Charles Laughton
Encyclopedia
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage
and film actor, screenwriter
, producer
and director
.
, England, the son of Robert Laughton, a Yorkshire hotel keeper, and his wife Elizabeth (née Conlon). His mother was a devout Roman Catholic and he attended Stonyhurst College
, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire
. He served during World War I (in which he was gassed
) first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment
.
He started work in the family hotel business, while participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Finally allowed by his family to become a drama student at RADA
in 1925, Laughton made his first professional stage appearance on April 28, 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at the London Gaiety Theatre
in May. Despite not having the looks for a romantic lead, he impressed audiences with his talent and played classical roles in two plays by Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. Laughton played the lead role of Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Sean O'Casey's "The Silver Tassie" in 1928 in London. He played the title role in Arnold Bennett's Mr Prohack (Elsa Lanchester
was also in the cast), Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in Alibi, the title role in Mr Pickwick after Charles Dickens, Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's On the Spot and William Marble in Payment Deferred. He took this last play across the Atlantic and in it he made his debut in the United States
on September 24, 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre
. He returned to London for the 1933–34 Old Vic Season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles (as Macbeth and Henry VIII, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Prospero in The Tempest). In 1936, he went to Paris and on May 9 appeared at the Comédie-Française
as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière
's Le Médecin malgré lui, the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he acted the part in French and received an ovation.
Laughton commenced his film career in England while still acting on the London stage. He took small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wife Elsa Lanchester
, Daydreams, Blue Bottles and The Tonic (all 1928) which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly
with Anna May Wong
in 1929. He appeared with Elsa Lanchester again in a "film revue", featuring assorted British variety acts, called Comets (1930) in which they duetted in 'The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie', and made two other early British talkies: Wolves with Dorothy Gish
(1930) from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, and Down River (1931) in which he played a murderous, half-oriental drug-smuggler.
His New York stage debut in 1931 immediately led to film offers and Laughton's first Hollywood film was The Old Dark House
(1932) with Boris Karloff
in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travellers in a creepy mansion in the Welsh mountains. He then played a demented submarine commander in The Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead
, Gary Cooper
and Cary Grant
and followed this with his best-remembered film role of that year as Nero
in Cecil B. DeMille
's The Sign of the Cross
. He also turned out a number of other memorable performances during that first Hollywood trip, repeating his stage role as a murderer in Payment Deferred
, playing H. G. Wells
's mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls
, and the meek raspberry-blowing clerk in the brief segment of If I Had a Million
that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch
. In all, he appeared in six Hollywood films during 1932.
His association with film director Alexander Korda
began in 1933 with The Private Life of Henry VIII
(loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII
), for which Laughton won an Academy Award
, the first British actor to do so. However, he continued to act occasionally in the theatre, including his American production of Life of Galileo
by (and with) Bertolt Brecht
.
Laughton soon gave up the stage in preference for a film career and returned to Hollywood where his next film was White Woman
(1933) in which he co-starred with Carole Lombard
as a Cockney
river trader in the Malaysian jungle. Then came The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) as Norma Shearer
's malevolent father; Les Misérables
(1935) as Javert, the police inspector; Mutiny on the Bounty
(1935) as Captain William Bligh
, one of his most famous screen roles, co-starring with Clark Gable
as Fletcher Christian
; and Ruggles of Red Gap
(1935) as the very English butler transported to early 1900s America. He was also signed to play Micawber in David Copperfield (1934) but after a few days shooting asked to be released from the part, as he did not feel suited to it, and was replaced by W. C. Fields.
Back in England, and again with Alexander Korda, he played the title role in Rembrandt (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, I, Claudius
, by Robert Graves
, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon
in a car crash. (Out-takes from this film provided the material for a BBC TV documentary in 1965 entitled The Epic That Never Was, narrated by Dirk Bogarde.)
After I, Claudius, he and the ex-patriate German film producer Erich Pommer
founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: Vessel of Wrath
(US Title The Beachcomber) (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham
, in which Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester
co-starred; St. Martin's Lane
(US Title Sidewalks of London
), a story about London street entertainers that also featured Vivien Leigh
and Rex Harrison
; and Jamaica Inn
, with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton
, based on a novel about Cornish smugglers by Daphne du Maurier
, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock
directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s. (Actually, Laughton more or less usurped direction of Jamaica Inn from Hitchcock, changing his own role from a minor character to the principal villain. Hitchcock later complained that he had not directed the film, but had "refereed" it.) The films produced were not successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy
when RKO Pictures
offered Laughton the title role of Quasimodo
in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1939). Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak of World War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company.
Laughton's early success in The Private Life of Henry VIII established him as one of the leading interpreters of the costume and historical drama parts for which he is best remembered (Nero, Henry VIII, Mr. Barrett, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo and others); he was also type-cast for arrogant, unscrupulous characters (Quasimodo was an exception).
He played an Italian vineyard owner in California in They Knew What They Wanted (1940); a South Seas patriarch in The Tuttles of Tahiti
(1942); an American admiral in Stand by for Action
(1942); a butler in Forever and a Day (1943); and an Australian bar-owner in The Man from Down Under
(1943). Simon Callow's 1987 biography quotes a number of contemporary reviews of Laughton's performances in these films. James Agate
, reviewing Forever and a Day, wrote: "Is there no-one at RKO to tell Charles Laughton when he is being plain bad?" (on the other hand, Bosley Crowther
of the New York Times declared that Forever and a Day boasted "superb performances".). C. A. Lejeune
, writes Callow, was "shocked" by the poor quality of Laughton's recent work: "One of the most painful screen phenomena of latter years", she wrote in The Observer, "has been the decline and fall of Charles Laughton."
On the other hand, David Shipman, in his book The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, said "Laughton was a total actor. His range was wide".
, in which he engaged himself most actively; in fact, while Renoir was still working in an early script, Laughton would talk to him about Alphonse Daudet
's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene of the film. He played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect
(1944), directed by Robert Siodmak
, who later became a good friend of his. He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist in Tales of Manhattan
(1942) and starred in an updated version of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost
in 1944.
Laughton appeared in two comedies with Deanna Durbin
, It Started with Eve
(1941) and Because of Him (1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate in Captain Kidd
(1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case
(1948). Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon in The Big Clock
(1948). He had supporting roles as a Nazi in pre-war Paris in Arch of Triumph
(1948), as a bishop in The Girl from Manhattan (1948), as a seedy go-between in The Bribe
(1949), and as a kindly widower in The Blue Veil
(1951). He played a Bible-reading pastor in the multi-story A Miracle Can Happen (1947), but his sequence was deleted and replaced with another featuring Dorothy Lamour
, and in this form the film was retitled On Our Merry Way
. However, an original print of A Miracle Can Happen was sent abroad for dubbing before the Laughton sequence was deleted, and in this form it was shown in Spain under the title Una Encuesta Llamada Milagro.
Laughton made his first color film in Paris as Inspector Jules Maigret in The Man on the Eiffel Tower
(1949) and, wrote the Monthly Film Bulletin, "appeared to overact" alongside Boris Karloff as a mad French nobleman in a version of Robert Louis Stevenson
's The Strange Door
in 1951. He played a tramp in O. Henry's Full House
(1952), in which he had a one-minute scene with Marilyn Monroe
. He became a pirate again, buffoon style this time, in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
(1952). He guest-starred in an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour on TV that also featured Abbot and Costello and that was notable for his delivery of the Gettysburg Address
. He played Herod Antipas
in Salome
(1953, with Rita Hayworth in the title role) and repeated his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess
(1953). He returned to England to star in Hobson's Choice (1954) directed by David Lean
. Kevin Brownlow's biography of David Lean (1996) reveals in Chapter 26 that Lean was a great admirer of Laughton and briefly considered him for the part of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai
, hoping that Laughton would lose weight for the role. Other possible contenders for the part included Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier, though in the end it went to Alec Guinness.
Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as Sir Wilfrid Robarts in the screen version of Agatha Christie
's play Witness for the Prosecution (1957).
He played a British admiral in Under Ten Flags
(1960) and worked for the only time with Laurence Olivier
in Spartacus (1960) as a wily Roman senator.
His final film was Advise and Consent
(1962), for which he received favorable comments for his performance as a southern US Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of Mississippi Senator John Stennis). Laughton worked on the film, which was directed by Otto Preminger
, while he was dying from metastatic renal cell carcinoma
(cancer of the kidney).
, starring Robert Mitchum
, Shelley Winters
and Lillian Gish
. The film is often cited among today's critics as one of the best of the 1950s, and has been selected by the United States National Film Registry
for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release, however, it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never had another chance to direct. The documentary Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter by Robert Gitt (2002) features preserved rushes and outtakes with Laughton's audible off-camera direction.
) - a stage adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
) and William Marble in Payment Deferred, in which he made his Lyceum Theatre (New York) debut in 1931.
In 1926, he played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production of Ferenc Molnár
's Liliom
(The play was musicalized in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein
as Carousel
, where Ficsur became Jigger Craigin, but Laughton never appeared in the musical version). While Laughton is most remembered for his film career, he continued to work in the theatre, as when, after the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933 as roles Macbeth
, Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard
, Prospero
in The Tempest
and Angelo in Measure for Measure
.
In America, Laughton worked closely with Bertolt Brecht
on a new English version of Brecht's play Galileo. Laughton played the title role at the play's premiere in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947 and later that year in New York. This staging was directed by Joseph Losey
. The processes by which Laughton painstakingly, over many weeks, created his Galileo—and incidentally, edited and translated the play along with Brecht—are detailed in an essay by Brecht, "Building Up A Part: Laughton's Galileo." Brecht's essay offers a sympathetic and detailed portrait of an actor at work.
Laughton had one of his most notable successes in the theatre by directing and playing the Devil
in Don Juan in Hell beginning in 1950. The piece is actually the third act sequence from George Bernard Shaw
's play Man and Superman
, frequently cut from productions to reduce its playing time, consisting of a philosophical debate between Don Juan
and the Devil with contributions from Doña Ana and the statue of Ana's father. Laughton conceived the piece as a staged reading and cast Charles Boyer
, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorehead
(billed as "The First Drama Quartette") in the other roles. Boyer won a special Tony Award
for his performance. The performance, recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks, is now available as an MP3 download.
He directed several plays on Broadway
. His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
, a full-length stage dramatization by Herman Wouk
of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny
. The play, starring Henry Fonda
as defense attorney Barney Greenwald, opened the same year as the film starring Humphrey Bogart
as Captain Queeg and José Ferrer
as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét
's John Brown's Body
, a full-length poem about the American Civil War
and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power
, Raymond Massey
(re-creating his film characterizations of Abraham Lincoln
and John Brown
), and Judith Anderson
. Laughton did not appear himself in either of these productions, but John Brown's Body was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks.
Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden
's The Party
at the New Theatre
which also had Elsa Lanchester
and Albert Finney
in the cast. He made his final theatre appearances as Nick Bottom
in A Midsummer Night's Dream
and as King Lear
at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear came in for particular lambasting by critics, with many reviews saying that the portly actor looked more like Old King Cole
than Shakespeare's creation, and critic Kenneth Tynan
wrote that Laughton's Nick Bottom "...behaves in a manner that has nothing to do with acting, although it perfectly hits off the demeanor of a rapscallion uncle dressed up to entertain the children at a Christmas
party". Although a British production of A Midsummer Night's Dream did air on television around this time, it was not the one with Laughton, but rather a 1958 production with Paul Rogers as Bottom.
Although he did not appear in any later plays, he continued to tour the US with staged readings, including a very successful appearance on the Stanford University
campus in 1960.
on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made such an impression with it in Ruggles of Red Gap.
He made several other spoken-word recordings, one of his most famous being his one-man album of Charles Dickens
's Mr. Pickwick's Christmas, a twenty-minute version of the Christmas chapter from Dickens's The Pickwick Papers
. It was first released by American Decca
in 1944 as a four-record 78-rpm set, but was afterward transferred to LP. It frequently appeared on LP with a companion piece, Decca's 1941 adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol
, starring Ronald Colman
as Scrooge. Both stories were released together on a Deutsche Grammophon
CD for Christmas 2005.
In 1943, Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story from St. Luke's Gospel, and this was released in 1995 on CD on a Nimbus Records
collection entitled Prima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past.
A Brunswick/American Decca LP entitled Readings from the Bible featured Laughton reading Garden of Eden, The Fiery Furnace, Noah's Ark, and David and Goliath. It was released in 1958. Laughton had previously included several Bible readings when he played the title role in the film Rembrandt.
Laughton was also heard narrating the story on the soundtrack album
of the film that he directed, Night of the Hunter, accompanied by the film's score. This album has also been released on CD.
Also, and derived from the film they made together, a complete radio show (18 June 1945) of The Canterville Ghost was broadcast which featured Laughton and Margaret O'Brien. It has been issued on a Pelican LP.
His wife Elsa Lanchester made three LPs in the 1950s: Songs for a Shuttered Parlour, Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room, and Cockney London. Laughton introduced the various numbers with spoken introductions on the first two and wrote the sleeve notes for the third.
An online version of the complete, two-LP Columbia Masterworks recording of the 1950 Broadway staging of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell was re-released [Saland Publishing] in April, 2009. It is available only as a download from various vendors.
However, none of Laughton's other record albums has been made available on CD as yet. A two-LP Capitol Records
album was released in 1962, the year of Laughton's death, entitled The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton. Taken from Laughton's one-man stage shows, it culls together dramatic readings from several sources. Three of the excerpts are broadcast annually on a Minnesota Public Radio
Thanksgiving
programme entitled Giving Thanks. The Story Teller won a Grammy in 1962 for Best Spoken Word Recording. However, although the album has yet to be released on compact disc, it can now be heard in its entirety online.
made his first of three appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show
, which garnered 72 million viewers (Ed Sullivan
was recuperating from a car accident). That same year, Laughton also hosted the first of two programs devoted to classical music entitled "Festival of Music", and telecast on the NBC
television anthology series Producers' Showcase
. He appeared multiple times on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford
.
In 1959, Laughton appeared in the episode "Eleanor" of the anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show
, broadcast over CBS.
One of his last performances was on the TV series Checkmate
, in which he played a missionary recently returned from China. He threw himself into the role, traveling to China for several months in order to better understand his character.
Bugs Bunny
spoofed Laughton playing Captain Bligh in Buccaneer Bunny
(1947), Laughton's Mutiny on the Bounty as Mutiny on the Bunny
(1948), The Sign of the Cross with Laughton as Nero in Roman Legion-Hare (1955), and as a spoiled king in Shishkabugs
(1962).
Laughton also appeared in the popular Western
TV series Wagon Train
.
, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became American citizens together in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death.
Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves
, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII
. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.
Laughton and Lanchester never had children, and years after Laughton's death, Lanchester published her autobiography, which alleged that this was because of Laughton's disinterest in fatherhood due to his being homosexual. While Laughton's homosexuality reportedly has been corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians, there is some dispute as to whether this was the reason that he and Lanchester did not have children.
Actress Maureen O'Hara
, a friend and co-star of Laughton, claimed that Laughton had told her that he and his wife never had children because of a botched abortion which Lanchester had early in her career while performing burlesque and that indeed his biggest regret was never having children of his own. In her own aforementioned autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged having two abortions in her youth (one of them, a child from Charles), though she didn't mention whether this left her incapable of becoming pregnant again. According to biographer Charles Higham, the reason she didn't have children was that she didn't feel fond of them.
The cremated remains of Charles Laughton are interred in the Court of Remembrance courtyard, at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery
in Los Angeles, California
.
for Mutiny on the Bounty
and Ruggles of Red Gap
in 1935.
Academy Awards
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and film actor, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
.
Early life and career
Laughton was born in Scarborough, YorkshireYorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, England, the son of Robert Laughton, a Yorkshire hotel keeper, and his wife Elizabeth (née Conlon). His mother was a devout Roman Catholic and he attended Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College is a Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is located on the Stonyhurst Estate near the village of Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley area of Lancashire, England, and occupies a Grade I listed building...
, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
. He served during World War I (in which he was gassed
Chemical warfare
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
) first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment
Northamptonshire Regiment
The Northamptonshire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1960. Its lineage is now continued by The Royal Anglian Regiment.-Formation:The regiment was formed as part of the reorganisation of the infantry by the Childers reforms...
.
He started work in the family hotel business, while participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Finally allowed by his family to become a drama student at RADA
Rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....
in 1925, Laughton made his first professional stage appearance on April 28, 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at the London Gaiety Theatre
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
in May. Despite not having the looks for a romantic lead, he impressed audiences with his talent and played classical roles in two plays by Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. Laughton played the lead role of Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Sean O'Casey's "The Silver Tassie" in 1928 in London. He played the title role in Arnold Bennett's Mr Prohack (Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
was also in the cast), Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in Alibi, the title role in Mr Pickwick after Charles Dickens, Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's On the Spot and William Marble in Payment Deferred. He took this last play across the Atlantic and in it he made his debut in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on September 24, 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre
Lyceum Theatre (New York)
The Lyceum Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 149 West 45th Street in midtown-Manhattan.It has the distinction of being the oldest surviving Broadway venue , the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in New York City, and the first Broadway theatre ever to be granted landmark status...
. He returned to London for the 1933–34 Old Vic Season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles (as Macbeth and Henry VIII, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Prospero in The Tempest). In 1936, he went to Paris and on May 9 appeared at the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's Le Médecin malgré lui, the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he acted the part in French and received an ovation.
Laughton commenced his film career in England while still acting on the London stage. He took small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wife Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
, Daydreams, Blue Bottles and The Tonic (all 1928) which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly
Piccadilly (film)
Piccadilly is a British film directed by Ewald André Dupont, written by Arnold Bennett and starring Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, and Jameson Thomas. The film was produced by British International Pictures and released by Wardour Films Ltd...
with Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong was an American actress, the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American to become an international star...
in 1929. He appeared with Elsa Lanchester again in a "film revue", featuring assorted British variety acts, called Comets (1930) in which they duetted in 'The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie', and made two other early British talkies: Wolves with Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress, and the younger sister of actress Lillian Gish.-Early life:...
(1930) from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, and Down River (1931) in which he played a murderous, half-oriental drug-smuggler.
His New York stage debut in 1931 immediately led to film offers and Laughton's first Hollywood film was The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
(1932) with Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travellers in a creepy mansion in the Welsh mountains. He then played a demented submarine commander in The Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
, Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
and Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
and followed this with his best-remembered film role of that year as Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
in Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
's The Sign of the Cross
The Sign of the Cross (film)
The Sign of the Cross is a pre-Code epic film released by Paramount Pictures, produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille from a screenplay by Waldemar Young and Sidney Buchman, and based on the original 1895 play by Wilson Barrett....
. He also turned out a number of other memorable performances during that first Hollywood trip, repeating his stage role as a murderer in Payment Deferred
Payment Deferred
Payment Deferred is a crime novel by C.S. Forester, first published in 1926.William Marble is a bank clerk living in south London, desperately worried about money and unable to control his wife Annie's spending. One evening without warning they are visited by his recently orphaned and very rich...
, playing H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
's mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls (1933 film)
Island of Lost Souls is an American science fiction horror film starring Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Bela Lugosi and Kathleen Burke as The Panther Woman. Produced by Paramount Pictures in 1933 from a script co-written by science fiction legend Philip Wylie, the movie was the...
, and the meek raspberry-blowing clerk in the brief segment of If I Had a Million
If I Had A Million
If I Had a Million is a Paramount Studios anthology film. There were seven directors: Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman Z. McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, and H. Bruce Humberstone...
that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
. In all, he appeared in six Hollywood films during 1932.
His association with film director Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
began in 1933 with The Private Life of Henry VIII
The Private Life of Henry VIII
The Private Life of Henry VIII is a 1933 film about Henry VIII, King of England. It was written by Lajos Biró and Arthur Wimperis, and directed by Sir Alexander Korda.Charles Laughton won the 1933 Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance as Henry...
(loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
), for which Laughton won an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, the first British actor to do so. However, he continued to act occasionally in the theatre, including his American production of Life of Galileo
Life of Galileo
Life of Galileo , also known as Galileo, is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. The first version of the play was written between 1937 and 1939; the second version was written between 1945–1947, in collaboration with Charles Laughton...
by (and with) Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
.
1933–1943
White Woman
White Woman is a 1933 film directed by Stuart Walker and starring Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, and Charles Bickford. A young widow remarries and accompanies her husband to his remote jungle rubber plantation. The film was based on the play Hangman's Whip by Norman Reilly Raine and Frank...
(1933) in which he co-starred with Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
as a Cockney
Cockney
The term Cockney has both geographical and linguistic associations. Geographically and culturally, it often refers to working class Londoners, particularly those in the East End...
river trader in the Malaysian jungle. Then came The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) as Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
's malevolent father; Les Misérables
Les Misérables (1935 film)
Les Misérables is a 1935 American drama film based upon the famous Victor Hugo novel of the same name. It was adapted by W. P. Lipscomb and directed by Richard Boleslawski...
(1935) as Javert, the police inspector; Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film)
Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Lloyd based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the Bounty.The film was one of the biggest hits of its time...
(1935) as Captain William Bligh
William Bligh
Vice Admiral William Bligh FRS RN was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. A notorious mutiny occurred during his command of HMAV Bounty in 1789; Bligh and his loyal men made a remarkable voyage to Timor, after being set adrift in the Bounty's launch by the mutineers...
, one of his most famous screen roles, co-starring with Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
as Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian was a master's mate on board the Bounty during William Bligh's fateful voyage to Tahiti for breadfruit plants...
; and Ruggles of Red Gap
Ruggles of Red Gap
Ruggles of Red Gap was serialized beginning December 26, 1914 in the Saturday Evening Post and became a best selling novel in 1915 by Harry Leon Wilson, adapted for the Broadway stage as a musical the same year, and made into a movie several times, most famously in 1935.In the comedy Western film...
(1935) as the very English butler transported to early 1900s America. He was also signed to play Micawber in David Copperfield (1934) but after a few days shooting asked to be released from the part, as he did not feel suited to it, and was replaced by W. C. Fields.
Back in England, and again with Alexander Korda, he played the title role in Rembrandt (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, I, Claudius
I, Claudius (film)
I, Claudius was the proposed 1937 film of the book I, Claudius. It was to have been produced by Alexander Korda, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Charles Laughton , Emlyn Williams , Flora Robson , and Merle Oberon , but it was dogged by ill-luck, culminating in a car accident involving...
, by Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon
Merle Oberon
Merle Oberon was an Indian-born British actress best known for her screen performances in The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Cowboy and the Lady . She began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII . She travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel...
in a car crash. (Out-takes from this film provided the material for a BBC TV documentary in 1965 entitled The Epic That Never Was, narrated by Dirk Bogarde.)
After I, Claudius, he and the ex-patriate German film producer Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as...
founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: Vessel of Wrath
The Vessel of Wrath
"The Vessel of Wrath" is a short story by W. Somerset Maugham. Written in 1931 it first appeared in the April 1931 edition of Hearst's International Cosmopolitan . Maugham often introduced short stories as a contribution to periodicals and then later included them in books or collected editions...
(US Title The Beachcomber) (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
, in which Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
co-starred; St. Martin's Lane
St. Martin's Lane
St. Martin's Lane is a street on the edge of Covent Garden in Central London, which runs from the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre.A narrow street with relatively little traffic, St...
(US Title Sidewalks of London
Sidewalks of London
Sidewalks of London, also known as St. Martin's Lane, is a 1938 British, black-and-white, comedy drama starring Charles Laughton as a busker or street entertainer who teams up with a talented pickpocket, played by Vivien Leigh. It also stars Ronald Shiner as the Barman...
), a story about London street entertainers that also featured Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...
and Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison
Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...
; and Jamaica Inn
Jamaica Inn (film)
Jamaica Inn is a 1939 film made by Alfred Hitchcock adapted from Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name, the first of three of du Maurier's works that Hitchcock adapted ....
, with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton
Robert Newton
Robert Newton was an English stage and film actor. Along with Errol Flynn, Newton was one of the most popular actors among the male juvenile audience of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially with British boys...
, based on a novel about Cornish smugglers by Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s. (Actually, Laughton more or less usurped direction of Jamaica Inn from Hitchcock, changing his own role from a minor character to the principal villain. Hitchcock later complained that he had not directed the film, but had "refereed" it.) The films produced were not successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
when RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...
offered Laughton the title role of Quasimodo
Quasimodo
Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by...
in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1939 American monochrome film starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo and Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda. It was directed by William Dieterle and produced by Pandro S. Berman...
(1939). Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak of World War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company.
Laughton's early success in The Private Life of Henry VIII established him as one of the leading interpreters of the costume and historical drama parts for which he is best remembered (Nero, Henry VIII, Mr. Barrett, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo and others); he was also type-cast for arrogant, unscrupulous characters (Quasimodo was an exception).
He played an Italian vineyard owner in California in They Knew What They Wanted (1940); a South Seas patriarch in The Tuttles of Tahiti
The Tuttles of Tahiti
The Tuttles of Tahiti is a 1942 film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Charles Laughton and Jon Hall. It was based on the novel No More Gas by James Norman Hall.-Plot:...
(1942); an American admiral in Stand by for Action
Stand by for Action
Stand by for Action is a 1942 war film directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy and Charles Laughton and featuring Walter Brennan. Suggested by a story by Laurence Kirk, and with an original story by Captain Harvey Haislip and R. C. Sherriff, the film's screenplay was...
(1942); a butler in Forever and a Day (1943); and an Australian bar-owner in The Man from Down Under
The Man from Down Under
The Man from Down Under is a 1943 drama film starring Charles Laughton as a man who raises two war orphans.-Plot:After the end of World War I, Australian soldier Jocko Wilson admires the spirit of a destitute Belgian orphan who fights a larger boy. He feeds the child, whom he names "Nipper", and...
(1943). Simon Callow's 1987 biography quotes a number of contemporary reviews of Laughton's performances in these films. James Agate
James Agate
James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...
, reviewing Forever and a Day, wrote: "Is there no-one at RKO to tell Charles Laughton when he is being plain bad?" (on the other hand, Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
of the New York Times declared that Forever and a Day boasted "superb performances".). C. A. Lejeune
C. A. Lejeune
Caroline Alice Lejeune was a British writer, best known as the film critic of The Observer from 1928 to 1960.-Family:...
, writes Callow, was "shocked" by the poor quality of Laughton's recent work: "One of the most painful screen phenomena of latter years", she wrote in The Observer, "has been the decline and fall of Charles Laughton."
On the other hand, David Shipman, in his book The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, said "Laughton was a total actor. His range was wide".
1943–1962
Laughton played a cowardly schoolmaster in occupied France in This Land is Mine (1943), by Jean RenoirJean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, in which he engaged himself most actively; in fact, while Renoir was still working in an early script, Laughton would talk to him about Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.- Early life :Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune...
's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene of the film. He played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect
The Suspect
The Suspect is a 1944 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak, set in Victorian times. It is based on the novel This Way Out, by James Ronald. Released by Universal Pictures, it tells the story of Philip Marshall , a kind but henpecked bank teller who strikes up an innocent friendship with a young...
(1944), directed by Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.-Early life:...
, who later became a good friend of his. He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist in Tales of Manhattan
Tales of Manhattan
Tales of Manhattan is a 1942 American anthology film directed by Julien Duvivier. Thirteen writers, including Ben Hecht, Alan Campbell, Ferenc Molnár, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Donald Ogden Stewart worked on the six stories in this film.-Cast:...
(1942) and starred in an updated version of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost
The Canterville Ghost
"The Canterville Ghost" is a popular short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887. It was later included in a collection of short stories entitled...
in 1944.
Laughton appeared in two comedies with Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....
, It Started with Eve
It Started with Eve
It Started with Eve is a 1941 musical romantic comedy film. A man's dying father wants to meet his new fiancée, but she is unavailable, so he substitutes a hat-check girl. Then the father unexpectedly recovers.Charles Previn and Hans J...
(1941) and Because of Him (1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate in Captain Kidd
Captain Kidd (1945 film)
Captain Kidd is a film starring Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, and John Carradine, directed by Rowland V. Lee, produced by Benedict Bogeaus and James Nasser, music conduced by Werner Janssen, and released by United Artists. The film has entered the public domain since the...
(1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case
The Paradine Case
The Paradine Case is a 1947 American courtroom drama film, set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick. The screenplay was written by Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht, from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the novel by Robert Smythe Hichens...
(1948). Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon in The Big Clock
The Big Clock (1948 film)
The Big Clock is a 1948 film noir thriller directed by John Farrow, adapted by renowned novelist-screenwriter Jonathan Latimer from the novel of the same name by Kenneth Fearing....
(1948). He had supporting roles as a Nazi in pre-war Paris in Arch of Triumph
Arch of Triumph (1948 film)
Arch of Triumph is a 1948 American war romance film made by Enterprise Productions. The film was directed by Lewis Milestone and adapted from the 1945 Erich Maria Remarque novel Arch of Triumph....
(1948), as a bishop in The Girl from Manhattan (1948), as a seedy go-between in The Bribe
The Bribe
The Bribe is an American crime film noir directed by Robert Z. Leonard and written by Marguerite Roberts, based on a story written by Frederick Nebel...
(1949), and as a kindly widower in The Blue Veil
The Blue Veil
The Blue Veil is a 1951 American drama film directed by Curtis Bernhardt. The screenplay by Norman Corwin is based on a story by François Campaux, which was adapted for the French language film Le Voile bleu in 1942.-Plot:...
(1951). He played a Bible-reading pastor in the multi-story A Miracle Can Happen (1947), but his sequence was deleted and replaced with another featuring Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour was an American film actress. She is best remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope .-Early life:Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Carmen Louise Dorothy...
, and in this form the film was retitled On Our Merry Way
On Our Merry Way
On Our Merry Way is an American comedy film, produced by Benedict Bogeaus and Burgess Meredith, and released by United Artists. At the time of its release, King Vidor and Leslie Fenton were credited with its direction, although the DVD lists John Huston and George Stevens, who assisted with one of...
. However, an original print of A Miracle Can Happen was sent abroad for dubbing before the Laughton sequence was deleted, and in this form it was shown in Spain under the title Una Encuesta Llamada Milagro.
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
The Man on the Eiffel Tower is a 1949 American mystery film directed by Burgess Meredith, Charles Laughton, Irving Allen and starring Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Meredith, and Robert Hutton. It is based on the 1931 novel La Tête d'un homme by Belgian writer Georges Simenon featuring his...
(1949) and, wrote the Monthly Film Bulletin, "appeared to overact" alongside Boris Karloff as a mad French nobleman in a version of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
's The Strange Door
The Strange Door
The Strange Door is a horror film, released by Universal Pictures. The film starred Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, and Sally Forrest. It was directed by Joseph Pevney and was based on the short story, The Sire de Maletroit's Door by Robert Louis Stevenson...
in 1951. He played a tramp in O. Henry's Full House
O. Henry's Full House
O. Henry's Full House is an anthology film made by 20th Century Fox, consisting of five separate stories by O. Henry. The film was produced by André Hakim and directed by five separate directors from five separate screenplays. The music score was composed by Alfred Newman...
(1952), in which he had a one-minute scene with Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
. He became a pirate again, buffoon style this time, in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd is a 1952 film starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, along with Charles Laughton, who reprised his role as the infamous pirate from the 1945 film Captain Kidd.-Plot:...
(1952). He guest-starred in an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour on TV that also featured Abbot and Costello and that was notable for his delivery of the Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery...
. He played Herod Antipas
Herod Antipas
Herod Antipater , known by the nickname Antipas, was a 1st-century AD ruler of Galilee and Perea, who bore the title of tetrarch...
in Salome
Salome (1953 film)
Salome is a Biblical epic film made in Technicolor by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by William Dieterle and produced by Buddy Adler from a screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Jesse Lasky Jr. The music score was by George Duning, the dance music by Daniele Amfitheatrof and the cinematography by...
(1953, with Rita Hayworth in the title role) and repeated his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess
Young Bess
Young Bess is a 1953 biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about the early life of Elizabeth I, from her turbulent childhood to the eve of her accession to the throne of England...
(1953). He returned to England to star in Hobson's Choice (1954) directed by David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
. Kevin Brownlow's biography of David Lean (1996) reveals in Chapter 26 that Lean was a great admirer of Laughton and briefly considered him for the part of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars William...
, hoping that Laughton would lose weight for the role. Other possible contenders for the part included Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier, though in the end it went to Alec Guinness.
Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as Sir Wilfrid Robarts in the screen version of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's play Witness for the Prosecution (1957).
He played a British admiral in Under Ten Flags
Under Ten Flags
Under Ten Flags is a 1960 Italian-American war film directed by Duilio Coletti. It was entered into the 10th Berlin International Film Festival.-Plot:...
(1960) and worked for the only time with Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
in Spartacus (1960) as a wily Roman senator.
His final film was Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent (film)
Advise & Consent is a 1962 American motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Allen Drury, published in 1959. The movie was adapted for the screen by Wendell Mayes and was directed by Otto Preminger...
(1962), for which he received favorable comments for his performance as a southern US Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of Mississippi Senator John Stennis). Laughton worked on the film, which was directed by Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
, while he was dying from metastatic renal cell carcinoma
Renal cell carcinoma
Renal cell carcinoma is a kidney cancer that originates in the lining of the proximal convoluted tubule, the very small tubes in the kidney that filter the blood and remove waste products. RCC is the most common type of kidney cancer in adults, responsible for approximately 80% of cases...
(cancer of the kidney).
The Night of the Hunter
In 1955, Laughton directed (but did not act in) The Night of the HunterThe Night of the Hunter (film)
The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. The film is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, adapted for the screen by James Agee and Laughton...
, starring Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
, Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
and Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
. The film is often cited among today's critics as one of the best of the 1950s, and has been selected by the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release, however, it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never had another chance to direct. The documentary Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter by Robert Gitt (2002) features preserved rushes and outtakes with Laughton's audible off-camera direction.
Theatre
Laughton made his London stage debut in Gogol's The Government Inspector (1926). He appeared in many West End plays in the following few years and his earliest successes on the stage were in roles like Hercule Poirot in Alibi (1928, the first actor to portray Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule PoirotHercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
) - a stage adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
) and William Marble in Payment Deferred, in which he made his Lyceum Theatre (New York) debut in 1931.
In 1926, he played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production of Ferenc Molnár
Ferenc Molnár
LanguageFerenc Molnár was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar...
's Liliom
Liliom
Liliom is a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It was very famous in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.- Plot :...
(The play was musicalized in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
as Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
, where Ficsur became Jigger Craigin, but Laughton never appeared in the musical version). While Laughton is most remembered for his film career, he continued to work in the theatre, as when, after the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933 as roles Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
, Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
, Prospero
Prospero
Prospero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
and Angelo in Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...
.
In America, Laughton worked closely with Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
on a new English version of Brecht's play Galileo. Laughton played the title role at the play's premiere in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947 and later that year in New York. This staging was directed by Joseph Losey
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...
. The processes by which Laughton painstakingly, over many weeks, created his Galileo—and incidentally, edited and translated the play along with Brecht—are detailed in an essay by Brecht, "Building Up A Part: Laughton's Galileo." Brecht's essay offers a sympathetic and detailed portrait of an actor at work.
Laughton had one of his most notable successes in the theatre by directing and playing the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
in Don Juan in Hell beginning in 1950. The piece is actually the third act sequence from George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's play Man and Superman
Man and Superman
Man and Superman is a four-act drama, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to calls for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905, but with the omission of the 3rd Act...
, frequently cut from productions to reduce its playing time, consisting of a philosophical debate between Don Juan
Don Juan
Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
and the Devil with contributions from Doña Ana and the statue of Ana's father. Laughton conceived the piece as a staged reading and cast Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...
(billed as "The First Drama Quartette") in the other roles. Boyer won a special Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for his performance. The performance, recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks, is now available as an MP3 download.
He directed several plays on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a two-act play by Herman Wouk, which he adapted from his own novel, The Caine Mutiny.Wouk's novel covered a long stretch of time aboard the USS Caine, a Navy minesweeper in the Pacific...
, a full-length stage dramatization by Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny is a 1952 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships...
. The play, starring Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
as defense attorney Barney Greenwald, opened the same year as the film starring Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
as Captain Queeg and José Ferrer
José Ferrer
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...
as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...
's John Brown's Body
John Brown's Body (poem)
John Brown's Body is an epic American poem written by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its title references the radical abolitionist John Brown, who raided Harpers Ferry in West Virginia in the fall of 1859. He was captured and hanged later that year, and his name and rebellion inspired the civil war song...
, a full-length poem about the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, Raymond Massey
Raymond Massey
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
(re-creating his film characterizations of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
and John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
), and Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
. Laughton did not appear himself in either of these productions, but John Brown's Body was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks.
Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden
Jane Arden (director)
Jane Arden was a Welsh-born film director, actor, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter, and poet.-Early career:...
's The Party
The Party (1958 play)
The Party is a play by the British dramatist, actor and director Jane Arden which was first staged at the New Theatre, London on 28 May 1958. The play was directed by Charles Laughton and starred, in addition to Laughton himself, Albert Finney, Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester, Ann Lynn, Joyce...
at the New Theatre
Noël Coward Theatre
The Noël Coward Theatre, formerly known as the Albery Theatre, is a West End theatre on St. Martin's Lane in the City of Westminster. It opened on 12 March 1903 as the New Theatre and was built by Sir Charles Wyndham behind Wyndham's Theatre which was completed in 1899. The building was designed by...
which also had Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
and Albert Finney
Albert Finney
Albert Finney is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films in the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television....
in the cast. He made his final theatre appearances as Nick Bottom
Nick Bottom
Nick Bottom is a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who provides comic relief throughout the play, and is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of an ass by the elusive Puck within the play.- Overview :...
in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
and as King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear came in for particular lambasting by critics, with many reviews saying that the portly actor looked more like Old King Cole
Old King Cole
"Old King Cole" is an English nursery rhyme. The historical identity of King Cole has been much debated and several candidates have been advanced as possibilities...
than Shakespeare's creation, and critic Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...
wrote that Laughton's Nick Bottom "...behaves in a manner that has nothing to do with acting, although it perfectly hits off the demeanor of a rapscallion uncle dressed up to entertain the children at a Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
party". Although a British production of A Midsummer Night's Dream did air on television around this time, it was not the one with Laughton, but rather a 1958 production with Paul Rogers as Bottom.
Although he did not appear in any later plays, he continued to tour the US with staged readings, including a very successful appearance on the Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
campus in 1960.
Recordings
Laughton's voice first appeared on 78-rpm records with the release of five British Regal Zonophone 10-inch discs entitled Voice of the Stars issued annually from 1934 to 1938. These featured short soundtrack snippets from the year's top films. He is heard on all five records in, respectively, The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, I, Claudius (curiously, since this film was unfinished and thus never released), and Vessel of Wrath. In 1937 he recorded Lincoln's Gettysburg AddressGettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery...
on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made such an impression with it in Ruggles of Red Gap.
He made several other spoken-word recordings, one of his most famous being his one-man album of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's Mr. Pickwick's Christmas, a twenty-minute version of the Christmas chapter from Dickens's The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
. It was first released by American Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
in 1944 as a four-record 78-rpm set, but was afterward transferred to LP. It frequently appeared on LP with a companion piece, Decca's 1941 adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
, starring Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
as Scrooge. Both stories were released together on a Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
CD for Christmas 2005.
In 1943, Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story from St. Luke's Gospel, and this was released in 1995 on CD on a Nimbus Records
Nimbus Records
Nimbus Records is a British record company specializing in classical music recordings.Nimbus was founded in 1972 by the late bass singer Numa Labinsky and the brothers Michael and Gerald Reynolds and has traditionally been based at the Wyastone Leys mansion site, near Monmouth and the English/Welsh...
collection entitled Prima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past.
A Brunswick/American Decca LP entitled Readings from the Bible featured Laughton reading Garden of Eden, The Fiery Furnace, Noah's Ark, and David and Goliath. It was released in 1958. Laughton had previously included several Bible readings when he played the title role in the film Rembrandt.
Laughton was also heard narrating the story on the soundtrack album
Soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...
of the film that he directed, Night of the Hunter, accompanied by the film's score. This album has also been released on CD.
Also, and derived from the film they made together, a complete radio show (18 June 1945) of The Canterville Ghost was broadcast which featured Laughton and Margaret O'Brien. It has been issued on a Pelican LP.
His wife Elsa Lanchester made three LPs in the 1950s: Songs for a Shuttered Parlour, Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room, and Cockney London. Laughton introduced the various numbers with spoken introductions on the first two and wrote the sleeve notes for the third.
An online version of the complete, two-LP Columbia Masterworks recording of the 1950 Broadway staging of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell was re-released [Saland Publishing] in April, 2009. It is available only as a download from various vendors.
However, none of Laughton's other record albums has been made available on CD as yet. A two-LP Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
album was released in 1962, the year of Laughton's death, entitled The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton. Taken from Laughton's one-man stage shows, it culls together dramatic readings from several sources. Three of the excerpts are broadcast annually on a Minnesota Public Radio
Minnesota Public Radio
Minnesota Public Radio , is the flagship National Public Radio member network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, Classical Music and The Current, MPR operates a 42-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest serving over 8 million people...
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
programme entitled Giving Thanks. The Story Teller won a Grammy in 1962 for Best Spoken Word Recording. However, although the album has yet to be released on compact disc, it can now be heard in its entirety online.
Television
Laughton was the fill-in host on September 9, 1956, when Elvis PresleyElvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
made his first of three appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
, which garnered 72 million viewers (Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...
was recuperating from a car accident). That same year, Laughton also hosted the first of two programs devoted to classical music entitled "Festival of Music", and telecast on the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television anthology series Producers' Showcase
Producers' Showcase
Producers' Showcase is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth Monday at 8 p.m. ET for three seasons, beginning October...
. He appeared multiple times on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford
The Ford Show
The Ford Show is a half-hour comedy/variety program, starring singer and folk humorist Tennessee Ernie Ford, which aired in color on NBC television on Thursday evenings from October 4, 1956 to June 29, 1961....
.
In 1959, Laughton appeared in the episode "Eleanor" of the anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show
The Joseph Cotten Show
The Joseph Cotten Show is an American anthology series series hosted by and occasionally starring Joseph Cotten. The series, which first aired on NBC, aired 31 episodes from September 14, 1956, to September 13, 1957...
, broadcast over CBS.
One of his last performances was on the TV series Checkmate
Checkmate (TV series)
Checkmate is an American detective television series starring Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot, and Doug McClure. The show aired on CBS Television from 1960 to 1962 for a total of 70 episodes and was produced by Jack Benny's production company, "JaMco Productions" in co-operation with Revue...
, in which he played a missionary recently returned from China. He threw himself into the role, traveling to China for several months in order to better understand his character.
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
spoofed Laughton playing Captain Bligh in Buccaneer Bunny
Buccaneer Bunny
Buccaneer Bunny is a 1947 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, released in 1948, directed by Friz Freleng. It features Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, the latter known in this picture as "Sea-Goin' Sam", a pirate. All voice characterizations in this cartoon are by Mel Blanc...
(1947), Laughton's Mutiny on the Bounty as Mutiny on the Bunny
Mutiny On The Bunny
Mutiny On The Bunny is a Looney Tunes cartoon short starring Bugs Bunny, directed by Friz Freleng and released by Warner Brothers studios in 1950....
(1948), The Sign of the Cross with Laughton as Nero in Roman Legion-Hare (1955), and as a spoiled king in Shishkabugs
Shishkabugs
Shishkabugs is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. The title of the short is a play on shish kebab, a type of grilled meat....
(1962).
Laughton also appeared in the popular Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
TV series Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
.
Private life
In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa LanchesterElsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became American citizens together in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death.
Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves
Anne of Cleves
Anne of Cleves was a German noblewoman and the fourth wife of Henry VIII of England and as such she was Queen of England from 6 January 1540 to 9 July 1540. The marriage was never consummated, and she was not crowned queen consort...
, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII
The Private Life of Henry VIII
The Private Life of Henry VIII is a 1933 film about Henry VIII, King of England. It was written by Lajos Biró and Arthur Wimperis, and directed by Sir Alexander Korda.Charles Laughton won the 1933 Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance as Henry...
. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.
Laughton and Lanchester never had children, and years after Laughton's death, Lanchester published her autobiography, which alleged that this was because of Laughton's disinterest in fatherhood due to his being homosexual. While Laughton's homosexuality reportedly has been corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians, there is some dispute as to whether this was the reason that he and Lanchester did not have children.
Actress Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...
, a friend and co-star of Laughton, claimed that Laughton had told her that he and his wife never had children because of a botched abortion which Lanchester had early in her career while performing burlesque and that indeed his biggest regret was never having children of his own. In her own aforementioned autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged having two abortions in her youth (one of them, a child from Charles), though she didn't mention whether this left her incapable of becoming pregnant again. According to biographer Charles Higham, the reason she didn't have children was that she didn't feel fond of them.
The cremated remains of Charles Laughton are interred in the Court of Remembrance courtyard, at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...
in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
Awards and nominations
Laughton won the New York Film Critics Circle AwardsNew York Film Critics Circle Awards 1935
The 1st New York Film Critics Circle Awards, announced on 2 January 1936, presented March 2, 1936, honored the best filmmaking of 1935.-Best Actor:*Charles Laughton – Mutiny on the Bounty and Ruggles of Red Gap...
for Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty
The mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny that occurred aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the...
and Ruggles of Red Gap
Ruggles of Red Gap
Ruggles of Red Gap was serialized beginning December 26, 1914 in the Saturday Evening Post and became a best selling novel in 1915 by Harry Leon Wilson, adapted for the Broadway stage as a musical the same year, and made into a movie several times, most famously in 1935.In the comedy Western film...
in 1935.
Academy Awards
- 1933 Won Best Actor in a Leading RoleAcademy Award for Best ActorPerformance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
, The Private Life of Henry VIIIThe Private Life of Henry VIIIThe Private Life of Henry VIII is a 1933 film about Henry VIII, King of England. It was written by Lajos Biró and Arthur Wimperis, and directed by Sir Alexander Korda.Charles Laughton won the 1933 Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance as Henry... - 1936 Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Mutiny on the BountyMutiny on the Bounty (1935 film)Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Lloyd based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the Bounty.The film was one of the biggest hits of its time...
- 1958 Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Witness for the Prosecution
Actor
- 1926: The Revizor [written] by Nikolai GogolNikolai GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
-
- first appearance, debut on the London stage (aka The Government Inspector)
- 1928: AlibiAlibi (play)Alibi is a 1928 play by Michael Morton based on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a novel by British crime writer Agatha Christie.It opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London's West End on May 15, 1928, starring Charles Laughton as Hercule Poirot. It was deemed a success and ran for 250...
adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
by Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
- 1928: Alibi
- police drama, he is the first actor to play detectiveDetectiveA detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
Hercule PoirotHercule PoirotHercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
- 1928: The Silver TassieThe Silver Tassie (play)The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones,...
(premiere) - 1931: Payment DeferredPayment DeferredPayment Deferred is a crime novel by C.S. Forester, first published in 1926.William Marble is a bank clerk living in south London, desperately worried about money and unable to control his wife Annie's spending. One evening without warning they are visited by his recently orphaned and very rich...
adapted from the novel by C. S. ForesterC. S. ForesterCecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...
- 1928: The Silver Tassie
- debut on the New York stage
- 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
by Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
- 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
- police drama, Laughton is also the director (American version of Alibi)
- 1933: Island of Lost Souls (1933 film) with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi.
- 1936: Rembrandt adapted from biography of great artist Rembrandt. Charles Laughton played a Rembrandt van Rijn
- 1939: The Hunchback of Notre'dam adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo
- 1947: GalileoLife of GalileoLife of Galileo , also known as Galileo, is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. The first version of the play was written between 1937 and 1939; the second version was written between 1945–1947, in collaboration with Charles Laughton...
by Bertolt BrechtBertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the... - 1950: The Cherry OrchardThe Cherry OrchardThe Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
by Anton ChekhovAnton ChekhovAnton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics... - 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell, the third act of Man and Superman by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
- drama, Laughton is also the director
- 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
- 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
- comedy, Laughton is also the director
- 1959: King LearKing LearKing Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
by William ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
- 1959: King Lear
- classic tragedy
- first appearance, debut on the London stage (aka The Government Inspector)
Director
- 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
by Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
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- police drama, Laughton also acts in the play.
- 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell (the third act of Man and Superman) by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
- 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell (the third act of Man and Superman) by George Bernard Shaw
- drama, Laughton also acts in the play.
- 1953: John Brown's BodyJohn Brown's Body"John Brown's Body" is an American marching song about the abolitionist John Brown. The song was popular in the Union during the American Civil War. The tune arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the 19th century...
, adapted by Laughton from Stephen Vincent BenétStephen Vincent BenétStephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...
- 1953: John Brown's Body
- with Judith AndersonJudith AndersonDame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
- 1955: The Night of the HunterThe Night of the Hunter (film)The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. The film is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, adapted for the screen by James Agee and Laughton...
. Adapted by James AgeeJames AgeeJames Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
and Starring Robert MitchumRobert MitchumRobert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
and Shelley WintersShelley WintersShelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
in 1953 Davis Grubb's story
- 1955: The Night of the Hunter
- police drama, Laughton also acts in the play.
- 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
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- comedy, Laughton also acts in the play
- 1954–1955: The Caine Mutiny Court Martial adapted from the novel by Herman WoukHerman WoukHerman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
- 1954–1955: The Caine Mutiny Court Martial adapted from the novel by Herman Wouk
- drama, with Henry FondaHenry FondaHenry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, transferred in 1954 to the screen by Edward DmytrykEdward DmytrykEdward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...
- comedy, Laughton also acts in the play
External links
- Official Charles Laughton Website
- Rooting for Laughton: Laughtonians of the world, unite! (Weblog)
- Gay Greats