: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.
:23:02
As the mad Claudin throttles the harlot,
she slashes his face with a butcher knife.
:23:08
The Breen Office
was on the outlook for sex,
:23:10
and the final shooting script contained
a line on page 68 where Jeanne says
:23:15
"That was when I told him
I didn't care for etchings after nightfall."
:23:20
They found this unacceptable
as sexually suggestive,
:23:23
and wanted it to be changed or omitted.
:23:25
Well, that line was,
but this setup in Monsieur Pleyel's office
:23:28
where Miles Mander,
as the licentious publisher,
:23:31
is flirting after dark with
his secretary and his etchings -
:23:35
fool, he's showing her etchings
and how they're done -
:23:38
this remained in.
:23:41
Pleyel's playmate is Renee Carson,
a French-born American girl,
:23:45
raised in a convent
and European-educated.
:23:47
She made a very nice career in France
playing American girls.
:23:51
In 1939, she and her family came to
America to escape the war in Europe.
:23:56
Miles Mander was a reliable character
actor in American films of the 1940s.