When Claudin is sacked from the orchestra for missing one note too many, he can no longer afford to pay rent or support Christine’s music lessons. Rains plays the unfortunate Erique Claudin, a fading violinist with the Paris Opera who harbors unrequited love for chorus girl Christine Dubois-so much so that he's secretly been paying for her voice lessons, the sap. The new film differed from the original in both tone and plot, deemphasizing the horror elements in favor of light romance. Unli ke the Chaney version, the Phantom was no longer the star of the show. Truman as guest soloist at the White House Press Photographer's Ball, however it is her role as Christine in Phantom of the Opera that she is most remembered for. A former schoolmate of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Foster was initially offered the Elizabeth Taylor role in National Velvet but turned it down. She worked for MGM, Paramount and Universal, and had an illustrious stage and film career, even performing for President Harry S. Susanna Foster was a gifted singer whom MGM had begun grooming for stardom at the age of twelve. By the time he appeared in Phantom of the Opera ten years later, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, primarily due to a series of popular romantic musicals in which he had co-starred with the Broadway-trained soprano, Jeanette MacDonald. He took over a dozen curtain calls, won rave reviews, and was instantly inundated with film offers. The promoters were terrified, however Eddy's bravura performance won the day. Singing idol Nelson Eddy and rising star Susanna Foster were cast as the romantic leads, with the great Claude Rains tapped to play the Phantom.Įddy was a classically-trained baritone and former opera singer who shot to fame literally overnight when he gamely filled-in at the last minute for German Soprano Charlotte Lehmann at a sold-out Los Angeles concert in 1933. Late in 1942, Universal Studios began re-dressing the still-standing opera set from The Phantom of the Opera (1925) for the film's planned remake as a glossy musical extravaganza to be directed by Arthur Lubin, who would later achieve a kind of dubious celebrity as the director of the popular Francis, the Talking Mule film series.
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