Sometimes I swear my favorite podcasts just know what I’m reading or watching. Last month, I was doing my usual Films I Love To Watch In October thing, checking Creepshow out of the library so many times that Blacklight is certain it’s because I have a movie boyfriend in it, laughing at the clothes and hair and Karswell in Casting the Runes and sprawling out on Mr Couch watching Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein on the weekends until Blacklight comes lurching out of the bedroom and into the living room like an Advil popping zombie. And then one day at Company X, I pop on the headphones and turn to the latest episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class to drown out Coworker 123 and find Holly and Tracy talking about the Bride herself, Miss Elsa Lanchester.

Now if you’ve read this blog before, the next part should not come as a surprise. The second my morning break rolled around?  I was logging into the Central Connecticut library system and placing an inter-library loan request for Elsa Lanchester’s autobiography Elsa Lanchester Herself and then heading to the cafeteria for tea.

Once Elsa Lanchester Herself arrived at my local library, I could not wait to get my hands on it. After all, Holly had been in ecstasies in the podcast. But would it be as awesome as I remembered when I found Elsa Lanchester Herself at a tag sale as a teenager and read it? Had I made a mistake getting rid of it in the Great Book Purge of 1998 when I got scared the wooden shelves in my closet had reached the breaking point?

But the book was in my hands and I started reading as I made Blacklight’s breakfast. And then put it down, and then read some more and put it down again. And this cycle of reading a bit and then put it down continued over a few weeks. Normally an inter-library loan that has me racing from work to the library to snap it gets consumed faster than Lay’s Honey BBQ chips on a buy one get one free special. Elsa Lanchester Herself was getting consumed like a bar of Cadbury Dark Chocolate, a bite here, a bite there, wrap it up and “Oh I have chocolate. Maybe I should eat a piece…”

I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t barreling through the book like I had at seventeen, cramming Elsa into my maw so fast I wasn’t getting everything there was to consume. I mean who wouldn’t devour a book about someone who was born to unmarried parents, raised in a loose fashion at odds with Edwardian society, studied dance in Paris under the doomed Isadora Duncan, had her own nightclub, moonlighted as a professional correspondent, met and married one of the great actors of all time and started in one of James Whale’s finest films? My teenage self loved reading Elsa Lanchester Herself. She was a Creative. A Bohemian. A rule breaker. So awesome. So very awesome.

Reading Elsa Lanchester Herself as an adult, I can see why it upset so many people and her late husband’s friends. Elsa Lanchester comes across as cuddly as a patch of nettles. Sometimes I wondered if she truly loved or cared about anything beyond living her life the exact opposite of her parents. Mom an anti-marriage, vegetarian with two children? Then marry, eat meat and don’t have children. And if that is true, is staying married to a person who seems to resent you and the marriage why Elsa Lanchester didn’t leave Charles Laughton. Because the love and bonds Elsa claims exist between herself and Charles? I can’t see them in their later years. What I do see is sadistic and sad. What kind of life is it being married to someone who can’t give you love and gets rid of everything you express fondness for? When Elsa talks about Charles selling a mask she treasured that turns out to be a very valuable and rare piece, I wanted to smack Charles and shake Elsa for not standing up for herself. And that’s just one of the many times I felt that urge.

I do agree with Stuff You Missed in History Class‘ Holly Frey that Elsa Lanchester Herself needs to be republished. Heck, I even liked the Facebook group. But maybe not for the same reasons. Elsa Lanchester Herself is a portrait of a very unique and interesting performer that no longer exists in our modern world. It’s also a look into a time where every choice both Elsa and her mother Biddy made was unusual and shocking. It gives a peek into making of one of the best horror movies of all time. And it makes me wish that someone would write a biography of Edith “Biddy” Lanchester who was just as fascinating as her daughter.