:46:39
Déjeuner sur le crypte. The drunken
doctor blows smoke in the face of death,
:46:44
just as Henry tossed dirt
at the grim reaper in the original film.
:46:48
Franz Waxman titled this cue
"Danse Macabre",
:46:51
using organ and padded xylophone
to mock the skeletal décor
:46:54
in three-quarter time.
:46:56
This is the role of a lifetime
for Ernest Thesiger.
:46:59
A true eccentric, his performance
draws much from his private persona.
:47:03
Valerie Hobson remembered him as
a terribly sweet man with a good heart.
:47:07
"I don't think he had a very strong
male approach to things,"
:47:11
she told historian Greg Mank.
:47:13
"He was one of the very first people
to make, almost, camp fun."
:47:16
"He did it as a serious thing, you know."
:47:19
"Sort of the arched eyebrow
and arched nostril."
:47:23
Elsa Lanchester recalled him as weird,
strange and acid-tongued.
:47:28
Thesiger opened in the play
A Sleeping Clergyman
:47:31
at the Theatre Guild, New York,
on October 8th, 1934.
:47:34
When it closed after 40 performances,
he was able to train west
:47:38
to join the cast of Bride
after the New Year.
:47:41
Reading Pretorius's dialogue, it is easy to
hear Claude Rains' brushed-velvet tones
:47:46
and imagine the cynical,
twinkling bemusement
:47:48
with which he played
Captain Renault in Casablanca.
:47:51
That same dialogue plays very differently
when enunciated by the man who,
:47:55
in The Old Dark House,
spoke the phrase "Have a potato"
:47:59
and endowed it with
seven levels of malevolence.