William Claude Rains (10 November 1889 – 30 May 1967) was an English actor of stage and screen whose career spanned 46 years. After his American film debut with The Invisible Man (1933) he played in classic films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Wolf Man (1941), Casablanca (1942; as Captain Renault), Notorious (1946), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Rains was a four-time nominee for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, but never won.

Biography

Rains became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. He married six times, and was divorced from the first five of his wives: Isabel Jeans (married 1913–1915); Marie Hemingway (to whom Rains was married for less than a year in 1920); Beatrix Thomson (1924–8 April 1935); Frances Propper (9 April 1935 – 1956); and the classical pianist Agi Jambor (4 November 1959 – 1960). In 1960, he married Rosemary Clark Schrode, to whom he was married until her death on 31 December 1964. His only child, Jessica Rains, was born to him and Propper on 24 January 1938.

He acquired the 380-acre (1.5 km) Stock Grange Farm in West Bradford Township, Pennsylvania (just outside Coatesville) in 1941, and spent much of his time between film takes reading up on agricultural techniques. He sold the farm when his marriage to Propper ended in 1956. Rains spent his final years in Sandwich, New Hampshire. He died from an abdominal haemorrhage in Laconia on 30 May 1967, aged 77. He was buried at the Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough, New Hampshire.

Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, a biography by David J. Skal and Rains' daughter Jessica, was published in 2008.

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