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Charles Laughton as photographed in 1940 by Carl Van Vechten
Charles Laughton (July 1, 1899 - December 15, 1962) was a British-born American stage and film actor.
Early Life and Career Rise
Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire. His mother was a devout Catholic and he attended the famed Jesuit school, Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, England.. He served during World War I and was gassed, which may have had something to do with his untimely death from cancer at the age of 63.
At first he went into the family business, not making his first stage appearance until 1926. Despite not having the looks for a romantic lead, he impressed audiences with his talent and played many classical roles before making his film debut in 1932. His association with the director Alexander Korda began with The Private Life of Henry VIII (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII of England), for which Laughton won an Academy Award. However, he continued to act in the theatre, and his American production of "Galileo" by (and with) Bertolt Brecht is legendary.
Later career
Later films included The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).
In 1937 he was to have starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, I, Claudius, by Robert Graves, which was abandoned only part-way into filming due to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash. He also received an Academy Award nomination for his role in Witness for the Prosecution (1957).
His final film was Advise and Consent (1962), for which he received favorable comments for his performance as a Southern U.S. Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of the late Mississippi Senator John Stennis), but Laughton was dying from cancer.
Despite his homosexuality, he had a long and resilient marriage to actress Elsa Lanchester. In her autobiography, Lanchester maintained that the the marriage was never consummated. This was disputed by Maureen O'Hara.
She claimed that Laughton had told her that his biggest regret was never having had children of his own. He also told her that the reason he and Lanchester had never had children was because of a botched abortion she had early in her career while performing burlesque.
Elsa Lanchester appeared opposite him in several films, including Rembrandt (1936). In 1950, the couple became American citizens.
Charles Laughton had one stint as a director and the result was the legendary The Night of the Hunter (1955), starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. This movie is often cited among today's critics as one of the best movies of the 1950s; unfortunately it was a critical and box-office flop when it was originally released. Laughton never had another chance to direct his own movies.
He is interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
