Biography
Friends and Family
Samuel Goldwyn
[Friend]
::
Maureen O`Hara
[Friend]
Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 Method actors give you a photograph. Real actors give you an oil painting. I have a face that would stop a sundial.
[on Robert Mitchum] "All the tough talk is blind. He`s a literate, gracious, kind man and he speaks beautifully - when he wants to. Bob would make the best Macbeth of any actor living."
Hollywood is a goofy place. But I like it. It`s the perfect mummers` home. If one weren`t a little mad one wouldn`t be there.
It`s got so that every time I walk into a restaurant I get not only soup but an impersonation of Captain Bligh.
I have a face like the behind of an elephant.
They can`t censor the gleam in my eye.
Trivia
He and his wife were both active in liberal politics.
(imdb.com)
He was diagnosed with cancer of the gall bladder in January 1962 after being hospitalized with a collapsed vertebrae following a fall in the bath. Over the course of his final eleven months, his weight dropped to just ninety pounds.
(imdb.com)
He was a close friend of Burgess Meredith.
(imdb.com)
In later years he was frequently accused by the critics of having a tendency to ham, although he remained a popular star.
(imdb.com)
Became an agnostic after his experiences as a soldier during World War I.
(imdb.com)
He was very disappointed by the commercial failure of The Night of the Hunter (1955).
(imdb.com)
Served in First World War. In spite of having Public School education and Officer Training (in Stonyhurst College`s OTC), he chose to join the Army as a private in 1917. He served with the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment, and later with 7th Bn. Northamptonshire Regiment in the Western Front. Shortly before the armistice he became a casualty due to mustard gas.
(imdb.com)
In a memoir written after his death, Laughton`s widow, Elsa Lanchester, stated they never had children because he was homosexual. According to Maureen O`Hara, however, Laughton once told her that not having children was his biggest regret, and that it was because Elsa could not bear children as a result of an botched abortion she had early in her career while performing burlesque. It is possible both stories are true. Whether Lanchester ever had an abortion (which would have been illegal at the time) is not known, but it is known that Charles Laughton was gay. That fact, however, would not have precluded parenthood. There is, additionally, Laughton`s reputed great dislike of children. It is possible he said what he did to Maureen O`Hara because he knew she was a VERY devout Roman Catholic and, having been schooled by Jesuits himself, he wanted to play a little joke on her sensibilities.
(imdb.com)
Discovered actress Maureen O`Hara at the age of 18 and immediately signed her under contract as his protege.
(imdb.com)
He greatly disliked children. Because of his disdain for them and the fact that he had to work with them in The Night of the Hunter (1955), most of the scenes with the children were directed by star Robert Mitchum, who had three children of his own.
(imdb.com)
A highly regarded drama teacher, whose students included Albert Finney and William Phipps, Laughton would play Billie Holiday records for his students as an illustration of vocal inflection techniques.
(imdb.com)
Gave highly successful one-man reading tours for many years, his material ranging from the Bible to Jack Kerouac`s "The Dharma Bums".
(imdb.com)
Although he directed only one film, The Night of the Hunter (1955), Laughton was a prolific stage director, staging the original Broadway productions of George Bernard Shaw`s "Don Juan in Hell" (in which he also appeared), Herman Wouk`s "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" and Stephen Vincent Benet`s "John Brown`s Body".
(imdb.com)
Became an American citizen in 1950.
(imdb.com)
For the film Advise & Consent (1962), Laughton based his character of Sen. Seab Cooley on real-life Mississippi Sen. John C. Stennis, and went so far as to have Stennis read the character`s lines into a tape recorder so he could get Stennis` accent and rhythms the way he wanted them.
(imdb.com)
Robert Mitchum once stated that Laughton was the best director he had ever worked for, ironic in that Laughton never directed another movie after The Night of the Hunter (1955) with Mitchum.
(imdb.com)
In the 1928 play "Alibi" he became the first actor to play Agatha Christie`s detective Hercule Poirot.
(imdb.com)
Interred at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA, in the Court of Remembrance.
(imdb.com)
Spouse: Elsa Lanchester (9 February 1929 - 15 December 1962) (his death)
(imdb.com)
Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, UK
(imdb.com)
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