Rains was born William Claude Rains in Camberwell, London on November 10, 1889. He grew up, according to his daughter, with "a very serious cockney accent and a speech impediment".
His acting talents were recognised by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, founder of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Tree paid for the elocution lessons Rains needed in order to succeed as an actor. Later, Rains taught at the institution, teaching John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, among others.
Rains served in the First World War in the London Scottish Regiment, with fellow actors Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and Herbert Marshall. Rains was involved in a gas attack that left him nearly blind in one eye for the rest of his life. However, the war did aid his social advancement and, by its end, he had risen from the rank of Private to Captain.
Rains began his career in the London theatre, having a success in the title role of John Drinkwater's play Ulysses S. Grant, the follow-up to the playwright's major hit Abraham Lincoln, and traveled to Broadway in the late 1920s to act in leading roles in such plays as Shaw's The Apple Cart and in the dramatizations of The Constant Nymph, and Pearl S. Buck's novel The Good Earth, as a Chinese farmer.
Rains came relatively late to film acting and his first screen test was a failure, but his distinctive voice won him the title role in James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) when someone accidentally overheard his screen test being played in the next room. Rains later credited director Michael Curtiz with teaching him the more understated requirements of film acting, or "what not to do in front of a camera".
Claude Rains in Notorious (1946)
Following The Invisible Man, Universal Studios tried to typecast him in horror films, but he broke free, starting with the role of Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), then with his Academy Award-nominated performance as the conflicted corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and followed with probably his most famous role, the flexible French police Captain Renault in Casablanca (1942). In 1943, Rains played the title character in Universal's full-color remake of Phantom of the Opera. Bette Davis named him her favorite co-star, and they made four films together, including Mr. Skeffington and Now, Voyager. Rains became the first actor to receive a million dollar salary, playing Julius Caesar in Gabriel Pascal's lavish and unsuccessful version of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), made in Britain. In 1946, he played a refugee Nazi agent opposite Cary Grant and Casablanca co-star Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. In 1949, he appeared in David Lean's The Passionate Friends.
His only singing and dancing role was in a television musical version of Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with Van Johnson as the Piper. This 1957 NBC color special, shown as a film rather than a live or videotaped program, was highly successful with the public. Sold into syndication after its first telecast, it was repeated annually by many local TV stations.
Rains remained a popular character actor in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing in many films. Two of his well-known later screen roles were as Dryden, a cynical British diplomat in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and King Herod in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). The latter was his final film role.
Rains made several audio recordings, narrating a few Bible stories for children on Capitol Records, and reciting Richard Strauss's setting for narrator and piano accompaniment of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Enoch Arden, with the piano solos played by Glenn Gould. This recording was made by Columbia Masterworks Records.
Rains became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. He married six times, the first five of which ended in divorce: Isabel Jeans (1913-1915); Marie Hemingway (1920, for less than a year); Beatriz Thomas (1924 pril 8, 1935); Frances Propper (April 9, 19351956); and to classic pianist Agi Jambor (November 4, 19591960). He married Rosemary Clark Schrode in 1960, and stayed with her until her death on December 31, 1964. His only child, Jessica Rains, was born to him and Propper on January 24, 1938.
He acquired the 380 acre Stock Grange Farm in West Bradford Township, Pennsylvania just outside West Chester in 1941, and spent much of his time between takes reading up on agricultural techniques. He eventually sold the farm when his marriage to Propper ended in 1956.
Rains died from an abdominal hemorrhage in Laconia, New Hampshire on May 30, 1967 at the age of 77. He is interred in the Red Hill Cemetery, Moultonborough, New Hampshire.
Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, a biography by David J. Skal and Rains' daughter Jessica Rains, was published in 2008.
In 1951, Rains won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for Darkness at Noon. He was also nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Casablanca (1942), Mr. Skeffington (1944), and Notorious (1946).
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard.
Dr. Jack Griffin/The Invisible Man
Gloria Stuart, Henry Travers, Una O'Connor
Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head
Lionel Atwill, Joan Bennett
Louis Gasnier, Charles Barton
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Douglass Montgomery, Heather Angel, David Manners
Marion Davies, Dick Powell, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton
Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Gale Sondergaard
Kay Francis, Ian Hunter
The Prince and the Pauper
Errol Flynn, Billy and Bobby Mauch
Dist. Atty. Andrew J. "Andy" Griffin
Gloria Dickson, Lana Turner
Fay Bainter, Jackie Cooper, Bonita Granville, Henry O'Neill, Kay Johnson
Gold is Where You Find It
Colonel Christopher "Chris" Ferris
George Brent, Olivia de Havilland, Tim Holt
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone
Rosemary, Lola, and Priscilla Lane, Gale Page, John Garfield
They Made Me a Criminal
John Garfield, Gloria Dickson, May Robson
Emperor Louis Napoleon III
Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, John Garfield
Rosemary, Lola, and Priscilla Lane, Gale Page, John Garfield
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Sen. Joseph Harrison Paine
Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Thomas Mitchell
Nomination Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Eddie Albert, Rosemary, Lola, and Priscilla Lane, Gale Page, John Garfield
John Garfield, Anne Shirley
Don Jos Alvarez de Cordoba
Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Henry Daniell, Flora Robson, Alan Hale
Lady with Red Hair
Miriam Hopkins, Laura Hope Crews
Rosemary, Lola, and Priscilla Lane, Gale Page
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Edward Everett Horton
Lon Chaney, Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Patric Knowles, Ralph Bellamy, Warren William, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya
Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, Charles Coburn
Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell
Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Gladys Cooper
Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt, S.Z. Sakall, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson
Nomination Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Forever and a Day
Anna Neagle, Ray Milland, C. Aubrey Smith
Phantom of the Opera
Erique Claudin/The Phantom of the Opera
Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster
Humphrey Bogart, Michle Morgan, Philip Dorn, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Helmut Dantine
Bette Davis, Walter Abel, George Coulouris, Richard Waring
Nomination Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Jean Gabin, Richard Whorf, Allyn Joslyn, Ellen Drew
This Love of Ours
Vivien Leigh, Stewart Granger, Flora Robson
Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Louis Calhern
Nomination Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Angel on My Shoulder
Paul Muni, Anne Baxter
Bette Davis, Paul Henreid
Joan Caulfield, Audrey Totter, Constance Bennett, Hurd Hatfield
Ann Todd, Trevor Howard
Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre
Wanda Hendrix, Macdonald Carey
Glenn Ford, Alida Valli, Oskar Homolka, Cedric Hardwicke, Lloyd Bridges
Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Maureen O'Sullivan
Dana Andrews, Lloyd Bridges
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By
Marta Toren, Marius Goring
Ray Milland, Maureen O'Hara
This Earth Is Mine
Rock Hudson, Jean Simmons, Dorothy McGuire
Professor George Edward Challenger
Michael Rennie, Jill St. John, David Hedison, Fernando Lamas, Richard Haydn
Battle of the Worlds
Peter O'Toole, Alec Guiness, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy, Jose Ferrer
Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Joey Heatherton, Linda Evans
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Max von Sydow, plus many cameos
a b Harmetz p. 147.
Aljean Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of "Casablanca" (New York: Hyperion, 1992)
David J. Skal and Jessica Rains, Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice (University Press of Kentucky, 2008)
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Claude Rains
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Claude Rains
Claude Rains at the Internet Broadway Database
Performances listed in Theatre Archive University of Bristol
Claude Rains at the Internet Movie Database
Claude Rains at Allmovie
Claude Rains at the TCM Movie Database
Claude Rains at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
Claude Rains at Find a Grave
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
Jos Ferrer / Fredric March (1947) Henry Fonda / Paul Kelly / Basil Rathbone (1948) Rex Harrison (1949) Sidney Blackmer (1950) Claude Rains (1951) Jos Ferrer (1952) Tom Ewell (1953) David Wayne (1954) Alfred Lunt (1955) Paul Muni (1956) Fredric March (1957) Ralph Bellamy (1958) Jason Robards, Jr. (1959) Melvyn Douglas (1960) Zero Mostel (1961) Paul Scofield (1962) Arthur Hill (1963) Alec Guinness (1964) Walter Matthau (1965) Hal Holbrook (1966) Paul Rogers (1967) Martin Balsam (1968) James Earl Jones (1969) Fritz Weaver (1970) Brian Bedford (1971) Cliff Gorman (1972) Alan Bates (1973) Michael Moriarty (1974) John Kani / Winston Ntshona (1975)
Complete list: (19471975) (19762000) (2001resent) I am a professional writer from China Print Net, which contains a great deal of information about tire distributors , tubeless tires, welcome to visit!
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