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Elsa Sullivan Lanchester (28 October 1902 – 26 December 1986) was an English actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.〔Obituary ''Variety'', December 31, 1986.〕 Lanchester studied dance as a child and after World War I began performing in theatre and cabaret, where she established her career over the following decade. She met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later. She began playing small roles in British films, including the role of Anne of Cleves with Laughton in ''The Private Life of Henry VIII'' (1933). His success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles. Her role as the title character in ''Bride of Frankenstein'' (1935) brought her recognition. She played supporting roles through the 1940s and 1950s. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for ''Come to the Stable'' (1949) and ''Witness for the Prosecution'' (1957), the last of twelve films in which she appeared with Laughton. Following Laughton's death in 1962, Lanchester resumed her career with appearances in such Disney films as ''Mary Poppins'' (1964), ''That Darn Cat!'' (1965) and ''Blackbeard's Ghost'' (1968). The horror film ''Willard'' (1971) was highly successful, and one of her last roles was in ''Murder By Death'' (1976). ==Early life== Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London.〔GRO Register of Births: MAR 1903 1d 1194 LEWISHAM - Elsa Sullivan Lanchester〕 Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan (1872–1945) and Edithe "Biddy" Lanchester (1871–1966), were considered Bohemian, and refused to legalise their union in any conventional way to satisfy the era's conservative society. They were both socialists, according to Lanchester's 1970 interview with Dick Cavett. Elsa's older brother, Waldo Sullivan Lanchester, born five years earlier, was a puppeteer, with his own marionette company based in Malvern and later in Stratford-upon-Avon. Elsa studied dance in Paris under Isadora Duncan, whom she disliked. When the school was discontinued due to the start of World War I, she returned to Britain. At that point (she was about twelve years of age) she began teaching dance in the Isadora Duncan's style and, very enterprisingly, started to give classes to children in her South London district, through which she earned some welcome extra income for her household. At about this time, after the First World War, she started the Children's Theatre, and later the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub at which modern plays and cabaret turns were performed. She revived old Victorian songs and ballads, many of which she retained for her performances in another revue entitled ''Riverside Nights''. She became sufficiently famous for Columbia to invite her into the recording studio to make 78 rpm discs of four of the numbers she sang in these revues: "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father" and "He Didn't Oughter" were on one disc (recorded in 1926) and "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin" and "The Ladies Bar" were on the other (recorded 1930).〔Maltin 1994, p. 494.〕 Her cabaret and nightclub appearances led to more serious stage work and it was in a play by Arnold Bennett called ''Mr Prohack'' (1927) that Lanchester first met another member of the cast, Charles Laughton. They were married two years later and continued to act together from time to time, both on stage and screen. She played his daughter in the stage play ''Payment Deferred'' (1931) though not in the subsequent Hollywood film version. Lanchester and Laughton appeared in the Old Vic season of 1933–1934, playing Shakespeare, Chekov and Wilde, and in 1936 she was Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook in J. M. Barrie's play at the London Palladium. Their last stage appearance together was in Jane Arden's ''The Party'' (1958) at the New Theatre, London.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elsa Lanchester」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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