Elsa Lanchester plays two parts in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and the credits only admit to one.
The film opens on a stormy night with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley indoors. Byron (Gavin Gordon) congratulates Mary on her “Frankenstein, a monster created from cadavers out of rifled graves,” and Mary goes on with the story. Mary is played by Lanchester. At the climax, the new Bride is unveiled, and she’s Lanchester too.
In the credits, Lanchester is billed as “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Opposite “The Monster’s Mate” there is only a question mark.
The real Mary had seen that joke before. In 1823 she went to see Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein in London and wrote to a friend that the playbill listed the creature only as “———— by Mr. T. Cooke.” Her verdict: “this nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good.”
Her novel has an unfinished bride of its own. The creature asks for a mate, Victor starts to build one, and then, “trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.” She is never finished. The 1935 film is not in the public domain. Mary’s novel is, and that story is free to tell.
Sources
- AFI Catalog, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), notes on the onscreen credits
- Library of Congress, National Film Registry essay, “Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein”
- Shelley-Godwin Archive, Frankenstein chronology (Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt, 9 Sept 1823)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 text), Vol. III (Project Gutenberg)
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