:01:02
with "The Monster's Mate"
played by... a question mark.
:01:45
The servant walking Lord Byron's hounds
is Irish actress Una O'Connor.
:01:49
We'll meet her again
in her principal role as Minnie,
:01:52
housekeeper of Castle Frankenstein.
:01:54
This whimsical doubling foreshadows
that of actress Elsa Lanchester.
:01:59
In an hour or so,
we'll meet Elsa as the monster's bride.
:02:03
Here she is as Mary Godwin.
:02:05
The cast list notwithstanding,
she's not Mary Shelley yet.
:02:10
The prologue was conceived by Whale
and first written by Edmund Pearson.
:02:14
Pearson created anachronisms, as he
put it, "for the benefit of the censors".
:02:18
In historical reality,
English poet Percy Shelley
:02:21
abandoned his wife Harriet
and their two children
:02:24
to live abroad with his lover,
Mary Godwin.
:02:26
Mary bore their love child, William.
:02:28
They wed only after
Harriet's convenient suicide,
:02:31
coincident with the publication
of Frankenstein in 1818 -
:02:35
its author also anonymous,
like the cipher in the Universal cast list.
:02:40
Originally, the prologue celebrated
the naughty behaviour of its principals.
:02:44
"We are all three infidels,
scoffers at marriage ties,
:02:47
believing only in living fully and freely"
stated Mary
:02:50
in dialogue cut from the prologue - along
with lingering views of Elsa's décolletage.
:02:55
When Mary refers to "such an audience",
:02:58
she doesn't mean her reading public,
but her circle of friends.