Charles Laughton and I.

Elsa Lanchester

doi:10.2307/2262658

Charles Laughton in Hobson’s Choice

Close-Up ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417037.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 35-45

Author(s):

Marcia Landy

Keyword(s):

Charles Laughton

A discussion of Charles Laughton in Hobson’s Choice

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Lear's Terrible Journey: Charles Laughton at Stratford, 1959

New Theatre Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0266464x00002888 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 4 (16) ◽

pp. 315-320

Author(s):

Ken Carter

Keyword(s):

Short Article ◽

Charles Laughton ◽

A Performance

Interest in Charles Laughton has recently been revived by the publication of Simon Callow's biography (Methuen, 1987), in which the author quoted from the personal recollections of a teacher. Ken Carter, whose view of Laughton's Stratford performance as Lear in 1959 ran counter to the critical dismissals which have otherwise come down to us. Carter expanded his views for a short article published in Drama (4–1987), and now provides a fuller account of a performance recollected in remarkable detail after almost thirty years. An Oxford graduate, Ken Carter has worked mainly as a teacher in London, with interludes near Bath and in Madrid.

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Notorious, The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright

The Camera Lies ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197515327.003.0011 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 136-160

Author(s):

Dan Callahan

Keyword(s):

Stage Fright ◽

Color Picture ◽

Charles Laughton ◽

Rare Instance ◽

Liberated Women

Still in Ingrid Bergman’s thrall, Hitchcock made one of his most romantic pictures for her, Notorious (1946), in which she and Cary Grant work out many of the contrasts and tensions in their screen personas. Hitchcock was stymied by casting decisions not his own on The Paradine Case (1947), which was the last film he made for producer David O. Selznick, and then he foundered on miscasting again when James Stewart was given the central role of a queer academic in Rope (1948), his first color picture. Hitchcock made Under Capricorn (1949) as a valentine to Ingrid Bergman, allowing her to dominate an eight minute and forty-seven second take where her character confesses to a crime, a rare instance of acting for its own sake in Hitchcock’s work. Though Marlene Dietrich was superficially in the mode of the liberated women that Hitchcock enjoyed like Carole Lombard and Tallulah Bankhead, the Master was mainly bemused by Dietrich’s demands for special lighting in Stage Fright (1950), and so he lets her have her way as he lets Charles Laughton dominate Jamaica Inn.

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