:21:01
Unlike Jacoby, who had
Claudin slashed with a knife,
:21:05
Taylor's Claudin was disfigured
when acid is tossed in his face.
:21:10
Taylor also expanded
Koster's idea of a family.
:21:13
Claudin's pursuit of music
would be "like a drug to him",
:21:16
and lead him to abandon his wife
and child to starve in a Paris garret,
:21:20
causing the wife to die of a broken heart.
:21:23
Her sister, having told the child that
both parents were dead, raises Christine.
:21:28
When Raoul learns this, he vows Christine
will never learn of the family's secret.
:21:33
In an odd plot twist,
:21:35
Claudin plans to flee to America
with Christine to further her career.
:21:39
As the police close in on the catacombs,
:21:41
Raoul gives Claudin
a pistol to commit suicide with.
:21:45
"He was right about America"
Raoul tells Christine.
:21:49
"For you, there is the New York Opera."
:21:50
"And for me, there is a man named
Edison I might work for."
:21:55
Taylor was a specialist in mysteries,
writing scores of Dick Tracy,
:21:58
Crime Doctor and Ellery Queen pictures.
:22:01
He wrote several Universal B horrors,
including Son of Dracula,
:22:04
and for Arthur Lubin, Black Friday
and The Spider Woman Strikes Back.
:22:08
He had just written Ghost of Frankenstein
:22:11
in the same period
in which he started work on Phantom.
:22:15
Jacoby's original outline
spent its energy immediately
:22:18
by having the phantom cut the chandelier
loose in the opening scenes.
:22:22
In flashbacks, the phantom was revealed
to be impoverished composer Claudin,
:22:27
whose only child, Christine, was raised
by his dead wife's family as their own.
:22:32
A chance encounter between Claudin
and the girl arouses her musicality,
:22:36
and she embarks on an operatic career
over family objections.
:22:40
Despite encouragement from Franz Liszt,
Claudin's mental stability is precarious.
:22:45
Understandably so, if,
as Jacoby insisted, it is 1873
:22:49
and he is composing in the styles
of both Stravinsky and Shostakovich.
:22:53
In his rented room, he envisions himself
receiving the adulation of the multitudes,
:22:58
but he receives mocking laughter from
a prostitute watching through a window.