Claude Rains is "Shocked! Shocked!!"; that today is his 123rd birthday

Claude, stuck in the middle. That's Bogie on the right and Henreid and Bergman on the left. If I have to identify which movie this is from, your reading the wrong blog.

Claude Rains is one of my all-time favorite actors. If the movie is a turkey he made it seem better. If it is excellent [and they often are], that movie is all the better for having his presence in it. Blessed with one of cinema's most identifiable speaking voices [at least one critic called his voice as sounding like sand laced with honey]. Claude Rains, though late to film [he was 44 at the time of his debut], appeared in nearly 60 films the last coming in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told. A good number of those movies have lived on as well regarded classics. As the invisible one in 1933's The Invisible Man to 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told, Rains garnered 4 Oscar nominations along the way. The first Oscar nod coming in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington as the corrupt Senator Joseph Paine in 1939. He lost the Best Supporting Actor award to Thomas Mitchell's Doc Boone in Stagecoach.

Rains confronting the real evil, Edward Arnold's big money man, in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, 1939

Rains' second bout with the little gold guy came in the role he may be best remembered, as the "poor corrupt official" Capt. Louis Renault in Casablanca, Rains gave a scene stealing performance that should have netted him the gold. Alas, voters saw things in a different light and rewarded Charles Coburn the prize for his comic turn in George Stevens' The More The Merrier. 

 

Not happy about losing the Oscar again.

 Rains was up for the Supporting Oscar again the very next year for Mr. Skeffington with Bette Davis, one of his favorite co-stars. Davis and Rains made a total of 4 films together starting with 1939's Juarez and culminating with 1946's Deception. Probably the best known of the 4 movies is the penultimate tearjerker Now, Voyager from 1942.

Mutual admiration: Bette and Claude, Mr. Skeffington, 1944

Rains' last tussle with little Oscar came in 1946 with the plum part of Alex Sebastian in the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece of intrigue, Notorious. As a Nazi living in post WW II Rio de Janeiro, Rains' Sebastian is infatuated with Ingrid Bergman's Alicia Huberman, marries her, not realizing she is not only an American spy sent to South America on a mission to find out all she can about Alex and his Nazi boys club, but that she is in love, not with him, but with Cary Grant's Devlin, her contact with the American agency she is employed with. To complicate matters further Sebastian is a momma's boy whose momma is not only still alive but very involved with her son's interests and lives in Alex' house. Notorious may contain the actor's greatest creation. Not only do we see the bad side of Sebastian, his Nazism, his weakness, being dominated by not only his mother but also to a certain extent by Alicia [talk about pussy whipped!], Rains not only makes us empathize with Sebastian's plight but also shows us his cruelty [the poisoning of Alicia]. Yet despite his position as the antagonist in the plot, Rains still allows us total access to Sebastian's motives and fears. The scene where Sebastian realizes Alicia is an agent sent to bring him and his Nazi associates down, goes to mother for comfort, help and support, is one of  Rains' finest moments. He allows the frightened little boy to emerge and the results are moving, yet we, the viewers are conflicted. We want Devlin to save Alicia from Sebastian's clutches, yet we also want Rains' Sebastian to be free of implication.

Claude, the odd man out again. With Grant & Bergman in Notorious.

Needless to say Claude Rains lost this bid for Oscar also, this time to real life WW II veteran Harold Russell for The Best Years of Our Lives. It was 1947, our boys were back from the war and Hollywood didn't have time to honor a portrait, not matter how exquisite, of an rich, exiled Nazi living the good life in South America. So when it comes to Oscar, Claude Rains is another in a long line of worthy but empty handed performers.  4 times a bridegroom, never a bride.

As the cruel, egoist conductor Alexander Hollenius. From Deception

 Other favorite Rains performances I savor include his virtuoso turn as the jealous, possessive conductor in Deception, the radio actor/entrepreneur in Michael Curtiz' 1947 noir The Unsuspected, the wandering father, trying to fit back into the family unit after 20 years away, in another Curtiz film 1939's much underrated Daughters Courageous and his cuckold husband in David Lean's too-little-seen The Passionate Friends in 1949. These are but a few of several memorable perfs Rains has left us and I didn't even mention Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wolf Man and Lawrence of Arabia and many others. Along with Peter Lorre, George Sanders and a handful of other character actors, Rains made movie watching in the 1930's and 1940's a singular treat and something which, sadly, is missing from the cinema today. To put it bluntly, we are shocked! Shocked!!

Happy birthday Claude.