. Two years
after this kidnapping, James and Edith gave birth to a
son named Waldo that was and a little later Elsa

(04:47):
was born on October two. Uh. He had to say
that she had an unconventional childhood is something of an understatement. Again,
keep in mind early nineteen hundreds, uh, and it's no
surprise that a couple like James and Edith were not
going to be exactly average parents. There had actually been
a London City Council ruling around that time that all

(05:09):
children had to begin school at age five, but the
Lanchester Sullivan household was not entirely compliant with that. Waldo
actually did go to school. He went to a boys
school that was run by a socialist headmaster that they
had befriended. His name was Frederick Kettle. But Edith wanted
to home school Elsa because she felt like girls were
not really going to get a valuable education in the

(05:31):
school system. Right. So the family, responding in in part
to this, became really mobile. They didn't really stay in
one place for very long. In Elsa Lanchester herself, Elsa writes,
we were always moving away from something that had overtones
of legal involvement, however harmless. My mother always seemed to
have the law on her side. She knew every loophole

(05:53):
in dozens of by laws, vaccinations, census, night landladies who
would not make repairs and correct sanitary inspectors. My parents
moved six times to avoid having me vaccinated because my
brother Waldo had quote taken very badly six years before
the local green grocer, a socialist, would move our few

(06:14):
possessions in the night, which was called shooting the moon.
So yeah, they were already a kind of an untethered
lifestyle from pretty much day one, and because the family
tended to move around a good bit, they really did
avoid the prying eyes of the city council for quite
a while. But when also was six and a half,
the jig was up. They got caught. And despite the

(06:35):
fact that Edith could prove to the council that she
was extremely well educated and perfectly capable of passing knowledge
to her children, Elsa was not allowed to learn at home.
They did not have a home schooling setup um and
she had to enroll in a council school. But they
also had a provision that Elsa would stay outside during
morning prayers because, in addition to being socialists and uh

(06:57):
kind of on the move and anti vaccination, they were
also eight Theists, which again is kind of an odd
thing at this time in history. Um So Elsa would
not participate in the prayers. And she was very bright,
and she knew about a great many things because her
mother really had taught her a lot, but she struggled
with the curriculum and structure in the new school. She

(07:17):
tells a story in her biography about them asking her
a question I think about how to make change, like
how many coins went into paper money, and she kind
of panicked and ran away and cried because she didn't
know the answer. Uh. And because I think this is
somewhat my inference, because she was a bright child, I
think it really hurt her to not know a thing.
And so that did not last. Um she did not

(07:40):
do so well at the Council school, but eventually her
parents made arrangements for her to attend the same school
as Waldo that was run by their socialist friend Mr Kettle,
even though she was the only girl there. So she
went to an all boys school but was the only
girl in attendance. But this arrangement seemed to work out
much better for ELS's She speaks very fondly of that

(08:01):
time and the fund that she had learning and and
how it was less structured so it really suited her
learning style much better. In addition to all this thinking
about how her children should be educated, Edith, who was
called Biddy by her husband and children, also had the
family on a strict vegetarian diet. James, who went by
shamous in the household, was grudgingly allowed a little bit

(08:25):
of meat on occasion because he believed that it was
good for his rheumatism. Yeah, but Biddy allegedly would say
all of the things that um people say when they
don't want someone to eat meat. Where he would be
eating these little amounts of meat. There was a lot
of pigs head discussion if you read her biography, and
they would boil a pig's head and he would eat that,

(08:47):
but she would Biddy would always pass by him and
say like, I hope you're enjoying your corpse. And because
she really was a very strict vegetarian. Again, this is
a very surprising combo in this era to be an atheist,
socialist vegetarian that is anti vaccination and living in a
non marriage, living in a non marriage with your child

(09:10):
enrolled in an all boys school, even though she's a girl.
It's a really unusual set of circumstances. However, in this
vegetarian household, Elsa was really fascinated with and craved meat.
She writes in her book quote, the smell of frying
bacon coming from houses on the way to school made
me start to think that maybe my mother was a

(09:30):
bit evil. Eventually, she got into this habit where she
would use her allowance. She got a penny per week
for cleaning the kitchen on the weekends. Uh, and she
would spend this money that she earned on household chores
to purchase oxo or bovrel cubes, which is basically bully
on cubes beef bullyon. And she would eat them secretly

(09:51):
in kind of like this defiance of her vegetarian parents. Um.
And she talks about quartering them, like cutting them into
four pieces and eating one piece at a time, and
how she just thought it was the most delicious thing,
just kind of fascinating and just eat bullion. But his
salt is very good. It's salt is good, and you
know salt. The taste meaty if you have been raised vegetarian,

(10:13):
might be very yummy. If that's what you're craving. The
story also reminds me of like when I was a kid,
there were things that were purchased from the grocery store
that were for my dad's lunch that we were not
allowed to have, and that meant that I wanted that
the most. I wanted those little Debbie cookies more than
anything else that was being the house ever. Oh yeah,
And you know, kids will always I really think firmly,

(10:35):
and again I am not a parent, but kids will
always find a way to rebel. Uh. And you know,
for her, she lived in this very liberal, freethinking household.
Like to rebel she had to go in search of meat,
which I think is kind of charming. Uh. And now
we will return to the wonderful world of Elsa and
her dance training. Yeah. So, when Elsa was around ten

(11:00):
years old, her mother, Biddy, befriended an American artist and
dancer named Raymond Duncan. Raymond, at the time was teaching
arts and crafts classes in Chelsea and like leather making,
like making your own shoes, and just all kinds of
sort of interesting classes. And Raymond found Elsa to be
really quite a talented and interesting child. And when his sister,

(11:22):
who happened to be the famous dancer is Adora Duncan
decided to start a dance school in Paris. Elsa, who
was a legend eleven by now, UH, was hand picked
to be one of the first students there based on
Raymond's recommendation, and all the expenses for her training were
to be paid by the school, which is really quite
a cool opportunity for a kid. UH. Biddy went to

(11:44):
Paris with Elsa and got a job at the school. UH.
Reading her autobiography, I Elsa was not very happy about this.
She wanted to go off and do this by herself,
and her mom was. She describes her as hovering over
her all the time. The helicopter parents. Yeah, I think
it was neat to go to Paris. Yeah, well I
would think that to you. But she was eleven, very

(12:06):
independent and wanted to go do it by herself. But
to see where most parents would not be cool with that. Yeah,
let's talk about her independence. Every morning, students were supposed
to line up and kiss Isadora's hand and greet her.
But in Hels his own words, I just pretended to
kiss it because the gesture was too much like bowing
before royalty. It practice not favored and Biddy's and Shamus's world. Yeah,
she doesn't speak very well of visitor. It's not kid. No,

(12:29):
I would not be about that either because germs. Yeah,
well she if you see interviews with her when she
appeared on Dick Cabot quite some time ago, she talks
at length about her time Isadora Duncan's school, and it's
not kind. She does not think of the woman as lovely,
although the time she spent there she really liked. But
her account of her dance training under as a Door

(12:50):
Duncan is really hilarious. Elsa was a very witty woman
in her writing is really fun to read, and she
describes is a Door's training in the following way quote,
I soon learned that all Isadora could do was teach
us to run away from or toward an enemy, or
to become an autumn leaf or something like. She basically
thought she was going to get actual dance training, and

(13:12):
what she got was kind of interpretive dance training that
was more about feelings and thoughts and less about technique.
Aside from the dance training, the students at this you know,
really chic school led super glamorous lives. Limousines would take
them to museums. There would be famous and important visitors
in the school all the time, and they were fed

(13:33):
lavish meals cooked by French chefs. Yeah, they got to
go to the louver all the time as a group
and think a cute little outfits made for them. But
unfortunately World War One was looming and most of the
children that had homes that were outside of Paris were
sent back to them. And also was among those kids
that that ended up leaving the school. Yeah. Shortly after

(13:54):
the assassination of Archduke Frances Ferdinand in nineteen fourteen, Mr
Kettle's Socialists School, which is where Elsa had returned after
her advance adventure in France, had to shut down. And
Elsa was twelve at this time, and the legal age
at which children were allowed to leave school was fourteen,
so there had to be some alternate arrangements for education. Yeah,

(14:15):
and to keep her education going, they kind of worked
out another interesting deal. They are always interesting deals, it seems.
In her family's story. Um Elsa ended up going to
a co ed boarding school at King's Langley in Berkshire,
and she earned her room and board there by teaching
dance classes two to three times a week, because even
though she's only twelve at this point, she had spent

(14:36):
time studying under Isadore Duncan's she had this clout that
they were able to kind of trade and say no, no,
she will teach your students the same thing she learned. Um.
But she says, of this arrangement, I knew I was
quite unfit to learn or teach. And after her time
being in France and you know, being well fed and
culturally stimulated, and you know, meeting interesting people at this

(14:59):
dance school, she really found it quite unpleasant to return
uh to London and and to you know, kind of
have what she felt was a very mundane life. She
found it unpleasant and she did not stay in the
assignment very long. So instead she eventually found work as
an assistant to one of Raymond Duncan's adult pupils named
Rose Benton, and she helped her out on this lecture

(15:21):
tour about Greek history and um Greek esthetics. But once
the tour fizzled out, because those things do not last forever,
Elsa continued to kind of trade in teaching engagements. So
as the war was going on, she was basically earning
her keep by teaching. Since the Lancester Sullivan household had
always been political, it's really not surprising that Elsa's brother, Waldo,

(15:45):
became a conscientious objector when his time was due for
conscription into the army. After a tribunal questioning where Waldo
was asked this long series of questions about his political
and moral views, he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs Prison
for a year in lieu of service. As the war
went on, he was recommitted to prison several times. And

(16:05):
and Else's account of this time, she says, I was
sure that Waldo's being a CEO was due to Betty's influence.
I was too young and confused to know what to think. Uh.
And after the war, Waldo was released and he came
home to live with the family, and like Elsa, he
worked on a wide range of jobs to make ends meet,
although he eventually settled into a career as a puppeteer or,

(16:27):
which their mother also worked in as well as one
of her many many things. And just as a brief aside,
it's kind of interesting, uh, Elsa, having grown up in
this very political household, was kind of not all that political. Again,
it's probably part of her rebellious spirit, but it was
like she kind of recognized that there were a lot
of mack nations going on on the world stage, but

(16:49):
she also recognized that she didn't always grasp what it
all was. And I think she also didn't want to
give it a level of import because she didn't want
to give in to her parents and make them think
that she was somehow supporting their ideals because she was
rebellious girl. Yeah, in her early adulthood, she was creatively,
very busy. In nineteen twenties she made her dance hall

(17:10):
debut as an Egyptian dancer, and she would perform in
theatrical shows and cabarets for her entire life. Also in
nineteen twenties, she co founded the Children's Theater in London,
and she worked there as a teacher for several years.
And the way it was set up was that the
lessons were given to children for free, so any child
could come and take lessons uh and to make money,

(17:31):
the theater would put on performances that would fund the
school's um functions. Performances would include anything from like songs.
Sometimes they would do short plays, sometimes full length plays,
they would do dances, they would do adaptations of fairy
tales and novels and both play and dance form, and
these productions actually became really successful. Also worked very hard,

(17:53):
and her students also worked very hard, and they put
on really pretty impressive shows, considering that they were working
on a shoestring budget, but they became successful to the
point that they were actually making money, and that was
a problem. H The London City Council called Elsa in
for questioning and they actually accused her of exploiting the
children under the Child Slave Act because they were now

(18:13):
actually turning a profit from these. The council forbade the
last performance of the show that was running at the time,
but Elsa arranged for the show to go on in
the school's practice room instead of the theater, and with
slips inserted into the program notifying the audience that all
proceeds for the show we're going to the Save the
Children Fund. After that, though, the theater floundered and it

(18:36):
was eventually shut down. But at this point Elsa had
already moved on to another project. Yeah, she was a
very busy lady. She and her partner at the time,
Harold Scott had had this vision for a nightclub where
they could perform midnight plays, and in that vision manifested
as a club called the Cave of Harmony. And this
actually becomes a very important kind of touchstone of her

(19:00):
early creative life. And in its early stages, the nightclub
was in a space that they were actually renting by
the hour, So they would move into this space late
at night, rent it for a few hours, put on
their plays, and then leave. But before long, because it
was becoming very successful, uh, they moved to a dedicated
space and there they continued to stage their cabaret acts

(19:22):
and plays, and Elsa even had aloft built into the
space so that she could sleep there on late nights
if she wanted. But she also kind of used it
as her own little, uh special getaway, and she wrote
of her little balcony that she had built in this
comfortable den, I felt independent and secure. I could see
down onto the dance floor through a small window, and

(19:42):
I could retire if I wanted to, and just listen
to the music and the general babble. To supplement her
income and make enough to eat and pay the rent,
during this time, Elsa did all kinds of other odd jobs.
So she sat for painters and sculptors, and she took
on housekeeping work, and she also took on a series
of jobs that technically we're acting, but weren't maybe entirely

(20:05):
on up and up, helping out couples who wanted to
get a divorce. Yeah, so this is kind of a
weird concept to me. I think it's awesome. Uh, it's interesting. Uh,
And I'll tell you why I think it's weird once
we kind of explain what it is. So, in instances
where a wife had been unfaithful, most husbands just sort

(20:25):
of culturally at the time, would try to do the
right thing, and they wouldn't even though their wife had
perhaps wronged them, would not want her to be branded
a so called scarlet woman in a divorce, and so
they would arrange to stage these affairs of their own,
but often they weren't actual affairs, so also would sometimes
be contracted through a lawyer, and she would be hired

(20:48):
to meet with these men in a hotel and then
to appear in the morning so that the maid would
see them alongside this gentleman in her pajamas, and this
enabled the maid to testify that the husband had been
seen in a hotel with a woman that was not
his wife, and this would cause the divorces to move
along very quickly at that point rather than dragging on,

(21:08):
because a man being unfaithful was more common and viewed
as a pretty open and shut case in divorce proceedings,
whereas a woman being unfaithful they would drag on and
get very messy. Yeah. Well, and the man was less
likely to be stigmatized forever a woman, right, although the
woman would also be stigma stigmatized, you know, had she

(21:31):
been revealed as an adulterer. So basically they stigma for everyone. Yeah.
If if the woman in the couple had been the
ones that committ adultery, her stigma would have been much
much greater than if the finding was on that of
the man. Yeah. Uh. And Lanchester is really clear in
her autobiography that this was in no way a sexual arrangement.

(21:53):
She's it's interesting because she is such a free spirit,
but there is a sort of um she has a
sense of propriety in her right dating where she will
be very open about some of her behaviors. But it's
written in a sort of prim way, which is interesting.
But she is really very adamant that no, no, this
was an acting job. To me, I was not doing
anything sexual. This wasn't um in any way untoward romantically.

(22:16):
But she does acknowledge that it's kind of outside the
realm of pure legality, like that she knows it's not
entirely right, and she didn't do it a lot because
she had some misgivings about it not being entirely legal.
But it's kind of a fascinating job for a girl
to have. Yeah, and you can go down a long
rabbit hole about what is more ethical in the situation. Yeah,
And just for clarity for her, it was not stigmatizing

(22:38):
because normally in such a case, even when it went
to court, the mistress was not called to appear, so
she could be she could remain anonymous as long as
the maid could say no, I saw a woman that
was not his wife, and usually the maids seemed to
be in hon it. I'm imagining divorce hotel, and that's
like it always is, going down in the same hotel

(22:58):
with the same maid and same mistress, and let's make
a reality show out of that. They're actually still laws
on the books, and a lot of places that make
divorce proceedings go differently when there is a documented adultery happening.
So I kind of wonder anyone ever still does something
like this. Sure, I'm confident that's do you have the

(23:19):
adultery Hotel reality shop? That's okay, don't read that, Okay. So,
through the Cave of Harmony, Elsa was just making connections
with movers and shakers in the theater community. She was
making a name for herself as an actress. As her
acting career started to take off, her entrepreneurial work at
the Cave started to become less and less of a

(23:41):
part of her life. And we're going to talk about
the next big part of her life in our next episode. Yeah. Uh,
it's because it launches really and becomes a lot more
about acting in her career. Uh, in the public eye then,
and um, yeah, we'll talk about all of that on
the follow up episode. Yes, do you have some listener

(24:01):
mail for us? Absolutely? I do. This particular piece of
mail is from our listener Alex, and he says, Hi,
Ali and Tracy, I've been saving up some things to
write about for a while now. Ever since I started
listening to the podcast, I finally had to write because
of your podcast on Filo Farnsworth. The first thing I
had to share with you was the source of inspiration
the other source of inspiration for the character of Professor

(24:22):
Farnsworth and Futurama, namely Professor Hubert Dreyfuss. I took a
class by him when I was in college and heard
from others that Farnsworth's character was based on him. After
one lecture, I was convinced he looks and even speaks
a lot like the character. Okay, to me, that is
so charming. I want to enroll in that school and
just take a class, especially now that Futurama is over.

(24:42):
Later in the podcast, though, I was surprised to hear
about the location of Filo Farnsworth San Francisco Lab. I
work at the Exploratory um on Pure fifteen in San Francisco,
which sounds so fun to me, just three blocks away
from the old lab. I'll have to check it out
now that I know. Incidentally, I listened to your podcast
every day at work. I work in the biology lab
taking care of the living things that we use for

(25:03):
our many living systems exhibit, and I spend a great
deal of time working on things by myself, so it's
really nice to have a podcast to listen to every day.
He also writes back a couple other podcasts, but I
wanted to focus on the Farmsworth one because that's really
fun to find out that you live so close to
something that is so cool and fun. Uh. And I
bet there's there's still a plaque there as far as
I know, so Alex, if you go check it out,

(25:24):
take a picture of the plaque. I think I've seen pictures,
but it's better when it comes from a listener. It
is um. If you would like to write to us
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(25:45):
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(26:05):
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(26:26):
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