5 Electrifying Facts About the ‘Bride of Frankenstein’

In Shelley’s 1818 novel, the Monster demands Dr. Victor Frankenstein “create a female...for with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.”

Victor initially complies but becomes concerned the pair will live on and, even worse, create new monsters “who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror." He destroys the incomplete creation.

In the film, Henry Frankenstein (renamed for the movie) goes through with the reanimation, but it is she who rejects the Monster once brought to life.

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Actress Elsa Lanchester plays a dual role in Bride of Frankenstein, both as the titular character and as author Mary Shelley, who provides the opening framing device. It was Whale’s idea to cast the same actress in both roles, explains Mark Viera in Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic. According to Viera, Whale wanted to show the duality of imagination.

Despite delivering one of horror’s most iconic performances, however, Lanchester was not credited as the Bride. She received screen credit only for playing Mary Shelley. Much like Boris Karloff’s anonymous billing in the original Frankenstein, the Bride is identified in the credits by nothing more than a question mark.

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Much of the marketing for the Bride of Frankenstein surrounded her appearance. The film’s trailer warns: “If you have a weak heart, better leave now." Images of a bandaged Bride were branded with “What will she LOOK like?”

Universal’s makeup artist Jack Pierce and Whale worked together to craft the Bride's look. Lanchester’s actual hair was given a Marcel wave (what we now call a perm) over a wire frame—inspired by the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Lanchester also wore a white dress embroidered with stars, moons and butterflies. It took 17 women 12 weeks to make the outfit. Lanchester said she had to fast in order to fit in the dress, writes David J. Skal in The Monster Show.

She also wasn’t a fan of Pierce, explains Viera. "He really did feel that he made these people, like he was a god," recalled Lanchester. "In the morning he'd be dressed in white as if he were in hospital to perform an operation.”

Both state and local censorship boards as well as the Hays Office—the industry’s self-regulating body responsible for enforcing moral guidelines—took issue with the film. Much of the concern centered on religious imagery. Frankenstein’s comparison of himself to God, a theme from the first film, again drew scrutiny. Censors also objected to a scene in which the Monster becomes confused by a statue of the crucified Jesus. Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration (the enforcement arm of the Hays Code), took issue with the film’s excessive deaths, according to historian Scott MacQueen in the movie’s audio commentary.

Two censorship disputes specifically involved the Bride. Whale ultimately agreed to remove certain scenes of Lanchester’s reanimation where too much of her breasts were visible. The film also faced resistance in England and China, according to Tom Johnson’s book Censored Screams. A sequence of the Creature looking lovingly at the dead corpse of the Bride made film boards in those countries uncomfortable, writes Johnson, as they felt it endorsed necrophilia.

When Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride first meet, it doesn’t go well. She screams and runs away, leaving the Monster to exclaim, “She hate me! Like others!”

Many of Lanchester’s movements and reactions were modeled on birds. She moves her head like a bird pecking for seed. And, right before the Monster condemns her and himself to death, the Bride famously hisses at him.

Lanchester based that hiss on the sounds swans make, says Viera. Because Whale shot the scene from multiple angles, she had to repeat the effect again and again, giving herself a sore throat.