Claude Rains Career Summation
My Oscar Book:
Nov 10, 2025
Rains, who made his stage debut as choirboy in London at age 11, held every possible position in the theater world, from call boy and prompter to lead actor and stage manager.
However, Rains’s impressive debut, The Invisible Man, in which he appeared faceless, occurred when he was forty-four. He won his first nomination in 1939, at age 50, for playing the corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Rains established himself as one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, winning four supporting nominations within 7 years; his second nomination was for Casablanca, and his third for Mr. Skeffington.
Most memorable was Rains’s role in Hitchcock’s Notorious, as mother-ridden Nazi betrayed by the woman (Ingrid Bergman) he loves, for which he received his fourth and last nomination.
Rains, who distinguished himself in numerous films, worked up to his death in 1967, but he had never won an Oscar.
Oscar Alert
In 1939, Rains lost the Supporting Actor Oscar to Thomas Mitchell in “Stagecoach.” In 1943, the Supporting Actor winner was Charles Coburn in “The More the Merrier.” In 1944, the winner was Barry Fitzgerald for “Going My Way,” and in 1946, Harrold Russell for “The Best Years of Our Lives.”
Long Biography
Rains (10 Nov 10, 1889 – May 30, 1967) was a British and American actor whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of four Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor. He’s considered one of the screen’s great character stars who played cultured villains during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
The son of a stage actor, Rains began acting on stage in London in the 1900s. He became a leading thespian on the West End, and acting teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He moved to the US in the late 1920s and became a successful Broadway star, before making his American film debut as Dr. Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man (1933).
He played prominent roles in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Wolf Man (1941), Casablanca (1942), Kings Row (1942), Phantom of the Opera (1943) and Notorious (1946).
In 1951, he won Tony Award for Best Actor for Darkness at Noon. He was a prominent character actor, as Mr. Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and his final role in the Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
In 1960, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.
William Claude Rains was born on Nov 10, 1889 at 26 Tregothnan Road in Clapham, London. His parents were Emily Eliza (née Cox) and stage actor Frederick William Rains.
He lived in the slums of London. Rains was one of 12 children, of whom all but four died while still infants. His mother took in boarders to support the family. Rains grew up with a Cockney accent and speech impediment.
Because his father was an actor, the young Rains spent time in theatres and was surrounded by actors and stagehands.
Rains made his stage debut at age 10 in the play Sweet Nell of Old Drury at the Haymarket Theatre, so that he could run around onstage as part of the production. He slowly worked his way up in the theatre, becoming a call boy (telling actors when they were due on stage) at His Majesty’s Theatre and later a prompter, stage manager, understudy, and then moving on from smaller parts with good reviews to larger, better parts.
Rains moved to the US in 1912 owing to opportunities offered in the New York theatres. However, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he returned to England and was commissioned into the British Army’s London Scottish regiment, alongside fellow actors Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman, Herbert Marshall and Cedric Hardwicke. In November 1916, Rains was involved in a gas attack at Vimy, which resulted in losing 90 percent of the vision in his right eye as well as suffering vocal cord damage.[10] He never returned to combat but continued to serve with the Transport Workers Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment, in which he was commissioned as a temporary lieutenant on 9 May 1917.[11] In March 1918, he was promoted to temporary captain,[12] the rank he held at the end of the war.[10] On 8 October 1918 he was appointed as adjutant,[13] and continued to serve in that role until March 1919.
Rains remained in England and continued to develop his acting talents. These talents were recognised by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Tree told Rains that in order to succeed as an actor, he would have to get rid of his Cockney accent and speech impediment. With this in mind, Tree paid for the elocution books and lessons that Rains needed to help him change his voice. Rains eventually shed his accent and speech impediment after practising every day.
He became a very elegant man, with a really extraordinary Mid-Atlantic accent. It was ‘his’ voice, nobody else spoke like that, half American, half English and a little Cockney thrown in.” He became recognized as one of the leading actors in London.
At age 29, he made his film debut, as Clarkis in his only silent film, the British film Build Thy House (1920).
During his early years, Rains taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). John Gielgud and Charles Laughton were among his students.
In London theatre, he achieved success in the role of John Drinkwater’s play Ulysses S. Grant, the follow-up to the same playwright’s Abraham Lincoln. Rains portrayed Faulkland in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, at London’s Lyric Theatre in 1925. He returned to NY in 1927 and appeared in nearly 20 Broadway roles, in plays which included Shaw’s The Apple Cart and The Constant Nymph and Pearl S. Buck’s novel The Good Earth (as Chinese farmer).
Rains came relatively late to film acting. While working for the Theatre Guild, he was offered screen test with Universal in 1932. His screen test for A Bill of Divorcement (1932) for a New York representative of RKO was a failure but led to his being cast in the title role of James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933) after his screen test and unique voice were inadvertently overheard from the next room. His agent, Harold Freedman, was a family friend of Carl Laemmle, who controlled Universal, and was keen to cast him in the role.
Rains signed contract with Warner on November 27, 1935, Warner had the right to loan him to other studios and Rains having potent income of up to $750,000 over 7 years.
He played the villainous role of Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Roddy McDowall once asked Rains if he had intentionally lampooned Bette Davis as Prince John, and Rains smiled “an enigmatic smile.” Rains later revealed that he had enjoyed playing the prince as homosexual, using subtle mannerisms. Rains credited the film’s co-director Michael Curtiz with teaching him understated requirements of film acting, or “what not to do in front of camera.”
On loan to Columbia, he portrayed a corrupt but honorable U.S. senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for which he received his first Best Supporting Actor nomination. For Warner, he played Dr. Alexander Tower, who commits murder-suicide to spare his daughter a life of insanity in Kings Row (1942) and the cynical police chief Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca (also 1942).
On loan again, Rains played the title character in Universal’s remake of Phantom of the Opera (1943).
In her 1987 memoir, This ‘N That, Bette Davis stated that Rains (with whom she shared the screen 4 times in Juarez; Now, Voyager; Mr. Skeffington; and Deception) was her favorite co-star.
Rains became the first actor to receive a million-dollar salary when he portrayed Julius Caesar in a large-budget but unsuccessful version of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), filmed in Britain. Shaw chose him for the part, though Rains disliked Gabriel Pascal, the film’s director and producer.
Rains followed it with Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) as a refugee Nazi agent opposite Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.
Back in Britain, he appeared in David Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949).
His only singing and dancing role was in a 1957 TV musical version of Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with Van Johnson as the Piper. The NBC colour special, broadcast as a film rather than a live or videotaped programme, was highly successful with the public. Sold into syndication after its first telecast, it was repeated annually by many local US TV stations.
Rains remained active as a character actor in the 1950s and 1960s, in films and as a guest in TV series. He played the ventriloquist Fabian on Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 1 Episode 20 “And So Died Riabouchinska” which aired February 10, 1956, and again, in 1957, Season 2 Episode 24 in “The cream of the jest” as a failing drunk actor. He ventured into science fiction for Irwin Allen’s The Lost World (1960) and Antonio Margheriti’s Battle of the Worlds (1961). Two of his late screen roles were as Dryden, a cynical British diplomat in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and King Herod in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), his last film. In CBS’s Rawhide, he portrayed Alexander Langford, an attorney in a ghost town, in the episode “Incident of Judgement Day” (1963).
He made audio recordings, narrating some Bible stories for children on Capitol Records, and reciting Richard Strauss’s setting for narrator and piano of Tennyson’s poem Enoch Arden, with the piano solos performed by Glenn Gould. He starred in The Jeffersonian Heritage, a 1952 series of 13 half-hour radio programmes recorded by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and syndicated for commercial broadcast on a sustaining (i.e., commercial-free) basis.[23]
Personal life and death
Rains became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939.
He married six times and divorced five times: Isabel Jeans (1913-1915), Marie Hemingway (1920-1920), Beatrix Thomson (1924-1935), Frances Propper (1935-1956), and Agi Jambor (1959-1960). In 1960, he married Rosemary Clark Schrode, to whom he was married until her death in December 1964. His only child, Jennifer, was the daughter of Frances Propper. As an actress, she is known as Jessica Rains.[27]
In 1941, Rains acquired the 380-acre (1.5 km2) Stock Grange Farm, built in 1747 in West Bradford Township, Pennsylvania.[28] Rains spent his final years in Sandwich, New Hampshire.[29]
A chronic alcoholic, Rains died from cirrhosis of the liver, having an abdominal hemorrhage in Laconia on 30 May 1967, aged 77.
Filmography
Film
1920 Build Thy House Clarkis Fred Goodwins Film debut
1930s
1933 The Invisible Man Dr. Jack Griffin/The Invisible Man James Whale
1934 Crime Without Passion Lee Gentry Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head Paul Verin Edward Ludwig
1935 The Mystery of Edwin Drood John Jasper Stuart Walker
The Clairvoyant Maximus Maurice Elvey
The Last Outpost John Stevenson Louis Gasnier, Charles Barton
Scrooge Jacob Marley Henry Edwards Uncredited
1936 Hearts Divided Napoleon Bonaparte Frank Borzage
Anthony Adverse Marquis Don Luis Mervyn LeRoy
1937 Stolen Holiday Stefan Orloff Michael Curtiz
The Prince and the Pauper Earl of Hertford William Keighley
They Won’t Forget District Attorney Andrew J. “Andy” Griffin Mervyn LeRoy
1938 White Banners Paul Ward Edmund Goulding
Gold is Where You Find It Colonel Christopher “Chris” Ferris Michael Curtiz
The Adventures of Robin Hood Prince John
Four Daughters Adam Lemp
1939 They Made Me a Criminal Detective Monty Phelan Busby Berkeley
Juarez Emperor Louis Napoleon III William Dieterle
Sons of Liberty Haym Salomon Michael Curtiz Two-reel short
Daughters Courageous Jim Masters
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Senator Joseph Harrison Paine, Capra, Best Supporting Actor nominee
Four Wives Adam Lemp Michael Curtiz
1940s
1940 Saturday’s Children Mr. Henry Halevy Vincent Sherman
The Sea Hawk Don José Álvarez de Córdoba Michael Curtiz
Lady with Red Hair David Belasco Curtis Bernhardt
1941 Four Mothers Adam Lemp William Keighley
Here Comes Mr. Jordan Mr. Jordan Alexander Hall
The Wolf Man Sir John Talbot George Waggner
1942 Kings Row Dr. Alexander Tower Sam Wood
Moontide Nutsy Archie Mayo
Now, Voyager Dr. Jaquith Irving Rapper
Casablanca Captain Louis Renault Michael Curtiz Nominated- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1943 Forever and a Day Ambrose Pomfret Herbert Wilcox
(sequence with Rains)
Phantom of the Opera Erique Claudin/The Phantom of the Opera Arthur Lubin
1944 Passage to Marseille Captain Freycinet Michael Curtiz
Mr. Skeffington Job Skeffington Vincent Sherman Nominated- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1945 Strange Holiday John Stevenson Arch Oboler
This Love of Ours Joseph Targel William Dieterle
Caesar and Cleopatra Julius Caesar Gabriel Pascal
1946 Notorious Alexander Sebastian Alfred Hitchcock Nominated- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Angel on My Shoulder Nick Archie Mayo
Deception Alexander Hollenius Irving Rapper
1947 The Unsuspected Victor Grandison Michael Curtiz
1949 The Passionate Friends Howard Justin David Lean
Rope of Sand Arthur “Fred” Martingale William Dieterle
Song of Surrender Elisha Hunt Mitchell Leisen
1950s
1950
The White Tower Paul DeLambre Ted Tetzlaff
Where Danger Lives Frederick Lannington John Farrow
1951 Sealed Cargo Captain Skalder Alfred L. Werker
1952 The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By Kees Popinga Harold French
1956 Lisbon Aristides Mavros Ray Milland
1959 This Earth Is Mine Philippe Rambeau Henry King
1960s
1960 The Lost World Professor George Edward Challenger Irwin Allen
1961 Battle of the Worlds Professor Benson Antonio Margheriti
1962 Lawrence of Arabia Mr. Dryden David Lean
1963 Twilight of Honor Art Harper Boris Sagal
1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told Herod the Great George Stevens
