This is essentially a footnote to the preceding post. We discussed there Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946), a film that exercised an influence on the Mansion, according to the Imagineers' own testimony. And no wonder, since in its own way the Beast's home in the film is a thoroughly haunted house, enchanted and alive. One item in La Belle that we highlighted was the fireplace in the dining room, with its living busts on either side of the hearth:
If the Haunted Mansion Imagineers drew inspiration from Cocteau's film, I wonder if it's possible that Cocteau in turn drew some inspiration from a haunted mansion, specifically, Borley Rectory, once known as "the most haunted house in England."
As it happens, the dining room at Borley Rectory had a fireplace
with a striking pair of busts on either side of the hearth.
Borley Rectory was at the height of its fame in the early 1940's, thanks to a series of best-sellers by the famous "ghost hunter" Harry Price. Conceivably, Cocteau may have seen photos like these while doing research of his own into houses that were supposedly infected by the supernatural.
Of course, the similarity between the fireplaces could be purely coincidental, but it's fun to contemplate the possibility that a "real" haunted house influenced a film that in turn influenced our favorite haunted house.
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