Birthday:
1 July 1899, Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, UK
Height:
5' 8" (1.73 m)
Biography
Son of Robert Laughton and Elizabeth Conlon. Educated
at Stonyhurst, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal).
First appearance on stage, 1926. Formed own film company, Mayflower
Pictures Corp., with Erich Pommer in 1937. Became American citizen 1950.
A consummate artist, Laughton achieved great success on stage and film,
with many staged readings (particularly of George Bernard Shaw) to his
credit
Laughton was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA) and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. He played
a wide range of classical and modern parts, making a big impact in
Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Hollywood, but
he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on some of the most notable British films of the era, including The Private Life of Henry VIII.
Among Laughton's biggest film-hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap, Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Big Clock. In his later career, he took up stage directing, notably in the Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, in which he also starred. He directed the acclaimed thriller The Night of the Hunter. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death. They had no children.
1933–1943
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 Malayan jungle. Then came The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) as Norma Shearer's character's malevolent father (although Laughton was only three years older than Shearer); Les Misérables (1935) as Inspector Javert; one of his most famous screen roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) as Captain William Bligh, 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 signed to play Micawber in David Copperfield (1934), but after a few days shooting asked to be released from the part and was replaced by W.C. Fields.[citation needed]
Back in the UK, and again with 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. 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 his wife, Elsa Lanchester, co-starred; St. Martin's Lane (US Title Sidewalks of London), about London street entertainers, which featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and Jamaica Inn, with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton, about Cornish smugglers, based on Daphne du Maurier's novel, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s.
The films produced were not commercially successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy only when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role (Quasimodo) in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), with Jamaica Inn co-star O'Hara. 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.[citation needed]
He largely moved away from historical parts when 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); and an American admiral during World War II in Stand by for Action (1942). He played a Victorian 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".[4]
C.A. Lejeune,
wrote 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".[5]
1943–1962
Laughton played a cowardly schoolmaster in occupied France in This Land is Mine (1943), by Jean Renoir, in which he engaged himself most actively;[6] in fact, while Renoir was still working on an early script, Laughton would talk about Alphonse Daudet's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene for the film.[7] Laughton played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak, who would become a good friend.[8] 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 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 piece wound up being cut and replaced with another featuring Dorothy Lamour, and in this form the film was retitled as 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 as Una Encuesta Llamada Milagro.
Laughton made his first colour film in Paris as Inspector 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). He became a pirate again, buffoon style this time, in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952). Laughton made a guest appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour (featuring Abbott and Costello), in which he delivered the Gettysburg Address. In 1953 he played Herod Antipas in Salome and repeated his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess (1953).
He returned to Britain to star in Hobson's Choice (1954), directed by David Lean. Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role in Witness for the Prosecution (1957). He played a British admiral in Under Ten Flags (1960) and worked with Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (1960). His final film was Advise and Consent
(1962), for which he received favourable 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 (kidney cancer).[9]
Awards and nominations
Laughton won the New York Film Critics' Circle Awards for Mutiny on the Bounty and Ruggles of Red Gap in 1935.
- Academy Awards
- 1933: Won Best Actor in a Leading Role, The Private Life of Henry VIII
- 1936: Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Mutiny on the Bounty
- 1958: Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Witness for the Prosecution
Theatre performances
Actor
-
- 1926: The Revizor, [written] by Nikolai Gogol
- first appearance, debut on the London stage (aka The Government Inspector)
- 1928: Alibi, adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- police drama; he is the first actor to play detective Hercule Poirot
- 1928: The Silver Tassie (premiere)
- 1931: Payment Deferred adapted from the novel by C. S. Forester
- debut on the New York stage
- 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- police drama, Laughton is also the director (American version of Alibi)
- 1947: Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
- 1950: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
- 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell, the third act of Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
- drama, Laughton is also the director
- 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
- comedy, Laughton is also the director
- 1959: King Lear by William Shakespeare
- classic tragedy
Director
-
- 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- 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 Shaw
- drama, Laughton also acts in the play.
- 1953: John Brown's Body, adapted by Laughton from Stephen Vincent Benét
- with Judith Anderson
- 1956–1957: Major Barbara, by George Bernard Shaw
- comedy, Laughton also acts in the play
- 1954–1955: The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, adapted from the novel by Herman Wouk
- drama, with Henry Fonda, transferred in 1954 to the screen by Edward Dmytryk
Producer
-
- 1955: 3 for Tonight
- musical revue, with Harry Belafonte
-
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