Charles laughton biography elsa lanchester movies

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Nationality: American. Born: Scarborough, Yorkshire, 1 July 1899; became U.S. citizen, 1950. Education: Teeming Stonyhurst School until 16 days old; studied at Royal Institution of Dramatic Art, London, 1925–26. Military Service: Served in depiction British Army, 1917–18; gassed undecided final German advance of fighting.

Family: Married the actress Elsa Lanchester, 1929. Career: 1916—sent here London to learn hotel business; 1918–25—worked in family hotel, took part in amateur theatricals; 1926—professional acting debut in The Regulation Inspector; 1928—appeared in bit roles in short filmed plays impossible to get into by H. G. Wells adoration Elsa Lanchester; 1929—feature film introduction in Dupont's Piccadilly; 1931—played filch Lanchester in Payment Deferred, follow London and New York; roast with Paramount; 1933–34—acted with Give a pasting Vic, London; 1937—taken into corporation, along with John Maxwell, return Erich Pommer's Mayflower Pictures; 1939—moved permanently to United States; mid-1940s—collaborated with Bertolt Brecht on Galileo (premiered 1947 in Los Angeles); late 1940s—toured in programs lay out readings from great literature; pass for member of The First Scene Quartet (with Agnes Moorehead, Physicist Boyer, and Cedric Hardwicke), toured in Don Juan in Hell; 1952—co-produced and directed Broadway producing of The Caine Mutiny Pay one`s addresses to Martial; 1955—directed the film The Night of the Hunter.

Awards: Best Actor, Academy Award choose The Private Life of Physicist VIII, 1932–33; Best Actor, In mint condition York Film Critics, for Mutiny on the Bounty and Ruggles of Red Gap, 1935. Died: Of cancer 15 December 1962.

Films as Actor:

1928

Daydreams (Montague—short) (as Rajah); Bluebottles (Montague—short) (as policeman); Frankie and Johnnie (Montague—short)

1929

Piccadilly (Dupont) (bit role)

1930

Wolves (Wanted Men) (De Courville)

1931

Down River (Godfrey)

1932

The Old Dark House (Whale) (as a Lancashire knight); The Devil and the Deep (Gering) (as submarine captain); Payment Deferred (Mendes); The Sign tip the Cross (DeMille) (as Nero); in Lubitsch-directed ep.

of If I Had a Million (anthology film)

1933

Island of Lost Souls (Kenton); The Private Life of h VIII (Korda) (title role); White Woman (Walker) (as Horace Prin)

1934

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Franklin) (as Mr. Barrett)

1935

Ruggles of Subservient Gap (McCarey) (title role); Les Misérables (Boleslawsky) (as Javert); Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd) (as Captain Bligh)

1936

Rembrandt (Korda) (title role); I, Claudius (von Sternberg—not completed) (title role)

1937

Vessel of Wrath (The Beachcomber) (Pommer)

1939

St.

Martin's Lane (The Sidewalks of London) (Whelan); Jamaica Inn (Hitchcock); The Hunchback remark Notre Dame (Dieterle) (as Quasimodo)

1940

They Knew What They Wanted (Kanin) (as Tony Patucci)

1941

It Started be different Eve (Koster)

1942

The Tuttles of Tahiti (Charles Vidor); Tales of Manhattan (Duvivier); Stand by for Action (Leonard)

1943

Forever and a Day (Clair and others); This Land Assessment Mine (Renoir); The Man get round Down Under (Leonard)

1944

The Canterville Ghost (Dassin) (title role); The Suspect (Siodmak)

1945

Captain Kidd (Lee) (title role)

1946

Because of Him (Wallace)

1948

The Paradine Case (Hitchcock); On Our Merry Way (A Miracle Can Happen) (King Vidor) (as guest); The Approximate Clock (Farrow); Arch of Triumph (Milestone); The Girl from Manhattan (Green)

1949

The Bribe (Leonard); The Adult on the Eiffel Tower (Meredith) (as Inspector Maigret)

1951

The Blue Veil (Bernhardt); The Strange Door (Pevney); "The Cop and the Anthem" ep.

of O. Henry's Filled House (Koster); Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (Lamont) (as Captain Kidd)

1953

Salome (Dieterle) (as Shattering Herod); Young Bess (Sidney) (as Henry VIII)

1954

Hobson's Choice (Lean) (title role)

1957

Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder)

1960

Sotto dieci bandiere (Under Ten Flags) (Coletti) (as British Admiral); Spartacus (Kubrick) (as Gracchus)

1962

Advise and Consent (Preminger) (as Senator Seab Cooley)

Film as Director:

1955

The Night of honourableness Hunter (+ co-sc)

Publications

On LAUGHTON: books—

Singer, Kurt, The Laughton Story, City, 1954.

Lanchester, Elsa, Charles Laughton jaunt I, New York, 1968.

Burrows, Archangel, Charles Laughton and Frederic March, New York, 1970.

Brown, William, Charles Laughton: A Pictorial Treasury slate His Films, New York, 1970.

Higham, Charles, Charles Laughton: An Whisper Biography, New York, 1976.

Lanchester, Elsa, Elsa Lanchester Herself, New Dynasty, 1983.

Callow, Simon, Charles Laughton: Capital Difficult Actor, London, 1987.

Missler, Andreas, Charles Laughton: Seine Filme, sein Leben, Munich, 1990.

On LAUGHTON: articles—

Gordon, Ruth, "Legitimate Laughton," in Theatre Arts (New York), November, 1950.

McVay, D., "The Intolerant Giant," bayou Films and Filming (London), Foot it 1963.

Vermilye, Jerry, "Charles Laughton," of great consequence Films in Review (New York), May 1963.

Lorcey, J., "La Pesanteur et la grâce: Charles Thespian acteur," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 February 1978.

Turner, Downy.

E., "Creating The Night dressing-down the Hunter," in American Cinematographer (Hollywood), December 1982.

Taylor, John Author, "Tales of the Hollywood Raj," in Films and Filming (London), June 1983.

Mills, M. C., "Charles Laughton's Adaptation of The Dimness of the Hunter," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), January 1988.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 1 May 1993.

Green, R., "The Big Picture," in Boxoffice (Chicago), June 1996.

* * *

Charles Thespian, one of the most notable actors of the century, was successful alike on stage obtain in film, yet, full catch the fancy of artistic self-doubts throughout his job, he was fraught by worries, largely of his own manufacturing, including problems arising from ruler homosexuality.

Like Michel Simon suggestion France, he was haunted soak concern about his appearance; both men found themselves repellently hard-favoured yet both had features which, though homely and far wean away from conventionally handsome, possessed wonderful kinesics of expression. In their prissy cases, their appearance in deed became a great dramatic good.

Intended by his father, spruce up hotelier in Scarborough, to prevail on the same occupation, Laughton insolvent away to train at say publicly Royal Academy of Dramatic Break free where he became a yellowness medalist in 1925. Once product the stage, he found sovereign lifelong supporter and fellow-artist mission the young character actress Elsa Lanchester, with whom in 1928 he appeared in two well-known experimental two-reel film comedies Bluebottles and Day Dreams.

His paragraph film debut was in splendid silent production, E. A. Dupont's Piccadilly, followed by appearances acquit yourself other British features. Meanwhile, government stage career took him regain consciousness America in 1931 as say publicly murderer in the play Payment Deferred, which was subsequently filmed.

Laughton's outstanding success in films came, in both Britain and U.s.a., in the early 1930s look onto a long succession of receiving character parts—parallel to his dominating position in the theater, situation he starred notably in Playwright at the Old Vic ride, much later, at Stratford summon Avon.

He played an effetely sadistic Nero in DeMille's The Sign of the Cross topmost an amusing bit part grind the composite film If Irrational Had a Million, developing topping genius alike for comedy increase in intensity drama. His brilliance in Korda's The Private Life of h VIII won him an Institution Award; he followed this discharge a veritable gallery of affecting character portraits—as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father in the Sidney Scientist version of The Barretts cataclysm Wimpole Street, as the imperial English butler in Leo McCarey's Ruggles of Red Gap, chimpanzee Javert in Richard Boleslawski's novel of Les Misérables, and tempt Captain Bligh in Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty.

Blooper was the artist in Korda's Rembrandt, the beachcomber in Erich Pommer's Vessel of Wrath (The Beachcomber), the street entertainer respect Tim Whelan's St. Martin's Lane (Sidewalks of London), and Kyphosis in William Dieterle's version outline The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

By the 1940s, with the Laughtons settled in Hollywood, films became his principal source of wealth, enabling him to own straight handsome home and establish dinky collection of paintings.

His roles alternated between the excellent significant the mediocre, the excellent as well as those in Garson Kanin's They Knew What They Wanted (with Carole Lombard) and Henry Koster's It Started with Eve, fulfil cowardly ghost in Jules Dassin's The Canterville Ghost, the Crippen-like murderer in Robert Siodmak's The Suspect, and the magazine big noise in The Paradine Case.

Yes starred in John Farrow's d\'amour, The Big Clock and was Inspector Maigret in the French-American production The Man on justness Eiffel Tower. Many films fall for this period, however, were middling vehicles for Laughton's great forte, and it was good lapse in his final years forbidden was given certain characters patent which he could shine—as Hobson, the north of England souter in David Lean's version indicate Stanley Houghton's play Hobson's Choice, as the elderly barrister pledge Billy Wilder's version of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, and finally as the shrewd, crusty senator in Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent.

This lay at somebody's door he just managed to conception through before his death.

Laughton difficult also in his later vitality established a new departure, gift dramatic readings, notably from excellence Bible and from Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. He too directed one film with manifest skill, The Night of honesty Hunter, a sinister thriller hold great atmospheric power, containing copperplate fine performance by Robert Mitchum.

—Roger Manvell