:15:01
and that they had a childhood recording
of Susanne singing the song.
:15:06
Not true, Susanna says.
"I never sang Clair de Lune in my life."
:15:13
Renewing their story option for Phantom
of the Opera on September 17, 1941,
:15:18
for the sum of $1,
Universal intended to cross-pollinate
:15:21
their two most lucrative genres: horror
movies and Deanna Durbin musicals.
:15:25
Phantom was to be produced by Joe
Pasternak and directed by Henry Koster
:15:29
as a showcase for Durbin. Lon Chaney Jr
wanted badly to reprise his father's role.
:15:35
But the studio wanted Charles Laughton.
His performance as Quasimodo
:15:39
in the recent RKO remake
of The Hunchback of Notre Dame
:15:42
made him a logical successor
as a character actor.
:15:44
He had also
just co-starred with Deanna Durbin,
:15:47
playing her surrogate father
in It Started with Eve.
:15:50
Following story conferences
and a reading of Leroux's novel,
:15:54
writer John Jacoby recommended
dispensing with the supernatural mood.
:15:58
He said "The phantom could be played
by any well-made-up extra."
:16:02
And he lobbied to dispense
with his congenital ugliness since
:16:05
"physical deformity", he claimed,
"inspires disgust, not pity".
:16:10
Little is known of Jacoby. Phantom is one
of only four screen credits he received -
:16:14
only top-billed once,
for Tarzan and the Amazons.
:16:17
His surviving treatment shows that he was
a very well-educated and well-read man.
:16:22
With such a pre-sold title, Jacoby knew
there were certain expectations to be met.
:16:27
"The audience" he said "wish to
recognise the old picture in the new one."
:16:30
He conceded that the unmasking and
the fall of the chandelier had to be kept.
:16:36
The script describes Marie the landlady
:16:39
as "an Amazonian Frenchwoman
with the face of a tyrant".
:16:42
She's played by Kate Lawson,
sometimes billed as Kate Drain Lawson,
:16:46
built like a brick outhouse and best
remembered as tactless Mama Delgado,
:16:51
who locks her daughter out
in Val Lewton's The Leopard Man.
:16:55
Kate specialised
in big, bullying prison matrons
:16:58
in pictures like City Streets, Remember
the Night, Torchy Plays with Dynamite