: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.
:24:01
He had choice roles in two
Sherlock Holmes films at Universal:
:24:04
The Pearl of Death, where he played
Giles Conover, the keeper of the Creeper,
:24:08
and The Scarlet Claw, where he played
the frightened Judge Brisson.
:24:12
He also locked wits with Bela Lugosi
in Return of the Vampire at Columbia.
:24:17
Mander had a long and colourful career.
:24:19
Sometimes known or billed as
Lionel Mander or Luther Miles,
:24:23
he had been born in
Wolverhampton, England, in 1888,
:24:26
apparently to a very well-to-do family.
:24:34
That's Shakespearean actor Fritz Leiber
playing composer Franz Liszt,
:24:38
powdered wig, warts and all.
:24:41
Like Claude Rains, Miles Mander
had been gassed during World War I.
:24:45
He had been a New Zealand sheep farmer.
:24:47
He wrote novels, plays, newspaper
articles. He was a film exhibitor.
:24:52
He was a globetrotting playboy
who ran through a $350,000 inheritance
:24:57
racing automobiles and promoting
prizefights. He also was a screenwriter,