He started work in the family hotel, though also participating in amateur theatrical productions in Scarborough. He was permitted by his family to become a drama student atRADA in 1925, where actorClaude Rains was one of his teachers. Laughton made his first professional appearance on 28 April 1926 at theBarnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedyThe Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at London'sGaiety Theatre in May. He impressed audiences with his talent and had classical roles in two Chekov plays,The Cherry Orchard andThe Three Sisters. Laughton played the lead role as Harry Hegan in the world premiere ofSeán O'Casey'sThe Silver Tassie in 1928 in London. He played the title roles in Arnold Bennett'sMr Prohack (Elsa Lanchester was also in the cast) and asSamuel Pickwick inMr. Pickwick at theTheatre Royal (1928–29) in London.[8][9]
He played Tony Perelli inEdgar Wallace'sOn the Spot and William Marble inPayment Deferred. He took the last role across the Atlantic and made his United States debut on 24 September 1931, at theLyceum Theatre. He returned to London for the 1933–34 Old Vic season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles (as Macbeth, Henry VIII, Angelo inMeasure for Measure and Prospero inThe Tempest) and also as Lopakhin inThe Cherry Orchard, Canon Chasuble inThe Importance of Being Earnest, and Tattle inLove for Love. In 1936, he went to Paris and on 9 May appeared at theComédie-Française as Sganarelle in the second act ofMolière'sLe Médecin malgré lui, the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he performed the role in French and received an ovation.[10]
Laughton commenced his film career in Great Britain while still acting on the London stage. He also accepted small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wifeElsa Lanchester,Daydreams,Blue Bottles, andThe Tonic (all 1928), which had been specially written for her byH. G. Wells and were directed byIvor Montagu. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent filmPiccadilly withAnna May Wong in 1929. He appeared with Lanchester again inComets (1930), afilm revue featuring assorted British variety acts, in which they sang a duet, "The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie". He made two other early British talkies:Wolves withDorothy Gish (1930) from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, andDown River (1931), in which he played a drug-smuggling ship's captain.
The films produced were not commercially successful enough, and the company was rescued from bankruptcy only whenRKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role (Quasimodo) inThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), withJamaica Inn co-star O'Hara. Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak ofWorld War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company. Laughton's early success inThe Private Life of Henry VIII established him as one of the leading interpreters of the costume and historical drama roles for which he is best remembered (Nero, Henry VIII, Mr. Barrett, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo, and others); he was also type-cast as arrogant, unscrupulous characters.[citation needed]
C. A. Lejeune, wrote Callow, was "shocked" by the poor quality of Laughton's work of that period: "One of the most painful screen phenomena of latter years", she wrote inThe Observer, "has been the decline and fall of Charles Laughton." On the other hand,David Shipman, in his bookThe Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, said "Laughton was a total actor. His range was wide".[13]
Laughton played a cowardly schoolmaster inoccupied France inThis Land Is Mine (1943), byJean Renoir, in which he engaged himself most actively;[14] in fact, while Renoir was still working on an early script, Laughton would talk aboutAlphonse Daudet's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene for the film.[15] Laughton played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife inThe Suspect (1944), directed byRobert Siodmak, who would become a good friend.[16] He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist inTales of Manhattan (1942) and starred inThe Canterville Ghost, based onthe Oscar Wilde story in 1944.
Laughton appeared in two comedies withDeanna Durbin,It Started with Eve (1941) andBecause of Him (1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate inCaptain Kidd (1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock'sThe Paradine Case (1947). Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon inThe Big Clock (1948). He had supporting roles as a Nazi in pre-war Paris inArch of Triumph (1948), as a bishop inThe Girl from Manhattan (1948), as a seedy go-between inThe Bribe (1949), and as a kindly widower inThe Blue Veil (1951). He played a Bible-reading pastor in the multi-storyA Miracle Can Happen (1947), but his piece wound up being cut and replaced with another featuringDorothy Lamour, and in this form the film was retitled asOn Our Merry Way. However, an original print ofA Miracle Can Happen was sent abroad for dubbing before the Laughton sequence was deleted, and in this form it was shown in Spain asUna Encuesta Llamada Milagro.
In 1955, Laughton directedThe Night of the Hunter, starringRobert Mitchum,Shelley Winters andLillian Gish, and produced by his friendPaul Gregory. The film has been cited among critics as one of the best of the 1950s,[17] and has been selected by the United StatesNational Film Registry for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never directed again. The documentaryCharles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter by Robert Gitt (2002) features preserved rushes and outtakes with Laughton's audible off-camera direction.[18]
Laughton had intended to follow upThe Night of the Hunter with an adaptation ofNorman Mailer'sThe Naked and the Dead.Terry andDennis Sanders were hired as writers, and press releases announced that Robert Mitchum was to star and thatWalter Schumann would compose the score.[19][20] Following the box-office failure ofThe Night of the Hunter, Laughton was replaced byRaoul Walsh as director onthe film and recruited an uncredited writer to rewrite the Sanders brothers' screenplay.[21][22]
Laughton made hisLondon stage debut in Gogol'sThe Government Inspector (1926). He appeared in manyWest End plays in the following few years and his earliest successes on the stage were asHercule Poirot inAlibi (1928); he was the first actor to portray the Belgian detective in this stage adaptation ofThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and as William Marble inPayment Deferred, making his Lyceum Theatre (New York) debut in 1931.[24]
Charles Laughton in 1940
In 1926, he played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production ofFerenc Molnár'sLiliom (The play became a musical in 1945 byRodgers and Hammerstein asCarousel, 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 ofThe Private Life of Henry VIII he appeared at theOld Vic Theatre in 1933 asMacbeth, Lopakin inThe Cherry Orchard,Prospero inThe Tempest andAngelo inMeasure for Measure. In the US, Laughton worked withBertolt Brecht on a new English version of Brecht's playGalileo. 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 byJoseph 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."[25]
Laughton had one of his most notable successes in the theatre by directing and playing the Devil inDon Juan in Hell beginning in 1950. The piece is actually the third act sequence fromGeorge Bernard Shaw's playMan and Superman, frequently cut from productions to reduce its playing time, consisting of a philosophical debate betweenDon 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 castCharles Boyer,Cedric Hardwicke andAgnes Moorehead (billed as "The First Drama Quartette") in the other roles. Boyer won a specialTony Award for his performance.[26]
Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star inJane Arden'sThe Party at theNew Theatre which also hadElsa Lanchester andAlbert Finney in the cast. He made his final appearances on stage asNick Bottom inA Midsummer Night's Dream, and asKing Lear at theShakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear was lambasted by critics, andKenneth 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 he did not appear in any later plays, Laughton toured the US with staged readings, including a successful appearance on theStanford University campus in 1960.[citation needed]
Laughton's voice, equally capable of a penetrating, theatre-filling shout and a soft, velvety tone, first appeared on 78-rpm records with the release of five British Regal Zonophone 10-inch discs entitledVoice 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), andVessel of Wrath. In 1937 he recorded Lincoln'sGettysburg Address on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made a strong impression with it inRuggles of Red Gap.
He made several other spoken-word recordings, one of his most famous being his one-man album ofCharles Dickens'sMr. Pickwick's Christmas, a twenty-minute version of the Christmas chapter from Dickens'sThe Pickwick Papers. It was first released by AmericanDecca 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'sA Christmas Carol, starringRonald Colman as Scrooge. Both stories were released together on aDeutsche Grammophon CD for Christmas 2005.
In 1943, Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story fromSt. Luke's Gospel, and this was released in 1995 on CD on aNimbus Records collection entitledPrima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past. A Brunswick/American Decca LP entitledReadings 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 filmRembrandt. Laughton also narrated 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) ofThe Canterville Ghost was broadcast which featured Laughton and Margaret O'Brien. It has been issued on a Pelican LP.[citation needed]
A two-LPCapitol Records album was released in 1962, the year of Laughton's death, entitledThe Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton. Taken from Laughton's one-man stage shows, it compiles dramatic readings from several sources. Three of the excerpts are broadcast annually on aMinnesota Public RadioThanksgiving program entitledGiving Thanks.The Story Teller won aGrammy in 1962 forBest Spoken Word Recording. Although the album has yet to be released on compact disc, it can now be heard in its entirety online.[28]
Laughton was the fill-in host on 9 September 1956, whenElvis Presley made his first of three appearances onCBS'sThe Ed Sullivan Show, which garnered 60.7 million viewers (Ed Sullivan was recuperating from a car accident). That same year, Laughton hosted the first of two programmes devoted to classical music entitled "Festival of Music", and telecast on theNBCtelevision anthology seriesProducers' Showcase. One of his last performances was onCheckmate, in which he played a missionary recently returned from China. He threw himself into the role, travelling to China for several months to better understand his character.[29]
In 1927, Laughton began a relationship withElsa Lanchester, at the time a castmate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, includingRembrandt (1936),Tales of Manhattan (1942),The Vessel of Wrath (1938), andThe Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayedAnne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton inThe Private Life of Henry VIII. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances inWitness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.
Laughton'sbisexuality was corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians.[30][31][32][33] Hollywood procurer and prostituteScotty Bowers alleged in his memoirFull Service that Laughton was in love withTyrone Power and that his sex life was exclusively homosexual.[34] ActressMaureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, disputed the contention that his sexuality was the reason Laughton and Lanchester did not have children, saying Laughton told her he had wanted children but that it had not been possible because of a botched abortion that Lanchester had early in her career of performingburlesque.[35] In her autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged two abortions in her youth—one of the pregnancies purportedly by Laughton—but did not mention infertility.[36] According to her biographer, Charles Higham, the reason she did not have children was that she did not want any.[37]
Laughton owned an estate on the bluffs above Pacific Coast Highway at 14954 Corona Del Mar in Pacific Palisades.[38] The property suffered a landslide in 1944, referenced byBertolt Brecht in his poem "Garden in Progress".[39] Laughton was aDemocrat and supported the campaign ofAdlai Stevenson during the1952 presidential election.[40]
English actorDaniel Day-Lewis cited Laughton as one of his inspirations, saying: "He was probably the greatest film actor who came from that period of time. He had something quite remarkable. His generosity as an actor; he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you cannot take your eyes off him."[47]
^Burton, Peter (1998).Six Inches of Bath Water: One Hundred Years of Scarborough College in Memories & Photographs, 1898-1998 (First ed.). Norwich: Michael Russell. p. 15.ISBN085955239X.
^RonaldBruceMeyer.com"1 July Almanac". Archived from the original on 8 May 2006. Retrieved22 March 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Retrieved 12 August 2007.
^David ShipmanThe Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, London: Macdonald, 1989, p.353
^Lourié, Eugène (1985)My Work in Films. San Diego: Harcourt Brace JovanovichISBN0-15-164019-X (Lourié, who worked after hours to work on the decors, once found Laughton working after hours to get used to move in the scenery.)
^Sesonske, Alexander (1996)Persistence of Vision (Maspeth), no. 12–13, 1996
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 26892-26893). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
Parker, John, ed. (1947).Who's Who in the Theatre 10th revised edition. London. pp. 892–3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Singer, Kurt (1954).The Charles Laughton Story. London: John C. Winston Company.
Tell Me a Story (1957) andThe Fabulous Country (1962). Two literary anthologies selected by Charles Laughton. They contain pieces which were presented by him in his reading tours across America, with written introductions which give some insight about Laughton's thoughts. This selection presents texts from the Bible,Charles Dickens,Thomas Wolfe,Ray Bradbury, andJames Thurber to name just a few.
Diverse authors, articles in The Stonyhurst magazine:Charles Laughton at Stonyhurst by David Knight (Volume LIV, No. 501, 2005),Charles Laughton. A Talent in Bloom (1899–1931), by Gloria Porta (Volume LIV, No. 502, 2006)
