Book sighting... >:)

 
This is definitely on my to-read list, when it comes out.....Claude Rains is one of my favourite actors of all time.  A noted stage actor and teacher by the time he arrived in Hollywood, he believed that the film camera would catch any insincerity* of acting in its unsparing lens.  Although Errol Flynn seized my attention first in the Warner Bros. swashbucklers, I soon came to appreciate the greater skill and nuance that it took to embody the villainous/complex roles in which Rains excelled -- for example, his performance as Sir John Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941) is both the deepest and deftest amidst an otherwise-cursory lineup of soon-to-be-stock roles in the horror genre. 



(* My father, btw, tells me that the key to great acting is sincerity....."once you can fake that, you've got it made." :P)

_