Charles Laughton

by Simon Callow

  The two faces of Henry VIII. Old Vic souvenir programme showing stage version.

  London Films publicity photo showing screen version.

  Early films: Piccadilly, 1929.

  The Devil and the Deep, 1932.

  If I Had a Million, 1932.

  Island of Lost Souls, 1933.

  The Importance of Being Earnest, Old Vic, 1934, with Laughton as Chasuble and Lanchester as Miss Prism.

  ‘Laughton bestrides the Atlantic’, a fantasy from the Sketch of 20 February 1935, showing Laughton with puppets of his most famous roles to date: (l. to r.) Nero; Henry VIII; the Murderer in Payment Deferred; and Moulton-Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

  Charles at Waterloo Station leaving for Hollywood and arriving (with Elsa), March 1935.

  Laughton as Rembrandt (1936).

  Laughton and Vivien Leigh in St. Martin’s Lane, 1938.

  Preparing Jamaica Inn: Charles lunching with fellow-actors in November 1938; and with J. B. Priestley (left: screenwriter) and Erich Pommer (centre: producer) in December 1938.

  A spread from Film Weekly, February 1938.

  Hollywood. Les Misérables, 1935.

  Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935.

  The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939.

  They Knew What They Wanted, 1940.

  Laughton as Captain Hook, 1936 (from The Sketch, 30.12.36.)

  A hand-made collage by Bertolt Brecht serving as the front cover of a collection of poems he gave to Charles for Christmas 1945 or 1946.

  Don Juan in Hell, 1951.

  Laughton and Agnes Moorehead.

  Laughton briefly encounters Marilyn Monroe in O. Henry’s Full House, 1952.

  Laughton and, right, Henry Daniell in Witness for the Prosecution, 1957.

  s Members of the Stratford company, 1959: (l. to r.) Laughton, Leslie Caron, Peter Hall, Angela Baddeley, Paul Robeson, Mary Ure, Edith Evans, Glen Byam Shaw (on stairs), Harry Andrews, Laurence Olivier.

  Laughton as Lear and Bottom, 1959.

  Laughton and Albert Finney in The Party, 1958.

  The late films.

  The Paradine Case, 1948.

  The Bribe, 1949.

  Night of the Hunter (Laughton directing Lillian Gish), 1952. Advise and Consent, 1962.

  Acknowledgements

  More than most writers, biographers are dependent on the kindness of strangers. When I started writing this book I took every opportunity to mention in interviews on television and in the newspapers that I was doing so, and the result was far beyond my expectations. People wrote to me from all over the world with reminiscences of Laughton and suggesting places where I might find further information. Ken Barrow, the distinguished biographer of Flora Robson and Robert Donat, was extraordinarily kind in this regard, directing my attention to archives whose existence I hadn’t suspected and sharing his own research with me as both Robson and Donat were friends of Laughton – this proved invaluable. Constance Cummings provided me with an absolute treasure trove of press cuttings of the production of The Man with Red Hair (adapted by her husband, Benn Levy). Philip Jenkinson enabled me to see a number of rare Laughton films and put me on to an aspect of Josef von Sternberg’s state of mind while directing I Claudius that I had hitherto not suspected. Benita Armstrong, Elsa Lanchester’s best friend in the thirties, gave me brilliant glimpses of the life of the young couple. Benita, Charles Laughton’s friend, student and fellow actor, not to mention being one of the world’s greatest ice-skating artists, offered me many remarkable insights into Laughton as teacher, director and friend. But equally forthcoming were people whom I could never have tracked down had they not come forward; ex-employees of the Pavilion Hotel in Scarborough, secretaries, understudies, stage managers; all with some revealing glimpse of the great man. Absolutely indispensable among these were the memories of Ann Rogers, his secretary in London in the late fifties and John Beary, Personal Assistant and friend. To all of these many thanks; and especially perhaps to the lady whose name I have tragically lost, who furnished me with the three letters that Charles Laughton wrote to her aunt, Hepsebiah Thompson, from the front in 1919.

  Billy Wilder was the first person I interviewed for this book, and Albert Finney was the last; they must stand for the vast army of Laughtonians who generously contributed reminiscences, analyses and recollected affections. Everyone was kindly disposed, even when their experiences at Charles’ hands had not been agreeable.

  In addition, I would like to thank Marion Rosenberg, my friend and agent, for putting me in touch with Roddy MacDowell, and in so doing opening many doors on Laughtons’s life; Edward Johnson, who helped me fill in some gaps in my knowledge of Laughton’s films, and in addition compiled the discography at the back of the book; Graham Jackson, whose initial spadework was the foundation for everything; and Ann Jack, who typed most of the book. The librarians of the Special Collections Department of the Research Library at the University of California, Los Angeles were wonderfully kind and efficient. My old friend, Peter Whitman, put me right on a number of matters, particularly those relating to the Oscars, on which he is a world authority. Charles Nolte who suffered under and learned from Charles Laughton when he acted for him in THE CAINE MUTINY TRIAL, kept a fascinating diary of the period which he generously allowed me a glimpse of; Bruce Zortman, Laughton’s amanuensis during his last years wrote down the actor’s sketchily remembered early autobiography and gave me sight of that most stimulating if frustrating document.

  Nick Gray, director of the parallel television documentary, was with me every step of the way, funny and shrewd; while Helen McGee, who researched the programme, is without peer in her trade, a genius of the quick follow-up and the persistent phone-call; without her this book would be much less useful.

  My friend Angus Mackay put his huge library and wonderfully-stocked mind at my disposal from the very beginning, and then read the manuscript with an eagle eye for fact and form; Nick Hern onlie begot the whole project and then patiently waited and watched throughout its elephantine gestation; Peggy Ramsay provided the inspiration and the encouragement in ways too numerous and too subtle to detail; and Bruno never once complained.

  S.C.

  APPENDICES

  CHARLES LAUGHTON

  Reading in Alaska

  I am a tourist at heart. I wanted to go to Japan to see the cherry blossoms, the tea ceremony and the geishas, the Japanese gardens, and Mount Fujiyama. And I went to Japan and it wasn’t cherry blossom time, and I didn’t see a geisha, except clacking along a back street of Kyoto with her attendant holding an oiled paper umbrella over her head in the rain. And the Japanese gardens are not at all as advertised – frail and dainty – but solemn religious exercises in stone and green sculptured bushes, and trees and gravel, which is much better.

  The Japanese screens are not pretty-pretty, but grave and comic, and some of them dazzling. I did not get to see Fujiyama, except when we left Tokyo we saw it in the blue distance from the plane, and not as Hokusai or Hiroshige saw it from the ground. And I always wanted to go to Alaska to see the polar bears and penguins and the northern lights.

  When I was invited to read in Anchorage and Clear, I quickly accepted, but I saw none of these things – no penguins, there are no penguins in Alaska – no Polar bears, we were not far enough north – and no northern lights, because it was not winter, but light all night long. In summer, the light at night is a pale gentle blue.

  One night there was a moon, and the colour of the sky behind the moon was a blue I had not seen before, save in a pretty girl’s eyes.

  The first day there we went to a place called Portage where there is a glacier that was majestic enough, but there was more to follow. The next day we flew over the mountains to one of the outposts of our defences at Clear, Alaska.

  Most everybody flies in Alaska. There are few roads. What roads there are get roughed up in the extreme cold of winter, and many of them are impassable in the spring thaws.

  We, all of us, have developed a heal
thy habit of getting away for the weekend or for Saturday night at least. If you want to get away to fish or hunt in Alaska you fly – but that is not entirely true – when we flew to Clear we flew over the Alaska Railroad which is the only railroad there and runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The trip, which takes an hour and a half by plane, takes twelve hours by railroad, for the train stops at any fisherman’s request at the spot where he wants to fish and picks him up on the way back.

  On our way to Clear, our pilot spotted some mountain goats high up on a cliff and went chasing them. I had to keep telling myself that he was far enough from the cliff, as he was used to judging distances in a plane. But I had to keep telling myself that. ‘There they go! There they go!’ said the pilot. He would turn around to tell me, and I would have to open my eyes because he was looking at me. There were moving specks of snow which must have been the goats. I hoped that he would not find any more. Then he spotted a moose. That wasn’t so bad because it was on flat land, although we went back two or three times at steep angles to take another look.

  After the mountains (we had flown by Mt McKinley which is 20,300 feet high), the man-made site at Clear looked minuscule from the air – like a small canning factory. When we were on it, it was a humming city of the future with its vast machines – an H. G. Wells or Ray Bradbury nightmare. The reflector screens are the size of a football field. The corridors are big enough for large trucks to drive down – and they do!

  This was the second time I had been among men on one of our far outposts. On both occasions, I noticed that they seemed to be in a solemn and kindly mood. I had been flattered that I had been asked to read to them. I found it hard to concentrate on reading, for I was thinking of them and their machines – and the moose and the bear and the wolves outside for hundreds and thousands of miles in the wilderness. I found it very hard to speak the jokes I have in my programme. I told them about the goats on the mountainside and made a movement with my hands of the plane zooming on its side – and every head in the audience moved with my hands. They knew all right. They laughed loudly – as I did after I got over the zooming. The pilot was in the audience, so we flew straight back the next morning – no tricks! I went to bed to rest up for the evening show in Anchorage.

  The two fellows who were with me running the tour inquired into the frontier life of Anchorage while I was resting. From what they told me, there were a couple of bars not too far removed in spirit from the Malamute Saloon – in The Shooting of Dan McGrew. One thing the two fellows were very emphatic about – the girls weren’t gorgeous like Marlene Dietrich – that is to say the girls at the Malamute Saloon. The other girls at Anchorage looked good, if those who came backstage to see me were any sample. As they tell it to me – in the saloon – a guy came in who literally darkened the doorway. He was the size of a Kodiak bear. He had a voice like a gravel pit, and he leant over Bob Hulter and said, ‘Are you a bridger?’

  ‘No,’ said Bob.

  ‘Well, I’m a bridger,’ he said. He put out his hand and near mashed Bob’s hand – and Bob’s a hefty guy. He’s a big Swede. I can’t go to places like that – they spot me. They get overhospitable and I wouldn’t get out of the place without downing six or seven rounds – and I wouldn’t be able to see Anchorage after that, or do all the reading at night.

  The audiences are great. They are building a community theatre and I had to break the ground for it with a spade that was still claggy with gold paint.

  The people there must be the most hospitable people in the world, for they do not want to show you off to their friends. They are proud and want to show off to you the lives they lead in their state. So Stanley McCutcheon, who is a lawyer, and his son-in-law, Stewart, flew us into a lake in the ‘out-country’ where Stanley McCutcheon has a cabin.

  The plane in which we had flown up to Clear was a wheel-plane that belonged to a small commercial line. But there are not many landing fields in Alaska and the planes which are privately owned are mostly float-planes, because they use as landing fields the multitude of lakes in that country. In winter when the lakes are frozen over, they change the pontoons for skis.

  We flew up in two one-engine float-planes into the lake where Stanley has his cabin. At the take-off we had to rock backward and forward to change the angle of the wings, for Stanley said that we had an extra heavy load of gas. I think he was being a good host and not saying that he had an extra-heavy passenger. We did not succeed the first time and the other passenger had to be ditched and fetched later.

  When we were over the cabin we circled it several times, as the day before they had had a bear with two year-old cubs around and the bear got menacing toward Stanley’s children. Stewart’s large calibre rifle had jammed and Stanley had had to shoot at it with a very light-calibre rifle. The bear had got away into the woods and Stanley was afraid that she might be waiting for us.

  However, no bear – and down we came onto the lake. We had been given high-waders, and I found out why when we got there. We waded from the float of the plane to the shore. There were moose and bears – we didn’t see any wolves – and ducks and swans and arctic terns, which must be the most beautiful birds in the world. I had never hoped to see a bird whose flight is more beautiful than the flight of a seagull. The arctic tern has a black head and neck and a body of pure white feathers. The tail and wing feathers spread like a fan and they hover upright like humming birds. And there were swallows, the bluest swallows I have seen. The swallows were friendly and swooped around our heads and dived in front of us, and lighted on the ground a yard from our feet.

  It is very silent there. And you hear the cries of the birds in perspective from the forest and over the lake. The approaching honk of swans and geese, and near – the cheerful chatter of the swallows.

  Later in the day, we set off in the two float-planes. I was in Stanley’s plane, and he had arranged to meet Stewart on a lake set in a glacier. When we got near the glacier there was no sign of Stewart, and the rendezvous lake was frozen over. We were running out of gas. I think Stanley had not taken as much gas as usual since one of his passengers was overweight, and he was counting on getting a can from Stewart on the glacier lake. However, we were running out, so we had to land on another lake.

  ‘What a beautiful lake,’ I said. ‘What is it called.’

  ‘It is an unnamed lake,’ said Stanley. ‘Stewart will be worried.’

  However, after foraging around, Stanley came grinning, saying that he had hit the jackpot. He was carrying a five-gallon can of gas which he had found in the only cabin, which was on the shore of the lake. I thought he was trying to josh me. I thought he knew it was there all the time because afterward I saw an aerial map of the area marked with black dots saying ‘Cabin with Gas.’ I was having far too good a time to be worried. I learned later that I was wrong. Stanley wrote me that he had been worried. ‘The nearest filling station was a two-week trek on foot through some of the wildest part of Alaska. Friends would have found us within two or three days, weather permitting, but Oh Brother, what headlines across the country in the meantime.’

  We flew back to his cabin, and Stewart had not been worried. He said that he knew better than to worry about Stanley.

  About nine o’clock one of them said, ‘What about dinner?’ We had brought no dinner. And I was wondering, ‘What about dinner?’ Three of them went off in a small boat leaving Stanley and me behind. In about half an hour they came back with a mess of rainbow trout. How good they were from those cold waters.

  As they were setting off to go fishing, we heard shouts from the boat and ran to see what it was about. There were two bears – the young bears from the day before – out on a spit of land looking for duck eggs about fifty yards away from us. They headed the boat into the shore and yelled, and the bears went away. But Stanley had raised his rifle in case the bears charged. Then I knew why, when you went to the toilet about fifteen yards from the cabin, you always had to carry a gun. When the children go to the toilet (the child
ren were not there that day), someone stands guard outside for them. Living the sort of life I do, I figured I should have been scared by this sort of thing, but I was not. I felt at home in the country of the big animals – I have to get back there! I was scared by the machines at Clear and the knowledge that somewhere in those buildings there was a button that someone might some day have to press.

  While the others were out fishing, Stanley told me a story. His cabin was up the hill. The one we were in at the edge of the lake belonged to a trapper – an old-timer – called Tom Krause.

  Tom Krause is a trapper and commercial fisherman, and a connoisseur of rocks. They say he is the best petrologist in Alaska. If anyone brings him a rock he can tell its mineral content by ‘the smell of it,’ as Stanley said. He has little ‘book-learning,’ but deep knowledge. He goes to his cabin and lives there by himself. Stanley is an old and treasured friend, but after three days of company Tom becomes irritable, and at the end of six days, impossible.

  Stanley said to me that I wouldn’t believe this story. And that is a good way to begin any story. So this is the story of Tom and Sam, the moose.