The Bride of Frankenstein's Swan Hiss
1935
The Bride of Frankenstein never says a word. She is unwrapped, stood up, takes one look at the Monster and screams, then hisses at him like an angry bird. It is one of the most famous reactions in horror cinema, and according to the actress who played her, Elsa Lanchester, it came from a walk around a park lake in London.
A sequel and a double role
Universal's Frankenstein (1931) was a huge hit, and the studio brought back its director James Whale and star Boris Karloff for a sequel. Bride of Frankenstein picks up where the first film ended, with the mad Doctor Pretorius pushing Henry Frankenstein into building a mate for the Monster.
Whale cast Elsa Lanchester in two roles. According to Wikipedia, he decided early on that the actress playing the Bride should also play Mary Shelley in the film's prologue, to show how the horror springs from the darker side of the imagination. The Alex Film Society's programme notes, drawing on Lanchester's memoir, say Whale remembered her from a London revue, Riverside Nights, where he had been stage manager. In the opening credits the Monster's Mate is listed only as '?', according to the cast list on Wikipedia.
Bandages and a lightning-bolt hairdo
Lanchester's Bride is assembled on screen: wrapped in bandages, raised through the laboratory roof into a lightning storm and then lowered and unwrapped. Off screen the process was almost as elaborate. The Alex Film Society notes quote her saying she was 'bound in yards and yards of bandage most carefully wound by the studio nurse', and say that make-up artist Jack Pierce spent hours on her each morning. Wikipedia adds that the famous streaked hairstyle was built by waving her own hair over a wire frame, and that she did not enjoy working with Pierce.
The swans of Regent's Park
The key moment is the Bride's first sight of her intended. Wikipedia states plainly that Lanchester modelled the Bride's hissing on that of swans. The Alex Film Society notes give the story in her own words from her memoir: she had always been fascinated by the sound swans make; Regent's Park in London had lots of them on the lake, 'really nasty creatures, always hissing at you', and she used the memory of that hiss.
She added that the sound men, in a case or two, ran her hisses and screams backwards to make them even stranger, and that she screamed so much during filming that she lost her voice for days. Those details come from her memoir as quoted in the Alex notes, so we give them as her recollection.
Myth versus reality
It is often said that the Bride is in the film for only a few minutes. That is true in spirit: she is created only in the final scenes, and the role has no dialogue. We have not found two sources that agree on an exact number of minutes, so we are not giving one.
Another common assumption is that the swan story is a later studio legend. In fact it traces back to Lanchester herself, in her own published memoir, rather than to a publicity department.
Aftermath
Lanchester went on to a long career in Britain and Hollywood, appearing, as the Alex notes put it, in nearly seventy films, and she was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Wikipedia notes that she was married to the actor Charles Laughton from 1929 until his death in 1962 and appeared with him in a dozen films. But the part she is best remembered for is the one with no lines, a shock of white-streaked hair and a hiss borrowed from a park lake. Late in life, the Alex notes report, she told an interviewer that whatever Whale saw in her face 'didn't leave me'.
Further reading
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