Charles Laughton can we discuss his genius?

Hey, kiddo. Thank you. Now how about making me a sandwich?

He was so insecure about his looks, yet this is what made him so great in so many roles.

An interview with Peter Ustinov where he talks about Laughton's insecurity.

If he had lived longer, Martin Scorsese could have used him in something… a bunch of hoodlums surrounding him in an alley or parking garage, with taunts of “Ya fat fuck!” etc.

I show a film series and Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution was a favorite of the audience for the series. Great seriocomic performance.

He was a favorite of mine as a kid, I remember seeing him at an early age on TV in The Beachcomber, Rembrandt, The Island of Lost Souls, and The Private Life of Henry VIII.

And then there's Night of the Hunter.

Night of the Hunter was not that well received at the time, but has grown to cult status.

Even as a kid, I knew I was watching something amazing when I saw him in Henry VIII, Mutiny on the Bounty and Hunchback, of course. Laughton had many facets. Would have loved to have seen him on the stage.

Elsa was a great actress in her own right. Iconic as Bride of Frankenstein. So beautiful. She outlived Laughton by 24 years. Obviously, she was very forgiving as they got married in 1929!!

He won an Academy Award and wanted to do a comedy, picked Leo McCarey to direct him, and "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935) was the very funny result.

Ruggles Of Red Gap is a delightful movie.

I read something recently about it. Laughton's Gettysburg Address moment didn't go over well in previews. People laughed at his facial expressions. So McCarey solved the problem by cutting away from his face to the awed spectators in the saloon as he recited the speech. It's a great scene but a lot of people might not notice the camera isn't on Laughton for much of it.

If for nothing else, I would adore Elsa Lanchester for her portrayal of suspected ax murderess Evelyn Holmby and her watercress sandwiches, chopping her way through the Florida Everglades with her blonde companion.

Laughton was fired from David Copperfield (1935) because he couldn't get a hold on how to play Mr. Micawber (he was replaced by W. C. Fields). Freddie Bartholomew played David as a boy. Someone working on the film mentioned at the time, regarding Laughton's attempts at the role, "He looked like he was about to molest the child."

WC Fields? Please... that hack!

The shit sandwich story/description still makes me sick just thinking about it.

Laughton was so disheartened by the reception that Night of the Hunter received that he never directed another movie. What a waste.

Laughton is so fascinating, in a fantastic cast, in "Witness for the Prosecution." Never tire of watching this movie! Laughton's scenes with each of the co-stars are riveting. My look here:

^^One of the best movies ever made.

I actually think that aside from the ending, that film’s deadly boring. Sorry.

R18 There's one in every crowd.

R18 I have the same response to some other "must see" films. Like Magnificent Ambersons. Just not for me. I can't even articulate why? I just can't do it.

According to Hollywood lore, he had a feces fetish where he had a friend of his wipe his ass with a piece of bread, which he put on his sandwich and then ate it. Mr. Laughton, a great actor in "Mutiny on the Bounty" may have had a few screws loose.

GIGANTIC FLAMING QUEEN

I found him to be a self-conscious actor, but that can also be interesting sometimes.

The producer Paul Gregory (later married to Janet Gaynor) wanted Laughton to direct and star in "The Night of the Hunter," but eventually they decided together that Robert Mitchum would be a better choice for the leading role. When Laughton first met with Mitchum, he told him, "This character I want you to play is a diabolical shit," to which the actor replied, “Present.”

Laughton may only have directed one movie (he also had a hand in directing The Man On the Eiffel Tower, but isn't credited)...but he directed for the theater, I think. According to Henry Fonda he actually directed The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (he was the co-producer, Dick Powell was the credited director), working with the actors who were on a bus tour with this play doing one night stands before it went to Broadway.

I don't think Laughton ever directed again after Night of the Hunter. Is that correct?

Correct, and he only lived around 7 more years.

It is a pity he never directed again after THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

He directed several plays on Broadway over 25 years, including an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," in which he played Hercule Poirot. He had played the role to great acclaim in London (although he didn't direct the production there), and got excellent reviews on Broadway, but the production flopped and closed after a month.

Laughton's family owned a hotel. When he returned from WWI he joined the family business. He busied himself into the design and decor and concierge services...you know, trying to upscale the operation. Apparently fell on deaf ears. If his efforts had been better received, we may be discussing Charles Laughton for entirely different reasons!

I always loved his plump, baby lips. Never wanted to do anything else with them, however!

Laughton had PTSD from WWI, but no one cares...holy shit, the things people went through.

"Laughton served in World War I, during which he was gassed, serving first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Battalion,[8] and then with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment."

R32 People still do.

Sad how Elsa said she became a more complete, alive person after he died. It ain't easy being married to a shit eater.

Elsa felt incomplete because she was sewn together from many parts.

"Life is a like a shit sandwich -- the less bread you have the more shit you have to eat."

When I was a kid watching Bugs Bunny I overheard two adults in the room saying the king in the "Cook! Cook! Where's my hassenpfeffer!?" cartoon was a parody of Charles Laughton.

Later that week I saw Charles Laughton in a movie and quickly understood what parody meant

He played a sympathetic chump in The Suspect, a really cool old film noir.

[quote] Night of the Hunter was not that well received at the time, but has grown to cult status.

It’s remarkable, really. Laughton directed only one picture, and it’s one of the greatest movies of all time.

A little more on the bread, if you would, kiddo. I have quite a taste for it this morning.

"I am not a man, I am not a beast, I am about as shapeless as the man-in-the-moon."

The shit sandwich story is right up there with Danny Thomas and the glass coffee table.

Laughton was in one of my favorite old movies, The Old Dark House, directed by James Whale. Laughton brings pathos to what could've been an insufferable bore of a character.

Simon Callie’s book on him, is superb, for my money the best book on an actor and how his life and intertwined ever written. That Callow was openly gay and a character actor who nonetheless was a star makes it especially moving and insightful—and sympathetic to what living in a different era did to Laughton.

I love Elsa Lanchestet. My favorite performance of hers is what amounts to a cameo in The Razor’d Edge, late in the film, where she plays the sympathetic assistant who allows Tyrone Power to take an invitation to the party that poorClifton Webb, on his deathbed, has been snubbed from. TRE is a bit too “spiritual journey” for my taste (I prefer the Dickensian bildungdroman of Of Human Bondage, and some of the short stories, like “The Letter” and “Rain”), but the film has a number of fine performances (though Owers and Tierney, both of whom I enjoy in other films, are pretty wooden). Anne Baxter, often reviled on FL (and she is over-the-top in Yen Commaents, but so is Judith Anderson and Nina Foch, so she’s in good company), is very touching as Sophie—and what a feat-/to beat Ethel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Flora Robson, and Gale Sondergaard for the BSA’

When we watched Julius Caesar in high school I thought Laughton came across as a fat old lady.

Which film of "Julius Caesar" did Laughton appear in?

I love Laughton, nice to see a thread on him here. How I wish we could have seen him play Poirot! Wow.

I will.definitwly download that Callow biography. Thanks r44

Oh wow! Callow did 3 vols on Orson Welles too!

R46, the one with Charlton Heston.

When I first so Mutiny Laughton was so hateful just the embodiment of evil. When I saw a part of it recently he looked as young as a college student.

R44=Jaclyn Smith

Lost soul.

"Island of Lost Souls" is the best version of the story. A fever-dream production, through and through.

Marylin has some fond memories of working with Charles.

Him and his whole family are MAGAts.

Henry VIII is an excellent film. The costumes are fabulous!

A few years ago I started a thread and asked for recommendations for old movies. I watched a lot of the ones in the thread, but "Witness for the Prosecution" was my favorite.

I read that he put off his Broadway debut because New York was undergoing a hot spell!

[quote] Anne Baxter, often reviled on FL (and she is over-the-top in Yen Commaents, but so is Judith Anderson and Nina Foch, so she’s in good company)

Was Yen Commaents a Chinese film?

Don't forget he played Nero in The Sign of the Cross (1932) (Cecil B. DeMille)

And he wasn't in either of Heston's "Julius Caesar" films.

R50 That's not correct.

Laughton on The Dinah Shore Show.

He sounds like James Mason at R64, which I'd never noticed before.

Charles on What's My Line has a bone to pick with Dorothy Kilgallen.

my sincerest apologies

i must have meant Spartacus

Honestly, when I first saw this thread I thought it said

[quote]Charles Laughton can we discuss his genitals?

Shelley did not have luck with water in the movies. Drowned in both A Place In The Sun and The Poseidon Adventure.

She didn't drown in either, r70.

She somehow survived "Tentacles"!

R71 She didn't drown?

R71 In Poseidon didn't she have a heart attack? But she drowned in A Place in the Sun, didn't she?

In the water I'm a very skinny lady.

I just assumed Mitchum killed her first, r73. I could be wrong.

Yes, r74, she drowned in that...to the audience's relief. Unlike the sympathetic Sylvia Sidney.

She delivered the baby in the water after she was dead.

The turtles and crawfish devoured it as it drowned.

Sit back with a cuppa tea and enjoy this little masterpiece.

Scotty Bowers is the one who told the shit sammie story. Laughton was also so hygienically challenged he could have been an EPA Superfund site.

He played Nero as a flaming queen. I can tell few of you have seen it.

I could never watch A Place in the Sun. You would want Winters to drown. That is 180 from the way you feel about the heartbreaking tragic character in Dreiser's book. The worst casting in the world.

Shelley Winters tells the story that she dressed down for the audition and director George Stevens didn't recognize her in the waiting room. He was used to seeing Shelley as the sexpot.

In the movie cute Monty has to be the sympathetic character. He represents all the young men trying to make it post-WW2, find their "place in the sun". Liz represents the unattainable trophy girl; Shelley is the tired ball 'n chain trying to ruin it all for him. George Stevens had such an affection for the character he changed the name from Clyde to George.

I loved how he used the monocle all the way through "Witness".

In the final scene he sits completly still ,eyes down, monocle tangling -waiting for the drama between Marlene and Tyrone to unfold as if he knows what´s coming.

R73 I don't think he did, that was district attorney Raymond Burr's interpretation. And it was Montgomery Clift.

Bowers isn't a credible source about anything. Laughton was a great actor beloeved and respected by colleagues.

Lanchester was annoying lush in her later years. She was Isherwood's neighbor and he felt compelled to put up with her coming over in an incoherent state.

I love how Bowers gets those high church of film types in a well-deserved snit.

R86 "Gincoherent"

[quote]When I first so Mutiny Laughton was so hateful just the embodiment of evil.

So hateful! I loathed him. Then saw him as Henry VIII weeping after learning Catherine Howard betrayed him and felt such empathy for him. This was my earliest thought of "That guy can REALLY act."

In 1937 Laughton starred in "I Claudius" as the roman emperor who had a limp and suffered from slight deafness due to being sick as a boy, Ostracized by his family he was excluded from public office until his consulship ,which he shared with his nephew Caligula.

The movie was produced by Alexander Korda who cast his wife Merle Oberon in the part of Claudius´ scheming third wife Messalina. Korda was in financial trouble after his last movie " Knigth Without Armour" for which he paid Marlene Dietrich a salary of $450 000.- thus making her the highest paid actress at the time. Still owing Marlene $100 000.- after production she said she would give up the money if Korda would hire her mentor Josef von Sternberg to direct "I Claudius". Von Sternbergs career had tanked after he ended his collaboration with Dietrich and the ever so loyal Marlene showed quiet some generosity to help him back on his feet. Dietrich adored Laugthon -Oberon not so much. " Can you imagine, that Singapore streetwalker a la Roman poisoner?"

Unfortunatly the production turned out to be a very troubled one. Laughton had frequent arguments with the director and producer about the characterisation of his character and constantly threatened to leave the production. Korda worried by exploding production cost was saved when Merle Oberon was involved in a car accident where she hit her face on a metal footrest. Though the seriousness of Oberons injuries have been much debated they gave Korda a reason to cancel the movie and collect insurance.

The unused footage later turned up in a BBC documentary . Great behind the scenes stuff.

I didn't know that Isherwood had such an unpleasant voice.

He was an unpleasant person.

Why did Dietrich call Oberon a Singapore streetwalker, when she was from India?

Carole Lombard found him physically repellent and had it in her contract that they would not be required to embrace or kiss in THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED .

R92, you mean Isherwood?

Didn’t Isherwood work as Singapore streetwalker (in his youth?)

First Singapore, then Berlin.

Ustinov does Laughton impressions. He was such a brilliant man. What a raconteur!

If you haven't seen HOBSON'S CHOICE with Laughton, John Mills, and Brenda de Banzie, I highly recommend it. Laughton is very funny.

And his hambone performance as a serpentine Southern senator in ADVISE AND CONSENT is very entertaining.

R95: Yes. I don't know what Lombard's issue was with Laughton as he generally was liked and respected---perhaps he was "European" in his hygiene or she just thought him ugly.

Quite a few movies of his up on YouTube. Here he is on What's My Line

Hobson's choice is good but I needed subtitles to fully understand some of the accents.

Watching what remains of "I Claudius" is painful. It could have been a truly great film. The scene where Claudius essentially takes over the senate is awesome.

R100, you are right, Isherwood comes across as quite unlikable in that documentary.

They must have be dozens, if not hundreds, of rent boys who had sex with Laughton. How come nothing ever transpired?

He probably paid them off when they tried to blackmail him.

"Devil and the Deep" (1932) with Tallulah Bankhead,Gary Cooper & Cary Grant

Laughton and Bankhead did not care for each other at all and Tallulah refused to shake hands because of his dirty fingernails

Still working on adapting his stagy intensity for the movie cameras Charles developed high respect for Cary Cooper He cited Cooper as the paragon of film acting for the rest of his life.

fun fact: Tallulah said "The only reason I went to Hollywood was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper"

Gowns by Travis Banton

He probably paid them off when they tried to blackmail him.

He probably sat on them.

According to something I read (Callow?) Laughton took a long time to become comfortable with his sexuality and did have a relationship of some consequence with a guy later in his life.

Laughton conducted an acting class at his home, Shelley Winters was in the class, it's one reason she was cast in Night of the Hunter.

There is or was an interview on YouTube with Charles and Elsa at their home--from the early 1950s, I think. The home looks modest. Movie stars lived differently then (and despite being wealthy they weren't super-rich as the stars are today--even non-star actors can be quite rich).

‘’Witness’’ was fun but now so tainted because of the shit sandwich thing. Do think one of his scorned ex’s made up this story-please help…

The pathos of this final scene…

This scene always brings a tear to my eye…the timing of the sound effect, edited perfectly at the spot where he grabs Maureen O’Hara, is golden.

Sidebar: movie lovers always talk about 1939 as the year of years. Thomas Mitchell co-starred in Hunchback, GWTW and Stagecoach all in that one year. He deserved the Oscar that year for sure.

Thomas Mitchell always played the same part.

To be fair to Tallulah, Gary Cooper was a gorgeous man.

Yes-R114. A Parisian lowlife-fool from the Middle Ages, a 19th Century alcoholic doctor in the Southwest and an antebellum Georgia plantation slavemaster are all so common and alike…no originality at all there!

He won a Grammy for the recording of his 1955 one-man shows called "The Story-Teller ... A Session with Charles Laughton"

Unfortunatly the double-album wasn´t released until 1962, the year of his death and he was awarded the Grammy posthumously .

If he had lived to make Irma La Duce maybe the film would have been watchable. As it was I think it was the Wilder film to make money.

R113 And Mitchell also was in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, in 1939. A role nothing like Gerald O'Hara in GWTW, R114. And he was also in Only Angels Have Wings in 1939.

I meant to say, 'As it was I think it was the last Wilder film to be a hit.'

Then it would seem a lot of people found it watchable.

[quote]He sounds like James Mason at [R64], which I'd never noticed before.

Laughton and Mason were from Yorkshire. You can hear it in both their voices, especially as they got older.

I watched 3/4 of “Arch of Triumph” last night before giving up. It’s rather awful… in that it’s very frustrating to see a professionally mounted film with SUCH a slow pace and SO little plot. Dear god!

I did laugh when I read that Charles Boyer remembered, “Before the editing it was terrible for four hours. Now it is only terrible for two hours.”

He and Olivier didn't like each other.

Laughton struggled to find his characters, as Garson Kanin (who directed They Knew What They Wanted) noted, and I think George Cukor also might have mentioned this in regard to David Copperfield. And Billy Wilder said he was always working on the characterization, adding little bits and improvements all the way through. He did train at RADA but was in a lot of ways like a method actor.

Laughton’s Claudius, physically much more deformed than Derek Jacobi’s, is fascinating.

Olivier was such a pompous ass. Who did like him?

R127, for someone who was so celebrated during his lifetime Olivier's posthumous reputation isn't great-- he isn't a beloved figure at all, and while there are still people who praise him as an actor, there don't seem to be many people who have/had good things to say about him as a man.

It is hard to find people who had anything good to say about Olivier as a man. In fact I don't recall anything. But there are a number of mean selfish things about him people have said. Maggie Smith has a couple. But those who saw him on stage said he was a force of nature. I think his performance in Wyler's Carrie is one of the best performances I've seen on film. And in Richard lll he is wonderful. His line 'I am not in the giving vein today' is so chilling. And his St Crispin's day speech in Henry V is exhilarating. But there are others which are either mediocre or hammy. He almost kills The Prince and the Showgirl except for the fact that Monroe is a blue diamond.

He was good when he played a pompous and devious asshole. Because he was one.

Maggie Smith on Olivier.

Stumbled upon this today. One of the best parts is Laughton transforming to a mafioso.

R129 He was pretty great in Wuthering Heights. I thought he was fantastic in Spartacus, and in a not-very-well-known movie called Term Of Trial.

About Spartacus:

Laughton also eventually agreed to sign on, for a reported fee of $41,000 ($400,000 today) for just thirteen days work, but he made Douglas' life a constant hell.

Laughton was never happy with the script by Dalton Trumbo, and Ustinov was asked to rewrite his scenes. Even so, he constantly harangued Douglas on set.

He recalled in his autobiography: "With shooting in progress, Charles Laughton, Gracchus in my epic movie Spartacus, was threatening to sue me and I was laugh­ing hysterically. Charles looked at me strangely. As he waddled out, sputtering, I called, “Go ahead! Sue me! What the f*** do I care!” I never did find out why he wanted to sue me."

Olivier once famously said of his fellow thespian: "I'm not a genius. There’s no room for genius in the theatre, it's too much trouble. The only actor I ever knew who was a genius was Charles Laughton. Maybe that's why he was so difficult."

Despite his calm appraisal of Laughton's character, it didn't stop him from provoking him on set.

Peter Ustinov recalled: "For some reason - like animals - they just didn’t like each other. When you get two dogs that growl at each other, you don’t really ask why, you just accept it.

He looked like he smelled bad.

My very elderly aunt loved Olivier in Wuthering Heights. She tried watching Sleuth but she found Olivier's aged looks so heartbreaking she had to turn it off.

R136, Olivier doesn't look bad in [italic]Sleuth[/italic] for a man in his mid-60s, but it's impossible to compete with his younger self as Heathcliff when his looks were at their absolute peak. He was never that gorgeous again, on film at least. I wonder if it irked Merle Oberon that Larry was prettier.

R137 I wouldn't go that far, although in WH she didn't really look her best. That movie is made so well I didn't notice on my first viewing (which was at the Regency, in NYC, when that theater existed) that she's not strong in that role. Especially considering what a strong role it is. Still I think there's something so right about her. Her reactions. If she was inadequate the movie wouldn't work. It's just that she could have been more forceful, at times, as an actress. Olivier had such a powerful voice, and physical presence.

Vivien Leigh was offered the other part (Geraldine Fitzgerald's part) but turned it down. William Wyler told her something like, "You'll never get a better Hollywood debut than that part." Haha. People think she's have been a better Cathy but Oberon's vulnerability was heartbreaking so I don't know.

*she'd

I always found Oberon too prissy as Cathy. The character in the book is much more rough around the edges and Oberon couldn't play that to save her life.

I've seen a lot of versions of WH and the first actress who got closer to Bronte's Cathy was Anna Calder-Marshall in the 1970 film (which is very uneven).

Oberon couldn't play much of anything.

[quote]I show a film series and Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution was a favorite of the audience for the series. Great seriocomic performance.

His delivery is incredible as always.

It is a thrown away line but remains my favorite- When Tyrone Power (also wonderful) as the sad sack salesman explains, "It not only beats the egg, but it separates the white from the yolk!" and Laughton replies, "Is that at all desirable?"

Bloody brilliant.

Nice to see Brenda De Banzie get a mention.

Brenda really holds her own against Laughton in Hobson's Choice. She is also delightful in the original Pink Panther.

Now if Laughton really liked shit sandwiches wouldn't dear close friends like Billy Wilder and Maureen O'Hara know? Gossip travels like lightening in Hollywood. They just didn't care?

Yes at the time a lot of people found Irma watchable. I just personally find it pretty bad. Maybe there are others here who really like it. Many many years ago when I first went to Paris my cheap hotel was by that district portrayed in the film with all the prostitutes hanging out in the doorways. I was walking down the street and thinking 'Oh my god I'm in Irma La Douce!' They were calling out to me 'Hey tall guy!' I thought to myself you've got the wrong guy. You can't tell?

Laughtons film debut in a 1928 short starring future wife Elsa Lanchester. Not much to see since Laughton took a very small part in the film just for fun as he had just started becoming involved with Elsa..

I don't know why some thought Elsa was rather plain. I always thought she was quite attractive.

You’re gay?! Yes, I’m sure.

I like Elsa's role as the mother in Lassie Come Home. Not an eccentric part for her for once and she has a great scene trying to be a hard case about the family having to sell the dog and then suddenly breaking down. She also does a Yorkshire accent.

R147: She was rather plain. Not glamorous, not ugly. She was never a great beauty and putting on weight made her look matronly before her time.

I find her very homely in an almost unwatchable sense. Laughton, as well, especially when he was older. In both cases, they looked more attractive when they smiled. Both had a lot of magnetism on the screen, though. Both were quite short, as well.

I also found Roddy McDowall very repulsive at a certain age (when he was a teen/young adult). He was adorable--though still homely--as a child, and somewhat better looking as an adult but always with the mouth hanging open.

(^played Elsa's son in the Lassie picture.)

Roddy and Jane Powell in adolescence.

Elsa is surprisingly pretty at the beginning of Bride of Frankenstein. She could do drama and comedy equally well.