Ironically Iconic

Lots of Brides, obscuring the Groom.  Photo by Tina McKenna

Even hardcore Bride of Frankenstein fans sometimes get the hair wrong. Understandable, probably, since the film was shot in black and white, but Elsa Lanchester’s hair was naturally a dark auburn, so the Bride of Frankenstein was a redhead, too.  Elsa’s own very unruly mop was shaped over a sort of wire cage, with the white streaks placed on each side. They’re not symmetrical—take a look, it’s a wonderful touch.
 
In her autobiography, ELSA LANCHESTER HERSELF, Elsa writes much too briefly about the making of the Bride.  I want to know everything! How James (Jimmy) Whale, an old friend from her youth in London approached her to play it; what she thought when she first saw herself in the Bride drag; if she ever thought it would be such a hit; and did she regret having done it?  I doubt that, somehow.  Elsa didn’t seem to regret much.
 
Apparently, the makeup process and the actual shoot were annoying and painful.  She didn’t like Boris Karloff much, and she REALLY didn’t like Jack Pierce, the makeup designer, who wouldn’t deign to respond to a pleasant “Good morning”. 
 
The Bride’s eyes were propped open so that Elsa couldn’t blink for long stretches of time, and the makeup you can now learn from YouTube tutorials took hours to complete. Never mind about being entirely wrapped in gauze—ever so carefully, by a nurse, she says. Elsa reminds us that she also played Mary Shelley, a much more enjoyable role than the Bride, and even got to be pretty for a change!  The Mary Shelley dress was gorgeous—yards and yards of lace.  But Elsa’s decolletage was a focus of the newly appointed Code censors, and some of her precious footage had to be scrapped due to the revealing bodice.
 
In her 1983 book, Elsa writes that if you want to shut her up, just ask her about that Bride movie. The book was released fifty years after the film, and by then she had been in SO many more films and plays and television shows and cabaret acts and radio broadcasts. . .  She had received a Golden Globe award for Witness for the Prosecution, had been nominated for two Best Supporting Oscars, and had starred in an all-but-forgotten TV series. How galling to be asked about four minutes of hissing like a Regents Park swan!
 
But horror fans are tenacious. We hang on to memories of our favorite monsters. Many of us grew up with the classic Universal films on Saturday morning television, a quieter, gentler world of monsters than the post-Night of the Living Dead gross-out and slasher flicks. By today’s standards, Universal monsters are almost quaint.  The Bride and her husband have been “costumed performers” at Universal Studios for ages, right there next to Spongebob and Scooby Doo and fake Marilyn Monroe, ready and waiting to pose for your vacation photo ops. 
 
I’m not sure how much The Bride of Frankenstein had been analyzed during Elsa’s lifetime.  Certainly not as deeply or as obsessively as it has been dissected now.  The gender issues, dark humor, subversive sexiness, sly references, extraordinary camera work and editing, even the soundtrack to the film have all been subjects of academic study.
 
There is a fascinating new book out called THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, essays about all of the above, edited by Emma Westwood.  It’s readable and relatable and so much fun, especially if you love the film as much as I do. I warn you, though, it’s on back order—mine took months to arrive!
 
My solo play about Elsa, ELSA LANCHESTER: SHE’S ALIVE!  takes place in 1962, twenty years or so before she published her autobiography.  "My” Elsa hasn’t made peace with the Bride of Frankenstein yet.  She’s older, matronly, dealing with how to stay creative, and how to come to terms with her longtime husband’s illness.  She’s probably not recognizable as the Bride anymore—more likely identified as the dotty aunts and nannies and nurses and maids that she played later.
 
But time does something funny for us, if we’re lucky.
 
On one of her last Johnny Carson show appearances, Elsa talks just a bit about being approached by children, who, prompted by parents, ask if she’s really the lady who played the Bride. She mentions having seen “Young Frankenstein”, the Mel Brooks film.  She even says that Madeline Kahn was awfully good in it. She says it’s nice to be remembered. And she says she has had the happiest life of anyone she knows.
 
The surprise of that last statement brought tears to my eyes. Elsa told me exactly why I have to continue with this piece. For HER, of course, for her indelible memory, her wonderful story, her oddball legacy, and for us women of an age, and, yes, for myself--when people don’t recognize younger me in old photos-- or even in my current face.  

Nobody, not even an icon, gets to choose how they’re remembered. Black hair or red?  Symmetrical or asymmetrical? Lanchester or Lancaster? 
 
I think we just keep doing what we’re doing. We work and live and love, in hope that we make a difference for the good, and remind ourselves to be grateful if anyone remembers us at all.

Elsa, once again with those white streaks in her hair, for an episode of "The Man from UNCLE"