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Biography: Claude Rains

The son of British stage actor Frederick Rains, Claude Rains gave his first theatrical performance at age 11 in Nell of Old Drury. He learned the technical end of the business by working his way up from being a two-dollars-a-week page boy to stage manager. After making his first U.S. appearance in 1913, Rains returned to England, served in the Scottish regiment during WWI, then established himself as a leading actor in the postwar years. He was also featured in one obscure British silent film, Build Thy House. During the 1920s, Rains was a member of the teaching staff at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; among his pupils were a young sprout named Laurence Olivier and a lovely lass named Isabel Jeans, who became the first of Rains' six wives. While performing with the Theatre Guild in New York in 1932, Rains filmed a screen test for Universal Pictures. On the basis of his voice alone, the actor was engaged by Universal director James Whale to make his talking-picture debut in the title role of The Invisible Man (1933). During his subsequent years at Warner Bros., the mellifluous-voiced Rains became one of the studio's busiest and most versatile character players, at his best when playing cultured villains. Though surprisingly never a recipient of an Academy award, Rains was Oscar-nominated for his performances as the "bought" Senator Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the title character in Mr. Skeffington (1944), the Nazi husband of Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946), and, best of all, the cheerfully corrupt Inspector Renault in Casablanca (1942). In 1946, Rains became one of the first film actors to demand and receive one million dollars for a single picture; the role was Julius Caesar, and the picture Caesar and Cleopatra. He made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1951's Darkness at Noon. In his last two decades, Claude Rains made occasional forays into television (notably on Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and continued to play choice character roles in big-budget films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide less

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Twilight of Honor (1963)
Tags: Courtroom Drama Drama
Length: 115min
Former TV leading man Richard Chamberlain plays a young lawyer about to take on an important murder case. He is shepherded through this big break by veteran attorney Claude Rains. The client is the disreputable Nick Adams, who seems determined to...
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The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Cast: Max von Sydow John Wayne Sidney Poitier Charlton Heston José Ferrer Robert Loggia Dorothy McGuire
Tags: Religious Epic Epic Hagiography
Length: 196min
Filmmaker George Stevens chose Monument Valley, Utah for his exterior sequences in The Greatest Story Ever Told, this (20 million) adaptation of Fulton Oursler's best-selling book. The "Greatest Story" is, of course, the life of Jesus Christ, played...
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The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1957)
Tags: Family Musical Fantasy
Length: 90min
The Pied Piper of Hamelin was originally filmed as a television special, then released theatrically outside the United States. The story is the familiar one: the town of Hamelin, plagued by rats, hires a mysterious piper (Van Johnson) to rid the town...
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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Cast: David Lean Alec Guinness Peter O'Toole Anthony Quinn
Tags: War Epic British Empire Film Epic
Length: 202min
This sweeping, highly literate historical epic covers the Allies' mideastern campaign during World War I as seen through the eyes of the enigmatic T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole, in the role that made him a star). After a prologue showing us Lawrence's...
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The Lost World (1960)
Tags: Prehistoric Fantasy Adventure Fantasy
Length: 98min
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story of an expedition to a remote plateau rumored to be the home of prehistoric beasts, already the basis of a 1925 sci-fi classic, is again brought to the screen in Irwin Allen's lesser version. Claude Rains stars as...
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Lisbon (1956)
Cast: Maureen O'Hara Ray Milland
Tags: Drama Action Spy Film
Length: 95min
Filmed on location, Lisbon was the second directorial endeavor of actor Ray Milland. The story revolves around a Portugal-based American smuggler, Capt. Robert John Evans (Milland). Hired by attractive Sylvia Merrill (Maureen O'Hara), Evans agrees to...
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The Paris Express (1953)
Cast: Claude Rains
Tags: Crime Drama Adventure Drama Crime
Length: 82min
A Georges Simenon novel was the source for the Anglo-American The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Claude Rains stars as Kees Popinga, chief clerk for a Dutch trading company. Scrupulously honest, Popinga goes off the deep end when he discovers that his...
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This Earth Is Mine (1959)
Cast: Rock Hudson Henry King
Tags: Drama
Length: 125min
Based on the novel The Cup and the Sword by Alice Tisdale Hobart, this drama examines the trials and tribulations of three generations of French-American California vineyard owners. It's set during the Prohibition era, when wine makers were...
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Sealed Cargo (1951)
Cast: Dana Andrews
Tags: War Drama Action War Drama Melodrama
Length: 90min
Sealed Cargo was based on The Gaunt Woman, a novel by Edmund Gilligan. Dana Andrews stars as Pat Bannon, a Newfoundland fishing-boat captain during WW II. Coming to the rescue of an endangered vessel, Bannon finds himself in the middle of a nest of...
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Where Danger Lives (1950)
Cast: Robert Mitchum
Tags: Psychological Thriller Film Noir Thriller
Length: 84min
Faith Domergue, the latest of Howard Hughes' protegees, made her film debut in 1950's Where Danger Lives. Domergue plays Margo Lannington the wife of Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), an elderly millionaire possessed of a sadistic streak. Robert...
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Claude Rains

Biography: Claude Rains

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