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With apologies to Bon Jovi, this week’s MovieFanFare poll celebrates “November Rains.” Today is the anniversary of British-born actor Claude Rains’ birth. A four-time Academy Award nominee, William Claude Rains was born in London in 1889, one of 12 children (only four of whom survived past infancy). The son of a stage actor, he overcame an impoverished family life and a speech impediment to begin his own thespian career at age 10.
By his early 20s Rains was landing key roles in England and in 1912 emigrated to America to pursue work on Broadway. Returning home to enlist when World War I broke out, he lost most of the sight in his right eye from a gas attack on the French battlefield. After the war Claude resumed his work on the London and New York stage during the next decade, making his film debut in a silent British drama, 1920’s Build Thy House.
In 1932 Rains got screen tests with two U.S. film studios. While RKO passed on signing him for A Bill of Divorcement, his distinctive voice won him a contract with Universal and the lead role in James Whale’s 1933 adaptation of the H.G. Wells thriller The Invisible Man. Even though he was only onscreen in the film’s final seconds, Rains’ sinister voicework made him a critical favorite, but audience acceptance would come after Warner Bros. signed him to a long-term contract in 1935. In the late ’30s he began a steady portrayal of historical screen villains: Marquis Don Luis in Anthony Adverse (1936); the Earl of Herford in The Prince and the Pauper (1937); Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); Emperor Louis Napoleon III in Juarez (1939); and Don José Álvarez de Córdoba in The Sea Hawk (1940). Rains earned his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination as corrupt Senator Paine in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
The 1940s opened with Rains played against type as the titular angelic advisor in 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and that same year as Larry Talbot’s (Lon Chaney, Jr.) father in The Wolf Man. Along with supporting roles in King’s Row and Now, Voyager, 1942 offered the actor the role for which he’s probably best remembered: “poor corrupt” French police prefect Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, which got him a second Oscar nom. He and co-star Humphrey Bogart would continue their “beautiful friendship” two years later in Passage to Marseille. Other key ’40s films included Phantom of the Opera (1943); Mr. Skeffington (1944); Caesar and Cleopatra (1945); Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946); and Angel on My Shoulder (also ’46). Mr. Skeffington and Notorious each won him Oscar nominations, but the gold statue eluded him.
Rains returned to Broadway in 1951 and won a Best Actor Tony for his performance as Rubashov in the anti-Communist drama Darkness at Noon. His cinema work place slowed down during the ’50s and ’60s, with such films as The White Tower, This Earth Is Mine, and (as Professor Challenger) The Lost World standing out. He played the British official Mr. Dryden in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, and his final screen appearance came as Herod the Great in the 1965 Gospel epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. Spending his final days in rural New Hampshire, Rains died from an abdominal hemorrhage linked to cirrhosis of the liver in 1967. He was 77 years old.
Now we’d like to hear which of Claude Rains’ movie roles is your favorite. We’ve had to keep the list down to a reasonable 20 titles, so if your top pick didn’t make the cut, plase let us know in the comments.