Elsa Lanchester

Her parents, James "Séamus" Sullivan (1872–1945) and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester (1871–1966), were Bohemians, and refused to marry in a religious or legal way as a rebellion against Edwardian era society.

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester (28 October 1902 – 26 December 1986) was a British actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.

Lanchester studied dance as a child and after the First World War began performing in theatre and cabaret, where she established her career over the following decade.

Her first film performance came in 1924 in the amateur production The Scarlet Woman, which was written by Evelyn Waugh who also appeared in two roles himself.

Lanchester made her film debut in The Scarlet Woman (1925) and in 1928 appeared in three silent shorts written for her by H. G. Wells and directed by Ivor Montagu: Blue Bottles, Daydreams and The Tonic.

Laughton made brief appearances in all of them.

She became sufficiently famous for Columbia to invite her into the recording studio to make 78 rpm discs of four of the numbers she sang in these revues, with piano arrangement and accompaniment by Kay Henderson: "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father" and "He Didn't Oughter" were on one disc (recorded in 1926) and "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin" and "The Ladies Bar" were on the other (recorded 1930).

She met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later.

Her cabaret and nightclub appearances led to more serious stage work and it was in a play by Arnold Bennett called Mr Prohack (1927) that Lanchester first met another member of the cast, Charles Laughton.

They were married two years later and continued to act together from time to time, both on stage and screen.

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".

She played his daughter in the stage play Payment Deferred (1931) though not in the subsequent Hollywood film version.

Lanchester appeared in several other early British talkies, including Potiphar's Wife (1931), a film starring Laurence Olivier.

She began playing small roles in British films, including the role of Anne of Cleves with Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).

Her success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles.

Lanchester and Laughton appeared in the Old Vic season of 1933–34, playing Shakespeare, Chekhov and Wilde, and in 1936 she was Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook in J. M. Barrie's play at the London Palladium.

She appeared opposite Laughton again as Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), with Laughton in the title role.

Her role as the title character in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) brought her recognition.

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), arguably the role with which she remains most identified.

She and Laughton returned to Britain to appear together again in Rembrandt (1936) and later in Vessel of Wrath (US: The Beachcomber. 1938).

They both returned to Hollywood, where he made The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) although Lanchester didn't appear in another film until Ladies in Retirement (1941).

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).

She played the lead in Passport to Destiny (1944) and supporting roles through the 1940s and 1950s.

She received top billing in Passport to Destiny (1944) for the only time in her Hollywood career.

Lanchester played supporting roles in The Spiral Staircase and The Razor's Edge (both 1946).

She appeared as the housekeeper in The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven playing the bishop, Loretta Young his wife, and Cary Grant an angel.

Lanchester played a comical role as an artist in the thriller, The Big Clock (1948), in which Laughton starred as a megalomaniacal press tycoon.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Come to the Stable (1949) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957), the last of twelve films in which she appeared with Laughton.

Their last stage appearance together was in Jane Arden's The Party (1958) at the New Theatre, London.

Following Laughton's death in 1962, Lanchester resumed her career with appearances in such Disney films as Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968).

Sullivan and Lanchester were both socialists, according to Lanchester's 1970 interview with Dick Cavett.

Elsa's older brother, Waldo Sullivan Lanchester, born five years earlier, was a puppeteer, with his own marionette company based in Malvern, Worcestershire, and later in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Elsa studied dance in Paris under Isadora Duncan, whom she disliked.

When the school was discontinued due to outbreak of World War I, she returned to the UK.

At that point (she was about twelve years of age) she began teaching dance in the Duncan style and gave classes to children in her South London district, through which she earned some welcome extra income for her household.

After World War I, Lanchester started the Children's Theatre, and later the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub at which modern plays and cabaret turns were performed.

She revived old Victorian songs and ballads, many of which she retained for her performances in another revue entitled Riverside Nights.

The horror film Willard (1971) was highly successful, and one of her last roles was in Murder by Death (1976).

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London.