Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton (/ˈlɔːtən/; 1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was a British and American actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. Over his career he received an Academy Award and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two BAFTAs and a Golden Globe. He earned a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Laughton played a wide range of classical and modern roles both on West End and Off West End, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His acting career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, where portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. He earned the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character in the historical drama The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). He was further Oscar-nominated for his roles as Captain William Bligh in the action adventure Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and an irascible barrister in the courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Among Laughton's biggest film hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Rembrandt (1936), Jamaica Inn (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Big Clock (1948), Young Bess (1953), Hobson's Choice (1954) and Spartacus (1960). His final film role was in Advise & Consent (1962).

He directed one film, the acclaimed thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955). In his later career, Laughton took up stage directing, notably in the dramas The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and Don Juan in Hell, in which he also starred.

Laughton was born on 1 July 1899 in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Robert Laughton (1869–1924) and Eliza (née Conlon; 1869–1953), Yorkshire hotel keepers. A blue plaque marks his birthplace. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent, and she sent him to briefly attend a local boys' school, Scarborough College, before sending him to Stonyhurst College, the pre-eminent English Jesuit school. Laughton served in World War I, during which he was gassed, serving first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Battalion, and then with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.

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 at RADA in 1925, where actor Claude Rains was one of his teachers. Laughton made his first professional appearance on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at London's Gaiety Theatre in May. He impressed audiences with his talent and had classical roles in two Chekov plays, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. Laughton played the lead role as Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Seán O'Casey's The Silver Tassie in 1928 in London. He played the title roles in Arnold Bennett's Mr Prohack (Elsa Lanchester was also in the cast) and as Samuel Pickwick in Mr. Pickwick at the Theatre Royal (1928–29) in London.

He played Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's On the Spot and William Marble in Payment Deferred. He took the last role across the Atlantic and made his United States debut on 24 September 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, Henry VIII, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Prospero in The Tempest) and also as Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Tattle in Love for Love. In 1936, he went to Paris and on 9 May 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 performed the role in French and received an ovation.

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 wife Elsa Lanchester, Daydreams, Blue Bottles, and The Tonic (all 1928), which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells and were directed by Ivor Montagu. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly with Anna May Wong in 1929. He appeared with Lanchester again in Comets (1930), a film 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 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 drug-smuggling ship's captain.

His New York stage debut in 1931 immediately led to film offers, and Laughton's first Hollywood film, The Old Dark House (1932) with Boris Karloff, in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travelers in a creepy remote Welsh manor. He then played a demented submarine commander in 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. Laughton gave other memorable performances during that first Hollywood trip, repeating his stage role as a murderer in Payment Deferred, playing H. G. Wells' 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, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. He appeared in six Hollywood films in 1932. His association with director Alexander Korda began in 1933 with the hugely successful The Private Life of Henry VIII (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII), for which Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor.