 On loan to Columbia Pictures, he portrayed a corrupt U.S. senator in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor.For Warner Bros., he played Dr. Alexander Tower, who commits murder-suicide to spare his daughter a life of insanity in "Kings Row" (1942) and the cynical police chief Captain Renault in "Casablanca" (also 1942).On loan again, Rains played the title character in Universal's remake of "Phantom of the Opera" (1943).