The Many Faces of Ernest Thesiger

Ernest Thesiger is one of the ’30s Hollywood thesps raved about in the piece B. Kite and I wrote for The Believer magazine. Although he was British born, bred and based, his work for James Whale across the pond is what he’ll doubtless be remembered for — BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE OLD DARK HOUSE. This is a little visual celebration of his ever-changing countenance as seen in the 1938 thriller THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT.

Pensive!

Hat on!

Effulgent!

Dyspeptic!

 ”And this is the real me!”

If I can go mad and QUOTE MYSELF, without vanishing into some kind of chrono-synclastic infundibulum, “Ernest Thesiger belongs, almost, to an unofficial group of effete British actors who created a parody of the upper classes and worked extensively with their nostrils.”

E.T.’s best British work is probably THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, where Alexander Mackendrick cast him as a malign, wheezing magnate. Are there many cases of a filmmaker being struck down by an illness he has made light of in his work? Mackendrick considered it an awful form of poetic justice that his own later years were blighted by emphysema.

As an asthmatic I sympathise. You easy breathers have no idea how wonderful a thing inhalation really is. You certainly come to appreciate it when deprived of the ability. Note to filmmakers — you always get this wrong — asthma doesn’t make you cough. Wheeze, yes, cough, no. You can get the air into your lungs, you just can’t make them do anything WITH it. Imagine that, then let’s be glad for our health.