Line #32 Creator/ClaudeRains


1	[[quoteright:315:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/claude_rains.jpeg]]
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3	->''"I am shocked -- ''shocked'' -- to find that gambling is going on in here!"''
4	-->-- '''Louis Renault''' (Claude Rains), ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' [[note]]A [[Memes/TVTropes much-loved]] piece of HypocriticalHumour.[[/note]]
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6	%% One quote is sufficient. Please place additional entries on the quotes tab.
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8	William Claude Rains (10 November 1889 – 30 May 1967) was an English actor of stage and screen, and one of the most significant actors in the UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood.
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10	Born in the Camberwell section of London, he overcame the handicaps of a [[UsefulNotes/BritishAccents Cockney accent]] ''and'' a [[SpeechImpediment lisp]] to become a notable stage actor under the tutelage of the famous actor-manager, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who helped him to pay for elocution lessons. That beautiful voice and flawless diction he had acquired landed him his [[StarMakingRole breakout role]] as the title character of the 1933 film of ''[[Film/TheInvisibleMan1933 The Invisible Man]]'' -- a film in which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin his face does not appear]] until the closing scene. This part is referenced in a line from the opening number of ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'', and in ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', where another [[{{Invisibility}} invisible man]] is named for him.
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12	A series of more or less macabre parts followed, such as the murderer John Jasper in the first sound film adaptation of Creator/CharlesDickens' ''Literature/TheMysteryOfEdwinDrood''. Rains's cool, [[DeadpanSnarker sardonic]] delivery made him a natural for [[HollywoodHistory costume]] [[WickedCultured villainy]], and he appeared as the treacherous [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade Earl of Hereford]] in the Warner Brothers’ adaptation of Creator/MarkTwain’s ''The Prince and the Pauper'', in which rising Warners star Creator/ErrolFlynn also appeared as Sir Miles Hendon. Rains and Flynn would appear together again to even better effect in ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRobinHood''; Rains would credit ''Hood'' director Creator/MichaelCurtiz with teaching him to moderate his [[LargeHam theatrical acting style]] for films.
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14	Later the same year Rains would play the musician Adam Lemp, father of the eponymous ''[[ChickFlick Four Daughters]]'' ― ironically, this now largely forgotten film was one of his most popular, and spawned two sequels and an almost exact copy-cat variant. As Senator Paine, the corrupt “[[IronicNickname Silver Knight]]” in Creator/FrankCapra’s ''Film/MrSmithGoesToWashington'', Rains was nominated for his first Best Supporting Actor [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]]. Three years later he would earn a second nomination for the part of raffish ''[[LesCollaborateurs collaborateur]]'' Louis Renault in Curtiz’s ''Film/{{Casablanca}}''; his delivery of the Epstein brothers’ sparkling dialogue immortalized such lines as “Round up the usual suspects.” He also gets a shocking -- shocking! -- scene of HypocriticalHumour, and the film famously ends with his and Creator/HumphreyBogart's [[HeterosexualLifePartners beautiful friendship]]. 1944 brought him his third [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]] nomination, as the [[HenpeckedHusband long-suffering husband]] of Creator/BetteDavis’s [[RichBitch shrewish society matron]] in ''Mr. Skeffington.''
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16	In 1945, Rains was featured in the most expensive British film that had been made up to that time, playing opposite Vivien Leigh in Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw’s ''Caesar and Cleopatra'' under the supervision of Shaw himself; the film was, alas! a notorious bomb. The next year, a better form of ''Film/{{Notorious\|1946}}'' under the direction of Creator/AlfredHitchcock brought Rains his fourth and last [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]] nomination for the difficult part of a [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain sympathetic]] post-war [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] conspirator. In 1951, he made a successful return to the stage, starring on Broadway in writer-director Sidney Kingsley's adaptation of Arthur Koestler's novel ''Literature/DarknessAtNoon.'' The role of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik imprisoned by the dictatorship he helped to create, won Rains the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play.
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18	In 1957 Rains [[QuestionableCasting sang and danced]] to the [[PublicDomainSoundtrack music of Edvard Grieg (!)]] in a SoBadItsGood TV musical adaptation of Robert Browning’s poem, ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin''. He made several appearances on television anthology series in that and the following decade, notably on ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents''. Rains’s last film appearance was as King Herod in Creator/GeorgeStevens’ 1965 [[Literature/TheBible Biblical]] epic, ''Film/TheGreatestStoryEverTold''.
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20	Rains was married six times and had one child (his daughter Jennifer, who worked as an actress under the name Jessica Rains in the '70s and '80s). In the 1940s and '50s he owned a 380-acre farm in eastern Pennsylvania, which he [[CallToAgriculture lived on and farmed when he wasn't busy acting]]. A [[TheAlcoholic chronic drinker]], Rains developed cirrhosis of the liver and died of abdominal bleeding at the age of 77.
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22	----
23	!!Some of his notable film roles include:
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25	* ''Film/{{The Invisible Man\|1933}}'' (1933) as Jack Griffin, the title character
26	* ''Literature/TheMysteryOfEdwinDrood'' (1935) as John Jasper
27	* ''Film/AnthonyAdverse'' (1936) as Don Luis
28	* ''Literature/ThePrinceAndThePauper'' (1937) as Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford
29	* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRobinHood'' (1938) as Prince John
30	* ''Film/FourDaughters'' (1938) as Adam Lemp (a role he would play three more times)
31	* ''Film/GoldIsWhereYouFindIt'' (1938) as Chris Ferris
32	* ''Film/{{Juarez}}'' (1939) as Emperor Napoleon III
33	* ''Film/MrSmithGoesToWashington'' (1939) as Senator Joseph Harrison Paine
34	* ''Film/SonsOfLiberty'' (1939) as Haym Salomon
35	* ''Film/TheyMadeMeACriminal'' (1939) as Det. Monty Phelan
36	* ''Film/TheSeaHawk'' (1940) as Don José Alvarez de Cordoba
37	* ''Film/HereComesMrJordan'' (1941) as Mr. Jordan
38	* ''Film/{{The Wolf Man\|1941}}'' (1941) as Sir John Talbot
39	* ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' (1942) Captain Louis Renault
40	* ''Film/KingsRow'' (1942) as Dr. Alexander Tower
41	* ''Film/{{Moontide}}'' (1942) as Nutsy
42	* ''Film/NowVoyager'' (1942) as Dr. Jaquith
43	* ''Film/{{Phantom of the Opera\|1943}}'' (1943) as Erique Claudin, the Phantom
44	* ''Film/PassageToMarseille'' (1944) as Captain Freycinet
45	* ''Film/MrSkeffington'' (1944) as Job Skeffington
46	* ''Film/CaesarAndCleopatra'' (1945) as UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar
47	* ''Film/{{Notorious\|1946}}'' (1945) as Alexander Sebastian
48	* ''Film/AngelOnMyShoulder'' (1946) as Nick, TheDevil
49	* ''Film/{{Deception\|1946}}'' (1946) as Alexander Hollenius
50	* ''Film/TheUnsuspected'' (1947) as Victor
51	* ''Film/ThePassionateFriends'' (1949) as Howard Justin
52	* ''Literature/ThePiedPiperOfHamelin'' (1957) as the Mayor (TV)
53	* ''Literature/{{The Lost World\|1912}}'' (1960) as Professor Challenger
54	* ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'' (1962) as Mr. Dryden
55	* ''Film/TheGreatestStoryEverTold'' (1965) as Herod the Great

Context Creator / ClaudeRains