November 23rd, 2009
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November 23, 2009, 7:26PM
In this Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 photo, Jessica Rains, left, daughter of author Claude Rains talks at Bibb Graves Hall on the University of North Alabama campus, while author David Skal autographs his book about Rains’ actor father, in Florence Ala. Three movie scripts, including one from Casablanca which starred Claude Rains with Humphrey Bogart, are being donated to the university.
FLORENCE, Ala. — Keeping her father’s memory alive has become a sort of cause for Jessica Rains.
“I remember going to my local libraries to see if there was anything written about my dad,” she said of her father, Hollywood legend Claude Rains. “I found 26 for Bette Davis but none for my dad. That was outrageous to me.”
To help honor his life and work, Rains, an actress in her own right, donated a number of items from her father’s estate to the archives at Collier Library at the University of North Alabama. Included in the collection that will be on permanent display beginning Monday are three original scripts from some of his more well-known works, “Casablanca,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” and “The Wolf Man.”
“Casablanca,” which starred Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay in 1942. It joins another Oscar-winning film in UNA’s archives, “Marty,” which came to campus compliments of actor Ernest Borgnine. “Marty” won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay in 1955.
Although Rains never won an Academy Award, he was nominated for the industry’s top honor four times.
Other memorabilia include photographs with Claude Rains from the sets of some of his films, DVDs of his works and the recent biography on Rains’ life written by David Skal.
Skal was with Jessica Rains at UNA to present the items to the university.
“I love biographies, but they’re only worth writing if you have access to new primary materials,” he said. “In the case of ‘An Actor’s Voice: Claude Rains,’ there were 30 hours of taped never-before-seen interviews (Rains) had recorded before his death for a biography he wanted to do himself. Jessica allowed me to be the first to get to be able to see them, and that’s what I built my book around.”
The materials become part of a growing collection of memorabilia from the science-fiction and horror genres. They will join items from Ray Bradbury, an author and screenwriter considered to be the father of science-fiction, as well as those most recently donated by George Johnson, the last remaining writer from “The Twilight Zone” series who is still able to travel.
Terry Pace, an adjunct English professor at UNA who coordinated the donation, said the addition adds “so much to the study of the Golden Age of the horror genre from the 1930s and 1940s. (UNA) has become one stopping-off point where people can get that information and that experience.”
(Michelle Rupe Eubanks of the TimesDaily newspaper authored this report.)
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