Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm from and I'm Tracy Wilson, and this is part
Speaker 1: two of our Elsa Lanchester podcast. We're leading up to
Speaker 1: her becoming a Brian of Frankenstein. So, just to recap,
Speaker 1: she grew up in very unconventional ways. It's kind of
Speaker 1: radical too. Yeah, parents who were in the early nine
Speaker 1: Dred's already socialists, vegetarian, anti vaccination atheists, which shaped her
Speaker 1: a lot. I think she grew up and became kind
Speaker 1: of an unconventional, free spirited woman. Uh. And she had
Speaker 1: started a theater in a nightclub in her early twenties. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then her acting career started to pick up, which
Speaker 1: is kind of where we are coming back in today.
Speaker 1: So in Elsa was cast in Arnold in its play Mr.
Speaker 1: Pro Hack, and on the first day of rehearsal, she
Speaker 1: met Charles Lawton, who would become her husband. My first impression,
Speaker 1: she writes in her book, was that he looked like
Speaker 1: a baker's assistant who just left a bakery and was
Speaker 1: all dusty with flower. Yeah. And at this point Lawton
Speaker 1: already had some notoriety as an actor, so he was
Speaker 1: kind of like the big name coming into this production
Speaker 1: they were working on. And Lanchester's description of their early
Speaker 1: relationship really describes one of friendship. Uh. They were kind
Speaker 1: of like two misfits finding each other. Lawton, despite uh
Speaker 1: being a popular actor, was very lonely. He was considered
Speaker 1: ugly um, so he didn't even though he was famous,
Speaker 1: he did not really have a lot of romantic prospects.
Speaker 1: And Elsa was to bohemian and independent for most men.
Speaker 1: She was, you know, a little She wasn't exactly a
Speaker 1: shrinking violet. She wasn't a demure coquette. She was a
Speaker 1: woman very much in charge of herself in her own
Speaker 1: life and it it made finding an equal partner for
Speaker 1: her a little bit tricky. And she always wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in in long term relationships either. Charles was from a
Speaker 1: hotel family. His parents had started out as servants basically
Speaker 1: and had built a fortune from nothing um and really
Speaker 1: kind of at this point had owned a lot of
Speaker 1: hotels and we're very well off. Elsa, ever, the independent,
Speaker 1: really struggled. She had some odd feelings. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of their friendship and spending time together at the idea
Speaker 1: of a man, for example, paying for her meals, but
Speaker 1: she kind of negotiated with herself and was able to
Speaker 1: kind of let go of that feeling because she knew
Speaker 1: that Charles wasn't struggling financially. The two of them went
Speaker 1: on long walks together, but it wasn't what you might
Speaker 1: think of as like a typical courtship walk. They would
Speaker 1: go on these really long walks out in the country,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they didn't even talk to each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for two you know, artistic twentysome things, you would think
Speaker 1: it would be a lot of outpouring of feelings and
Speaker 1: discussion and mind melding, and they really it was more
Speaker 1: of a very quiet companionship, particularly in the beginning and
Speaker 1: once they realized that they actually wanted to be together
Speaker 1: as a couple. Uh. One of the things and because
Speaker 1: her career was becoming more and more successful and she
Speaker 1: was in the public eye more, Charles wanted her to
Speaker 1: get a proper wardrobe, and this actually caused a fight
Speaker 1: between them. She had been largely making her own clothes
Speaker 1: at the time, but she was not an especially good seamstress,
Speaker 1: and so it showed that they were homemade and so
Speaker 1: he wanted her to visit this dressmaker that he knew
Speaker 1: of that was clearly out of her price range. Elsa
Speaker 1: still felt like she should be paying her own way
Speaker 1: in life, but he was insistent about it, and in
Speaker 1: her account, she says, Charles finally had to pay and
Speaker 1: resented my resentment about it. We never did quite recover
Speaker 1: from this financial tennis match about my wardrobe, nor have
Speaker 1: I yet recovered from his pressure that I follow his taste.
Speaker 1: His ideas and taste were very good, nevertheless, and no
Speaker 1: one could resist his enormous enjoyment of a few hours
Speaker 1: with the dressmakers. Uh So, And she wrote about this
Speaker 1: in the eighties, so decades later she was still kind
Speaker 1: of angry about sort of being put in this position
Speaker 1: where she felt like she had to depend on a
Speaker 1: man for something that she needed. I just think it's
Speaker 1: very interesting that she writes about this so much later,
Speaker 1: almost sixty years later, she was still kind of fuming
Speaker 1: about it. On so they talked about marriage. Charles wanted it,
Speaker 1: but Elsa didn't really care, and they were teetering on
Speaker 1: the brink of respectability. But at about this time Elsa
Speaker 1: became pregnant that they chose to terminate the pregnancy, and
Speaker 1: then after this they moved into a flat together, and
Speaker 1: then after that they then decided to get married. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She talks about a little bit this period in their
Speaker 1: lives where um, people treated them as though they were respectable,
Speaker 1: and they even would sometimes check into hotels as the
Speaker 1: Lawtons and people so I thought they were already married, uh,
Speaker 1: And how they kind of felt like they were living
Speaker 1: a lie and the pregnancy termination made them feel like
Speaker 1: we'd look respectable to people, but we know that we're
Speaker 1: really not, and it's all just a big fib and
Speaker 1: that probably played into their decision to actually marry uh.
Speaker 1: And Lanchester describes their wedding day as a French farce
Speaker 1: because both actors were popular enough at this point that
Speaker 1: their romance had been covered in the press. Uh. And
Speaker 1: though they had arranged to get married on a day
Speaker 1: that the registry office was normally closed so that they
Speaker 1: could avoid attention, when they were getting ready to leave,
Speaker 1: their street was so crowded with journalists that they actually
Speaker 1: had to like try laugh in grade kind of juggling
Speaker 1: of multiple taxis. They tried to go out at different times, uh,
Speaker 1: separately and then at the same time but in separate taxis,
Speaker 1: and eventually they shook off enough of the crowd that
Speaker 1: they were able to make their way to the ceremony,
Speaker 1: and they did make it to the registry and they
Speaker 1: were married, and that was on February tenth. Lawton's mother
Speaker 1: and his brother went on their honeymoon in Switzerland with them,
Speaker 1: which is very odd um And eventually though, Lawton and
Speaker 1: Lanchester moved on to Italy for a second stage of
Speaker 1: their honeymoon without additional family members. But apparently there was
Speaker 1: a good bit of teasing in their social circlet, like
Speaker 1: you took your family on your honeymoon with you. Two
Speaker 1: years into their marriage, Lawton was forced, due to a
Speaker 1: slightly confusing interaction with police, to tell Elsa that he was,
Speaker 1: in his words, homosexual. Partly her initial reaction to this
Speaker 1: was that that was fine with her, but the deception
Speaker 1: was pretty upsetting. She didn't have to have a problem
Speaker 1: with his sexual orientation, just with the fact that he'd
Speaker 1: been keeping it from her. She claimed to have no
Speaker 1: indication prior to this that he had any interested interest
Speaker 1: in men, and she hinted that she had tripped ne
Speaker 1: did this seemingly sudden change to a midlife crisis. She wrote,
Speaker 1: it was his change of life. Yeah. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: crazy police interaction. To give a little more flesh to that,
Speaker 1: they're the police stopped Lawton. They had a young man
Speaker 1: in custody and they thought he was trying to possibly
Speaker 1: extort money from Lawton. Uh. And it turned out it
Speaker 1: had been someone he had been sexually involved with, and
Speaker 1: there was a court case over the young man, and
Speaker 1: they had been concerned because they were being covered in
Speaker 1: the press. Uh. And somehow some money had changed hands
Speaker 1: between Lawton and this gentleman. And but the press and
Speaker 1: the judge and the matter handled it all very kindly,
Speaker 1: And I think they basically wrote it off as saying
Speaker 1: that Lawton was quote he had performed a misguided generosity
Speaker 1: in giving this person money. It was a very weird
Speaker 1: sort of you know, very um polite and proper handling
Speaker 1: of kind of a subject that I think none of
Speaker 1: the people involved at the time we're really ready to
Speaker 1: deal with. And I just it's I didn't want to
Speaker 1: gloss over it, uh completely and not mentioned kind of
Speaker 1: what it was. But it is a very hazy, weird
Speaker 1: account like what actually went down that actually surprises me
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, given the treatment of other
Speaker 1: gay people in UH in Britain at the time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in entertainment. And I think part of it is
Speaker 1: that Lawton was this sort of you know, one he
Speaker 1: was highly regarded as an actor and as an artist,
Speaker 1: and too he had this sort of sweet, bumbling way
Speaker 1: about him in some ways. And I think part of
Speaker 1: it is just that people didn't believe any of this
Speaker 1: could be the case. You know, it was kind of
Speaker 1: one of those maybe, but it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: believe that this man would be involved in anything untoward,
Speaker 1: and so I think that was part of why they
Speaker 1: kind of got a very kind and gentle treatment in
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So their marriage, though continued even though
Speaker 1: it had problems, problems even aside from Lawton's indiscretions, and
Speaker 1: Charles would allegedly sometimes bully Elsa if he was unhappy
Speaker 1: in his work UH, and she felt that when her
Speaker 1: career was thriving, that he would become jealous and would
Speaker 1: kind of be a little bit mean to her. That
Speaker 1: two of them moved to Hollywood not long after Lawton's
Speaker 1: play payment deferred clothes and he was signed to a
Speaker 1: picture alongside Gary Cooper and to Lula Bank had called
Speaker 1: The Devil and the Deep. They arrived in California before
Speaker 1: the movie's script was ready, so he was loaned to
Speaker 1: James Wales's project, The Old Dark House. And as Lawton's
Speaker 1: Hollywood career continued, Lanchester's acting career really sputtered. She wasn't
Speaker 1: working at the time and it was making her a
Speaker 1: little bit crazy. Uh. And she eventually went back home
Speaker 1: to London, and the years following this we're really filled
Speaker 1: with a lot of back and forth travel. They were
Speaker 1: both working and acting in both film and theater, and
Speaker 1: they would just go back to London, go back to California.
Speaker 1: It was a very sort of transient life they were living. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the early nineties MGM offered Lanchester a contract
Speaker 1: uh and it kicked off a very busy decade for her,
Speaker 1: and of course smack Dab in the middle of that
Speaker 1: decade was the role that made her an icon, which
Speaker 1: was The Bride. And now we will get into The
Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein. During a stint in London in which
Speaker 1: she really missed Charles and she felt overwhelmed at taking
Speaker 1: care of both their flat in the city and their
Speaker 1: country home, Elsa was offered the role of the bride
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein by the director himself. He had danced the
Speaker 1: Tango with the Cave of Harmony back in the day,
Speaker 1: and he and Elsa had remained friends throughout the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and James Whale, who directed Um Brandon, Frankensteini and Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: had also, you may recall, been working with Lawton on
Speaker 1: another picture in the early thirties, and whales first Frankenstein
Speaker 1: picture had really made Boris Karloff a household name, so
Speaker 1: getting to work on the follow up was exciting exciting
Speaker 1: for Elsa, but she was also really excited that the
Speaker 1: script actually had two parts for her. The bride, of course,
Speaker 1: but at the beginning of the picture she also plays
Speaker 1: Mary Shelley, and she describes that character as quote dressed
Speaker 1: extremely elegantly, sweeter than sugar, and some screenings the early
Speaker 1: part of the film is cut, so not everybody who's
Speaker 1: ever seen it has been treated to else's Mary Shelley performance.
Speaker 1: The idea that Wale was working with was that there
Speaker 1: must be something dark inside such a woman to make
Speaker 1: her be able to come up with a story like Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: so he wanted the same actress to appear both as
Speaker 1: the seemingly delicate Shelly and the seemingly monstrous bride. And
Speaker 1: while the role made her famous, if you watch the movie,
Speaker 1: she really doesn't have all that much screen time in it.
Speaker 1: All the same, the time that she did spend on
Speaker 1: set was grueling by all accounts, at least the segments
Speaker 1: where she was filming as the bride. The Mary Shelley
Speaker 1: Prologue only took a few days to film, and Elsa
Speaker 1: was just charmed by the costume that she wore for
Speaker 1: this segment, and it had this really intricate handworked and
Speaker 1: sequence embroidery. It was a long and white dress, but
Speaker 1: it had a delicate, refined hint at the look that
Speaker 1: the bride would have later on in the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh. I remember reading a um a film
Speaker 1: history account that described to the bride as being evocative
Speaker 1: of both a burial shroud and a wedding night nightgown.
Speaker 1: Just something I had not thought about that much until
Speaker 1: I read that, and I just loved it. So filming
Speaker 1: The Monster's Bride took ten a week to ten days
Speaker 1: to film, according to Lanchester's recollection. Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: a really uncomfortable affair for many, many reasons. Her hair
Speaker 1: was built up over this horsehair and wire cage that
Speaker 1: was anchored onto four arrow braid tracks tight around her head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so similar to the way hair extensions are put in.
Speaker 1: These braided tracks were run along the top of her
Speaker 1: scalp and then they would sow the cage into that
Speaker 1: for the day, uh, comb her hair up around it,
Speaker 1: and then add those two white streaks those are hair pieces.
Speaker 1: Her makeup would take three to four hours to do
Speaker 1: each day, and the makeup artist, Jack Pierce, who uh
Speaker 1: it was an interesting character himself, would work in silence.
Speaker 1: He would be slowly layering on putty and pigment, and
Speaker 1: he was intolerant of interruption or chatter. She wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to speak to him first, like he If he said
Speaker 1: good morning to her, she could say it back, but
Speaker 1: if he didn't greet her, she just had to sit
Speaker 1: in the chair and get the makeup app life and
Speaker 1: he wore a lab coat the whole time. He was
Speaker 1: almost like his own. Dr Frankenston, a studio nurse, would
Speaker 1: wind elsa into her bandages every day, and she drank
Speaker 1: as little fluid as possible while shooting because going to
Speaker 1: the bathroom was just such an or deal with all
Speaker 1: these bandages on. Yeah. She also mentioned in her book
Speaker 1: that she Emboris Karlof didn't like to go to the
Speaker 1: commissary during meal breaks because they didn't like being stared
Speaker 1: at because they both looked so completely bizarre in their
Speaker 1: costumes that Karloff, who didn't like to miss meals, apparently
Speaker 1: would wear like a cheese cloth veil and go down
Speaker 1: to the commissary and like lift the veil to pop
Speaker 1: food in. That seems weirder than showing up in your makeup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when you think about what that makeup looked like,
Speaker 1: and it was in the nineteen thirties when backlots were
Speaker 1: probably more filled with people trying to look pretty and cute, Uh,
Speaker 1: you could see her, it would be weird. But the
Speaker 1: shroud does, Like having a shroudy cheese cloth of ale
Speaker 1: while you eat your meals does seem odd as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there's no winning in that
Speaker 1: point in the shot where the bandages come off from
Speaker 1: her eyes and they pop open as she looks around.
Speaker 1: She wasn't supposed to blink, so she'd have to open
Speaker 1: her eyes as wide as she possibly could and and
Speaker 1: keep them open, which really caused her a lot of
Speaker 1: pain as the day war on. Yeah, each day of shooting.
Speaker 1: By the end of it, she was really in a
Speaker 1: lot of pain. Uh. And then all the screaming that
Speaker 1: she did throughout uh, because it's pretty much what she
Speaker 1: does as the bride really took such a toll on
Speaker 1: her throat that she was left unable to speak for
Speaker 1: several days after the shoot, and she was even prescribed
Speaker 1: coding for the pain because it had really ravaged her
Speaker 1: throat quite badly. So all of these tribulations aside as
Speaker 1: often happens with really grueling movie set stories. She spoke
Speaker 1: very fondly ever time on the set with Wale, and
Speaker 1: for those two weeks of filming, she became just a
Speaker 1: really indelible part of the cinema's history. Yeah. And as
Speaker 1: an aside, I love when people first see Brida Frankenstein
Speaker 1: and they have that charming revelation that it's actually somewhat
Speaker 1: of a comedy. I don't know if you've ever sat
Speaker 1: through it in a theater, but you have these moments.
Speaker 1: There's a few characters, particularly at the beginning, that are
Speaker 1: played very broadly and kind of for laughs, and it's
Speaker 1: fun to kind of look around and watch people go
Speaker 1: I thought I was seeing a classic horror film kind
Speaker 1: and they're like, but it's funny, the horror comedy. There's
Speaker 1: there's funny in it. I really love that film. It's
Speaker 1: so beautiful and so fun to watch, and I love
Speaker 1: the the play of contrasts. It's just gorgeous. But rather
Speaker 1: than wax rapsodic about how much I love the bride
Speaker 1: at Frankenstein, shall we get back to Elsa now? Of course?
Speaker 1: So she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscars twice
Speaker 1: in her career. The first was in ninety nine for
Speaker 1: her role Income to the Stable, and then again in
Speaker 1: seven for Witness for the Prosecution, which was her last
Speaker 1: picture with her husband. Yeah, she and Charles Lawton did
Speaker 1: a lot of projects together. She tried to keep her
Speaker 1: career separate from his, but there were times when it
Speaker 1: would work out or they wanted to be together. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because they really did are very deeply about
Speaker 1: each other. Even though they had had this revelation early
Speaker 1: on in their marriage that he was gay, they still
Speaker 1: really seemed to build this life together and were very
Speaker 1: devoted to one another, so sometimes they would try to
Speaker 1: work on the same projects, and throughout this time, Elsa
Speaker 1: would continue to sing and dance in cabaret style shows.
Speaker 1: She really never lost her love of performing live theater,
Speaker 1: and she would sometimes two are in tandem with Charles.
Speaker 1: He did a couple of book tours, and she would
Speaker 1: try to set up cabaret tours that would follow the
Speaker 1: same path as him. They became American citizens in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: after having gotten lots of criticism back home for staying
Speaker 1: in the United States during World War Two. According to Elsa,
Speaker 1: Charles would often tell her, I was in the First
Speaker 1: World War in the trenches bayonetting men and getting gassed.
Speaker 1: I think once in a life is enough. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could see not wanting to do that again. The parents
Speaker 1: stayed married, As I said, they were really quite devoted
Speaker 1: to each other until Charles died into member of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, and he had had a really prolonged battle
Speaker 1: with cancer. His lengthy treatments had really eaten a way
Speaker 1: at the couple's finances, so when he died it wasn't
Speaker 1: like she was left with a lot of money. She
Speaker 1: had a small allowance that they had arranged after a
Speaker 1: lot of legal sorting of his assets. Uh and there
Speaker 1: was a pretty significant art collection that had to be
Speaker 1: dealt with. But she needed to fiscally or support her
Speaker 1: ailing mother who was back in London, and she needed
Speaker 1: to supplement her income, so she started working in television series.
Speaker 1: Uh and at that point, the one that she was
Speaker 1: working on was The John Prescith Show. And she would
Speaker 1: send funds to her mother Biddy regularly, and she really
Speaker 1: often had throughout her life. Sadly, one of her cousins
Speaker 1: thought that she had just abandoned her mother for Hollywood
Speaker 1: and just wrote scathing letters accusing her of negligence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she uh prints she reprints those letters in her autobiography
Speaker 1: and they really are just super mean, really accusing her
Speaker 1: of basically being of extremely shallow and low character and
Speaker 1: that she's just been, you know, completely entranced by Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and and that clearly all she cares about is being
Speaker 1: famous and important and she doesn't have any regard for family,
Speaker 1: and that it's basically like, you're a horrible person. You're
Speaker 1: so horrible and shallow, I hate you. And she just
Speaker 1: keeps getting these letters. They're awful, but eventually, four years
Speaker 1: after Charles died, Biddy also passed away. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because she did financially support her mother a great deal,
Speaker 1: but also it was quite clear in all of her
Speaker 1: writings that she never really liked her mother, though she
Speaker 1: kept trying to, and she's, you know, pretty self reflective
Speaker 1: about it. And it's like, I recognize that many people
Speaker 1: say were a lot of light and that may be
Speaker 1: a significant part of why we never really had a
Speaker 1: meeting in the minds. Uh and her father had actually
Speaker 1: died in the nineteen forties, but they weren't terribly close
Speaker 1: and it wasn't something she really dwelled upon. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't think she mentions it in her book until after
Speaker 1: Biddy dies, where she's like, oh, yeah, Shamus had already
Speaker 1: died like twenty years before that, and it's pretty glossy.
Speaker 1: So even though she had this ongoing relationship with her
Speaker 1: parents in a very interesting childhood and early adulthood where
Speaker 1: she was still with them, she does seem to have
Speaker 1: had some emotional separation from them, like she never she
Speaker 1: didn't maintain a closeness with her family. Her career continued
Speaker 1: through the eighties and primarily involved appearances on TV, and
Speaker 1: a lot of roles in Disney films. She played Katie
Speaker 1: Nanna in the opening scenes of Mary Poppins Yeah, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't recognize her. She's much older
Speaker 1: at that point, and she is for anyone who has
Speaker 1: only vague recollection of that film, she is the nanny
Speaker 1: at the very beginning who loses the children and because
Speaker 1: the children ran away from her in the park and
Speaker 1: she's quitting her job the big Suffragette song number at
Speaker 1: the beginning. So that was really like the latter part
Speaker 1: of her career. That was those last two decades where
Speaker 1: spent mostly doing small parts on television, UM and in
Speaker 1: these Disney films. UH. But then as she was getting older,
Speaker 1: of course, she suffered two strokes in and UH. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six she contracted bronchial pneumonia and she died
Speaker 1: at the end of that year, on December six, when
Speaker 1: she was eighty four. At the time, she wrote of
Speaker 1: her life, it was felicitous to be born in nineteen
Speaker 1: o two. Anyone born around that time he had a
Speaker 1: jackpot era. That is, if they lived through the two wars, science,
Speaker 1: medicine and the arts. In this century tumbled over each
Speaker 1: other at such speed that our human span of three
Speaker 1: score years and ten seems more like living two hundred years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was pretty, uh, kind of turned on by the
Speaker 1: development of of culture and science and how quickly she
Speaker 1: was watching technology develop and industry change. Uh. When it
Speaker 1: came to talking about the Bride later in her life,
Speaker 1: Lanchester once wrote that the quickest way to make her
Speaker 1: shut up was to ask her about the Bride of Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: because she was a very talkative and loquacious woman. And
Speaker 1: in her books she says to this day, nine out
Speaker 1: of ten photographs I get in the mail for autographing
Speaker 1: or of the bride, I'm grateful for the Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: It became a sort of trademark for me. But such
Speaker 1: trademarks can cause typecasting and boomerang for some actors. Such
Speaker 1: actors work all the time, some like it, some grumble.
Speaker 1: Perhaps even more grateful for her turn in Frankenstein's sequel
Speaker 1: are fans of horror and classic cinema. There's this just
Speaker 1: instantly recognizable image of the bride, and that has been
Speaker 1: all over all kinds of memorabilia. It's been made into dolls.
Speaker 1: This year. It's part of a marketing campaign for for
Speaker 1: Matt Cosmetics based around a line of products develops with
Speaker 1: developed with effects artists Rick Baker, And like that clip
Speaker 1: of her screaming, it's just everywhere it is. It's it
Speaker 1: shows up in all kinds of pop culture references. It's
Speaker 1: been mimt eyes, It'll show up in your Facebook feed periodically.
Speaker 1: It really is quite a h an iconic to the
Speaker 1: point that people who have never ever seen that movie,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people haven't because it is quite
Speaker 1: old and you don't always get to screenings, but it's, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody knows that it's the Bride of Frankenstein without I
Speaker 1: can't think of anybody who's ever seen it and gone,
Speaker 1: what's that? Um, it's just instantly knowable. Uh. I remember
Speaker 1: wanting to dress as her for Halloween one time when
Speaker 1: I was a child, and I can't remember if I
Speaker 1: actually got to do it or not. Like I remember
Speaker 1: my mom being like that hair is the hair is
Speaker 1: always what holds people back because I I've always had
Speaker 1: extremely fine hair. I was like, that is not ever
Speaker 1: going to take on your head well in wigs or
Speaker 1: even tricky, you know. I don't know if the legs
Speaker 1: don't always work right. I don't know if they had
Speaker 1: Brad Frankenstein wigs for seven years the early eighties. I
Speaker 1: guess that was early he might. Uh. There is also
Speaker 1: a fan driven effort underway at the moment to get
Speaker 1: the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which is the MPTF
Speaker 1: to reprint else's autobiography. Um, if you're interested in investigating
Speaker 1: that cause or adding your voice to it, you can
Speaker 1: google reprint Elsa and you'll get to all the pertinent
Speaker 1: sites and information. That effort is also on Facebook at
Speaker 1: facebook dot com slash reprint Elsa. And for me, it
Speaker 1: was one of those things that when I found out
Speaker 1: that people were trying to get reprinted, I was in
Speaker 1: in a minute because she really is uh so fun
Speaker 1: to read, even though and she knew so many interesting
Speaker 1: people throughout her life, and she recalls with a great
Speaker 1: deal of clarity some of these really fascinating interactions. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just a fun read even if you weren't interested
Speaker 1: in Elsa Lanchester. I think her wit uh makes the
Speaker 1: story of her life very fun and kind of enjoyable. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is dense, though it's a lot of Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of book. I mean, it's not like a
Speaker 1: fluffy read. There's a lot of interesting information there. Do
Speaker 1: you have some listener mail for ends? I do, indeed,
Speaker 1: and uh I did not check with this listener on pronunciation.
Speaker 1: I don't know if his name is Josiah or Josiah,
Speaker 1: because I know people that have done in both ways.
Speaker 1: And he says, first off, let me say I love
Speaker 1: the show. I had a decent amount of physics in college,
Speaker 1: and I thought I may be able to shed some
Speaker 1: light on the Vixen radar system and how it worked.
Speaker 1: He's referring to the Louis Alpharez podcast. The basic principle
Speaker 1: is that, in general, the closer you are to a
Speaker 1: radio wave transmission, the stronger the signal you will receive.
Speaker 1: So as an airplane approached a U boat, each successive
Speaker 1: transmission of radio waves a ping, if you will, would
Speaker 1: be stronger. Alvarez and company brilliantly designed a system that,
Speaker 1: after initially detecting a submarine, would reduce the power of
Speaker 1: each successive ping by a certain ratio, so while the
Speaker 1: plane was actually getting closer and closer, the strength of
Speaker 1: the radar transmission would actually get weaker, making it appear
Speaker 1: as though it's going away from the target boat that
Speaker 1: my athematical complications arise from the fact that the intensity
Speaker 1: of a wave is inversely proportional to the square of
Speaker 1: its radius. I did not fact check that of just
Speaker 1: trusting you um in a simple example, ignoring some of
Speaker 1: the more complicated behavior of waves. If you have the
Speaker 1: distance between yourself and the target, reducing your radio power
Speaker 1: to one quarter of its original strength will make you
Speaker 1: appear stationary. The signal reaching the target will be the
Speaker 1: same strength, even though you are much closer. Taking this
Speaker 1: a step further, have the distance and reduce ratio power
Speaker 1: by an eighth, and you will in effect appear to
Speaker 1: be twice as far away. A slightly better explanation, he says,
Speaker 1: would involve a whiteboard. But maybe this will help a little. Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense mathematically well. And I was hampered
Speaker 1: a little bit and doing some of the research for
Speaker 1: that episode because a lot of what I was reading
Speaker 1: was definitely written for other physicist And when I started
Speaker 1: trying to look up how to better explain multiple things
Speaker 1: in the episode, there were there were some things that
Speaker 1: I was able to come up with, like a lay
Speaker 1: person's explanation for pretty quickly, and then others where I
Speaker 1: just kept finding densely tynical explanations that were beyond my
Speaker 1: ability to understand. So I am super happy that we
Speaker 1: got a listener's thoughts on It was a really good
Speaker 1: way to explain it, because I did not have time
Speaker 1: to read an entire manual on Radar long. And I know, uh,
Speaker 1: I and probably many other people, I really love science,
Speaker 1: but I do get kind of watted up in a
Speaker 1: little confused sometimes by the mathematics involved, and uh, some
Speaker 1: of the more esoteric concepts I have to really kind
Speaker 1: of fight my way in to get a handle on them.
Speaker 1: So it's nice when it's laid out so nicely in uh,
Speaker 1: normal people speak. So if you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us, you can do so at History Podcasts at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or you can visit us on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash history class stuff. We're on Twitter at
Speaker 1: missed in History. You can also find us on Pinterest
Speaker 1: in anyway all the things. If you would like to
Speaker 1: learn more about what we've talked about today, you can
Speaker 1: go to our website and type in for Frankenstein in
Speaker 1: the search bar, and you will get a number of
Speaker 1: different things, including how Frankenstein's Monster Works, and uh another
Speaker 1: one called quiz called how well do you know Frankenstein's Monster?
Speaker 1: It was very, very fun. How Frankenstein's Monster Works was
Speaker 1: written by Robert Lamb who's on Stuff to bow your Mind,
Speaker 1: and it's a really cool examination of literally how are
Speaker 1: reanimated human that has been pieced together could scientifically work.
Speaker 1: There's really fun stuff in it. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: If you'd looks learn more about that or anything else
Speaker 1: you can think of, you should do that at our website,
Speaker 1: which is how Stuff Works dot com. But more on
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