This is the story of the 1943 version of The Phantom of the Opera, the one with Susanna Foster, Nelson Eddy and Claude Rains. It is not ALW's Phantom, nor even Leroux's Phantom. There is no kiss, no story of love and redemption, but it did influence other cinematic versions for several until Webber's masterpiece came along. That being said, it is an enjoyable version its own way if you’re the sort who enjoys an old-fashioned Hollywood mystery/melodrama, filmed in glorious Technicolor with sumptuous sets and costumes and with big-named stars of the day.
As those of you who have watched the 1943 version of Phantom know, this story has little in common with Leroux’s original—other than the location (the Paris Opera), a blond singer named Christine (duBois instead of Daaé), somebody named Raoul (d'Aubert, a policeman, not de Chagny, a vicomte) and a disfigured musician (named Erique rather than Erik). Yes, there are other similarities such as Erique terrorizing the Opera House so that Christine can sing for him and his infatuation with the ingénue, but the ’43 Phantom and Leroux’s original (even Chaney’s silent version, for that matter) are more like distant relatives to this remake. Yet for all of these changes, if the scriptwriters and studio heads had had their way, the story would have been even more different.
Back in 1941, when Universal decided to remake its silent classic, The Phantom of the Opera, studio heads felt that audiences had grown up in the twenty-some years since the former was made. There was this belief that audiences were too sophisticated to believe in Leroux’s story. (Yet little more than four decades later, audiences did exactly that when Andrew Lloyd Webber trotted out his musical version of the same story. But that’s another story for another time.)
So when it came to working up a screenplay for their remake, the powers that be felt it would be best to move away from what they saw as the supernatural elements of the story, concerned that viewers would not accept a young girl taking orders from a voice behind a mirror. Instead of a story with more than a touch of fantasy, Universal opted for one more in the lines of a traditional mystery.
What follows is an attempt on my part to put into writing some of the original unfilmed story line, based upon commentary by film historian Scott MacQueen that can be heard on the DVD edition of the Rains film. I call this “The Phantom Movie That Was Never Made.”
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Some of the early changes that did not make it into the movie involved Raoul, who in the earliest drafts was going to be an early inventor of the phonograph, and Claudin’s face, which was initially going to have been scarred by a knife attack. The latter was eventually changed to the infamous pan of acid.
In this new story line, it would be Claudin’s pursuit of music that was to be the driving force behind the events in this version. For Claudin, Music would be his drug, his addiction. It would cause him to give up a lucrative position at the family mill in Provence and to leave his wife and infant daughter, Christine.
Abandoned, left without any means of support, Claudin’s wife dies of a broken heart...and starvation. It is the wife’s sister, Aunt Madeleine, who rescues the child and raises Christine. In this version of the screenplay, it would be Raoul who would eventually play detective and learn all of this from Christine’s aunt in a scene that never made it into the movie, yet was apparently filmed as shown in this still.
Years later, Claudin and his estranged daughter meet by chance. This sparks his interest and her musicality (although the commentator does not go into detail as to how exactly this was to be accomplished). Encouraged in some manner by Claudin, Christine embarks on an operatic career, over her family’s objections. They remember what music did to her father, and how his obsession killed her mother. Aunt Madeleine encourages Christine to cultivate her friendship with Raoul, who by this time in the script is either a police detective or still the phonograph inventor, railing against music, reminding Christine what it did to her father. But Christine (perhaps not unlike her father) cannot resist the lure of music.
In a plot twist, Claudin was planning to flee to America, taking his rediscovered daughter with him in order to further her career. Trapped in the catacombs, the police closing in, Raoul confronts Claudin and gives him a pistol with which to commit suicide.
“He was right about America, Christine,” Raoul would say to Christine in the end. “For you, there is the New York Opera, and for me, there is a man named Edison I might work for.”
But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves! There is still more of Claudin’s story to be told, including how he became this scarred, insane person who terrorizes the opera house.
In the original screenplay treatment, Claudin was to be shown composing in the style of both Shostokovich and Stravinski – in 1873. (Remind anyone of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Phantom’s Don Juan Triumphant?) Already, he displays signs of instability in spite of receiving encouragement from such luminaries as Franz Liszt (who was kept in the movie).
As he sits in his cheap, rented rooms, Claudin plays one of his compositions (on the piano or the violin, I do not know). There, he envisions himself receiving the cheers and adulation from the multitudes that have come to hear him perform. His reverie is interrupted, however, by the mocking laughter of a prostitute, heard through the open window. Claudin snaps and attacks the woman. She attempts to fight back, and before he chokes the life out of her, she slashes his face with a butcher’s knife, leaving him horribly disfigured.
Chased by the police, who apparently have been alerted to the attack, Claudin escapes and takes refuge in the opera, hiding his injured face behind a hideously painted mask. It is while living here that he encounters his daughter, and soon engages in a reign of terror in an effort to promote her rise to stardom. Later, during the annual masked ball (sorry, no Red Death was mentioned), he abducts Christine and takes her to the cellars where he reveals their relationship.
As this project was being worked on, the story went through many changes. In another rewrite (echoes of which can be found in the movie), a performance of Claudin’s symphony lures him back above to the stage, where he is gunned down by the police. The movie was to end when a coal fire in Claudin’s lair ignites the building – (Shades of ALW’s conflagration in the 2004 film version of his stage play!) – and Christine, her foster parents and Raoul are the only survivors of that opening night performance of her father’s doomed symphony.
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All right, this is not the Phantom that most of us know and love, but I can’t help but think that in the hands of the right author, these various story lines could be woven into a good story.
As those of you who have watched the 1943 version of Phantom know, this story has little in common with Leroux’s original—other than the location (the Paris Opera), a blond singer named Christine (duBois instead of Daaé), somebody named Raoul (d'Aubert, a policeman, not de Chagny, a vicomte) and a disfigured musician (named Erique rather than Erik). Yes, there are other similarities such as Erique terrorizing the Opera House so that Christine can sing for him and his infatuation with the ingénue, but the ’43 Phantom and Leroux’s original (even Chaney’s silent version, for that matter) are more like distant relatives to this remake. Yet for all of these changes, if the scriptwriters and studio heads had had their way, the story would have been even more different.
Back in 1941, when Universal decided to remake its silent classic, The Phantom of the Opera, studio heads felt that audiences had grown up in the twenty-some years since the former was made. There was this belief that audiences were too sophisticated to believe in Leroux’s story. (Yet little more than four decades later, audiences did exactly that when Andrew Lloyd Webber trotted out his musical version of the same story. But that’s another story for another time.)
So when it came to working up a screenplay for their remake, the powers that be felt it would be best to move away from what they saw as the supernatural elements of the story, concerned that viewers would not accept a young girl taking orders from a voice behind a mirror. Instead of a story with more than a touch of fantasy, Universal opted for one more in the lines of a traditional mystery.
What follows is an attempt on my part to put into writing some of the original unfilmed story line, based upon commentary by film historian Scott MacQueen that can be heard on the DVD edition of the Rains film. I call this “The Phantom Movie That Was Never Made.”
-0-0-0-
Some of the early changes that did not make it into the movie involved Raoul, who in the earliest drafts was going to be an early inventor of the phonograph, and Claudin’s face, which was initially going to have been scarred by a knife attack. The latter was eventually changed to the infamous pan of acid.
In this new story line, it would be Claudin’s pursuit of music that was to be the driving force behind the events in this version. For Claudin, Music would be his drug, his addiction. It would cause him to give up a lucrative position at the family mill in Provence and to leave his wife and infant daughter, Christine.
Abandoned, left without any means of support, Claudin’s wife dies of a broken heart...and starvation. It is the wife’s sister, Aunt Madeleine, who rescues the child and raises Christine. In this version of the screenplay, it would be Raoul who would eventually play detective and learn all of this from Christine’s aunt in a scene that never made it into the movie, yet was apparently filmed as shown in this still.
Years later, Claudin and his estranged daughter meet by chance. This sparks his interest and her musicality (although the commentator does not go into detail as to how exactly this was to be accomplished). Encouraged in some manner by Claudin, Christine embarks on an operatic career, over her family’s objections. They remember what music did to her father, and how his obsession killed her mother. Aunt Madeleine encourages Christine to cultivate her friendship with Raoul, who by this time in the script is either a police detective or still the phonograph inventor, railing against music, reminding Christine what it did to her father. But Christine (perhaps not unlike her father) cannot resist the lure of music.
In a plot twist, Claudin was planning to flee to America, taking his rediscovered daughter with him in order to further her career. Trapped in the catacombs, the police closing in, Raoul confronts Claudin and gives him a pistol with which to commit suicide.
“He was right about America, Christine,” Raoul would say to Christine in the end. “For you, there is the New York Opera, and for me, there is a man named Edison I might work for.”
But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves! There is still more of Claudin’s story to be told, including how he became this scarred, insane person who terrorizes the opera house.
In the original screenplay treatment, Claudin was to be shown composing in the style of both Shostokovich and Stravinski – in 1873. (Remind anyone of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Phantom’s Don Juan Triumphant?) Already, he displays signs of instability in spite of receiving encouragement from such luminaries as Franz Liszt (who was kept in the movie).
As he sits in his cheap, rented rooms, Claudin plays one of his compositions (on the piano or the violin, I do not know). There, he envisions himself receiving the cheers and adulation from the multitudes that have come to hear him perform. His reverie is interrupted, however, by the mocking laughter of a prostitute, heard through the open window. Claudin snaps and attacks the woman. She attempts to fight back, and before he chokes the life out of her, she slashes his face with a butcher’s knife, leaving him horribly disfigured.
Chased by the police, who apparently have been alerted to the attack, Claudin escapes and takes refuge in the opera, hiding his injured face behind a hideously painted mask. It is while living here that he encounters his daughter, and soon engages in a reign of terror in an effort to promote her rise to stardom. Later, during the annual masked ball (sorry, no Red Death was mentioned), he abducts Christine and takes her to the cellars where he reveals their relationship.
As this project was being worked on, the story went through many changes. In another rewrite (echoes of which can be found in the movie), a performance of Claudin’s symphony lures him back above to the stage, where he is gunned down by the police. The movie was to end when a coal fire in Claudin’s lair ignites the building – (Shades of ALW’s conflagration in the 2004 film version of his stage play!) – and Christine, her foster parents and Raoul are the only survivors of that opening night performance of her father’s doomed symphony.
-0-0-0-
All right, this is not the Phantom that most of us know and love, but I can’t help but think that in the hands of the right author, these various story lines could be woven into a good story.
