Rains was never a minor character

Claude Rains was luckier than most of his character-acting peers in Hollywood's so-called classic age: He played a pivotal role in one of the few movies of that era that almost everyone has seen -- and goes on seeing. His insouciantly cynical but ultimately redeemable Captain Renault in "Casablanca" has many of the film's best lines, delivered with insinuating ease. Resolutely unaddled by romantic posturings, political and sexual, that preoccupy the rest in the movie, he is the audience's perfect surrogate. "What fools these mortals be," he seems to say, but aren't they pretty? And aren't they capable of infectious nobility, despite the darkness of their historical moment?

That said, however, it seems to me that "Casablanca" does a small disservice to Rains. For he was the greatest character actor of his age -- possibly of all ages. Today, people seem unaware of the astonishing range of response that he brought to an extraordinarily diverse group of pictures: the prosecutor whose political ambitions lead to a lynching in "They Won't Forget"; Napoleon III as Hitler stand-in in "Juarez"; the mysteriously damaged humanist-doctor of "Kings Row"; the openly Jewish (a rarity in movies of that time) investment banker in love with Bette Davis in "Mr. Skeffington." That says nothing of the many sympathetic father figures he played. Or about what may be his greatest role, as the mother-dominated Nazi spy hopelessly in love with Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's "Notorious." It is a part that, unlikely as it seems, generates our sympathy and not solely because he competes -- talk about hopeless -- with Cary Grant for her favors.

Rains invested these roles with a slight but palpable air of mystery. By never fully explaining himself, he commanded our wondering attention long after the film was over. It was a great, singular career that has long deserved a thoughtful biography, which David J. Skal, working with Rains' daughter, Jessica, doesn't quite provide in "Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice" -- a short, workmanlike, rather dispassionate book. It is another actor bio that substitutes quotations from ill-chosen reviews for passionate critical engagement, while adding a few brisk but not very illuminating discussions of Rains' several demons.

Skal follows Rains' modest-to-a-fault lead. He was coolly professional in demeanor, never particularly close to his fellow players (Bette Davis being the notable exception), a man who arrived promptly on set, his lines learned, offering no displays of overt temperament.