Review by C.J. Bunce
What? Now streaming? Elsa Lanchester? The actress from Bride of Frankenstein, Bell, Book, and Candle, and Mary Poppins? If you’re a fan of any or all of her movies– and who isn’t–you’ve probably wondered about Lanchester’s roles before Bride of Frankenstein, where she starred as Mary Shelley and the Bride at age 32. Only seven years earlier in 1928, at age 25, Lanchester starred as a heroine in a crime comedy caper called Blue Bottles–1920s British slang for cops. It takes place in the flapper era, and the year before Lanchester would marry the film’s only other recognizable actor, Charles Laughton, who she’d work with in a dozen film projects. It turns out 61-year-old science fiction author H.G. Wells was a fan, too, and decades after his fame with The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The War of the Worlds, he wrote the silent short film for her. The story? Elsa blows a whistle.
The movie can be found streaming now, with an added soundtrack, free on YouTube. Cast the show from your computer or smart phone to “the biggest screen possible” for a half hour of fun, and to meet a young Elsa Lanchester for the first time.
Lanchester plays a young woman named… Elsa Lanchester, who happens upon a discarded police whistle on a quiet city street, outside a brownstone where criminals have converged for some nefarious purpose. When she blows the whistle–which was a quick call to come to an officer’s aid–she unknowingly triggers a slew of police officers… and much more. The basic framework of Blue Bottles can be seen in hundreds of comedies since.
Lanchester is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and quickly finds herself in the middle of a firefight between the mobsters and the police. Lanchester becomes one of cinema’s first action heroines as she picks up a pistol and aims it at the first thug. But it doesn’t end there. The police initially think she’s committing the crime–summoning the police presumably as some kind of joke. Slapstick ensues as she’s hit on the head and finds herself stumbling through the gunfire. And the incompetence of the police is rivaled only by the incompetence of the assailants. This is the kind of role Sandra Bullock made famous at the end of the century in roles like Miss Congeniality and While You Were Sleeping, the kind of story Frank Capra would perfect in the decades after the film’s release.
Her hat, her sweater, her skirt, her boa, wide eyes and eyelashes, and her hair and makeup make her a perfect fashion image from the era. At one level she’s an attractive solo act among a set filled with me–like Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire. She plays an innocent ingénue like Shelley Duvall in Bernice Bobs Her Hair. What does Blue Bottles say about women in the 1920s? And what does it foresee about women headlining not only a comedy but an action movie?
Keep an eye out for Easter eggs–yes, director Ivor Mantagu hadn’t heard the term yet, but knew how to make it work for the film. Like a reference to real-life villain Dr. Crippen. The movie is fun, and for a silent film, the drama and comedy hold up just fine. Here’s the silent era film, Blue Bottles:
In her autobiography Elsa Lanchester, Herself, Lanchester wrote, “When I first met Charles, H.G Wells was a friend of mine, and he wrote three silent short films for me. I was supposed to do six a year. Just for fun, Charles played a little part in each one. He was paid six pounds and six shillings for his work in the films—in those days there were no union problems or anything. The filming began on August 20 and took about three weeks to complete. We went on location near Rye for some ocean shots, and the whole company stayed in various small hotels in the area. They were good days. I guess we were all in our twenties, including the cameraman who was Fred Young.” When they met, Lanchester was more famous than Laughton, whose career as a leading actor would take off upon moving to the U.S. Lanchester would go on to earn two Oscar nominations, and Laughton would win one. Both would become well known together for their roles in Agatha Christie and Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution.
After your annual Halloween viewing of Bride of Frankenstein, give this film a try!
