Discovering Charles Laughton

[@chrissierunham4533]

Charles Laughton was also a under-rated Film Director. His film ‘The Night of the Hunter’ is a classic. Pity he was not recognised as such.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

He was above everybody"s head. It became a classic with time. The French Cahiers du cinéma considered it the 2nd greatest film in history after Citizen Kane.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

Wow! What an actor. One of the greatest. It's true, what they said at the end, there's no one like him, and there never will be.

[@paulanderson7338]

My favourite movie of all time, Hobsons Choice, Laughton at his finest.

[@ange9663]

Incomparable Charles Laughton for me the greatest actor there has ever been ❤️, no one comes close gone far too soon, thank you for posting

[@philiphalpenny3783]

Billy Wilder said the same thing. During rehearsals on 'Witness For The Prosecution' Wilder said Laughton would do all the other actors parts...including Dietrich's! He sat in awe...who could match that range of performances in his '30s movies alone?

[@Missangie827]

i agree

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I agree. The greatest of all time.

[@furtherdefinitions1]

Absolutely one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema

[@timsan55]

Elsa Lancaster ? Lanchester ! Great documentary, and he deserves to be remembered.

[@johncumiskey672]

Lan Chester !

[@timsan55]

@@johncumiskey672 Lanchester. Otherwise the printers and publishers have got it wrong.

[@johncumiskey672]

@@timsan55 thanks , yes I know. Should have presented it better. Great team 👏

[@timsan55]

@@johncumiskey672 Apologies. I might have replied better ! Yes, Great team !

[@mikew608]

I would have loved to see Charles play Winston Churchill. What a performance that would have been.

[@americanwoman445]

Omg, yes! He even looks like him.

[@jeromesullivan4015]

Laughton was of a slightly younger generation, before Churchill was actually popular, but, I’m sure that if he put his mind to it…

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

He even looks like Churchill. What a shame he didn't play him! Men like him shouldn't die.

[@harri2626]

Masterful performances.

[@Scrapper.]

Extraordinary presence on stage and screen. The actors' actor.

[@LIZZIE-lizzie]

CHARLES LAUGHTON! One of our GREATEST players of the 20th century. It was said he would walk through his orange groves memorizing his lines. Olivia De Haviland said one of his most challenging roles, if not the most challenging, was that of CALIGULA. She said, he ran into her dressing room and exclaimed, I have it! He's just like Henry the VIII!, after crying with his head in her lap. Never tire of watching LAUGHTON. There isn't a character "favorite"of mine because EVery character he plays is stellar. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, JAMAICA INN, CAPTAIN KIDD and titles I can't remember.... In THE HUNCHBACK, LAUGHTON jumped on the bells, himself. Talented, talented player! Thank you for this presentation on CHARLES LAUGHTON.

[@stephenford6487]

Claudius, not Caligula

[@stephenford6487]

And, Edward VIII in his abdication speech on radio

[@jasonhowell-lg5ig]

​@@stephenford6487 Correct.. he was playing Roman Emperor Claudius not Caligula.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

And each charcter is unique. He doesn't play the same role twice.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

@@stephenford6487Oh, big difference!

[@Paula-gs2dk]

Loved everything he has ever done. Wonderful!!! Greatest.

[@alexandergraham6912]

"Laughton was a genius, and there is no room for genius in the theatre. He was greater than I was." Laurence Olivier

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

Olivier is right. I thought Olivier was the greatest I"d ever seen, but I have to admit Laughton was even greater. Good for Olivier to recognise it. Laughton thought he was ugly and fat, but boy, his acting made you fall for him. Marlene Dietrich called him "the sexiest man in the world."

[@adriannespring8598]

True!! Olivier had the looks vs Laughton had the talent & subtlety.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

@@adriannespring8598 Well put.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

@@adriannespring8598 kösz

[@rachelleryan9193]

Astounding 🥰 what an actor 😎

[@jadezee6316]

one of my favorite actors and one of the greatest actors ever...not being an attractive man..he had to do it all....just with talent....

[@williamprice3700]

One of my favorites!

[@americanwoman445]

I just posted on Twitter who my pick was for greatest actor of all time and it was Charles Laughton...

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I agree.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I would say the same.

[@milliesmith5068]

Charles Laughton the greatest actor.

[@jantyszka1036]

It's Elsa *Lanchester*, not Lancaster. If you're going to take part in a documentary, do your research.

[@martinturner2309]

hear hear at least 2 of these BS merchants dont seem to really know the films they are pontificating about.

[@howardsmith8430]

@@martinturner2309 Stephen Armstrong and Ian Nathan are the two.

[@Jungleland33]

How did that major f up get through?

[@chrisleach3958]

Very disappointed that you didn’t show scenes From I Claudius, Charles Laughton was making back in 1937, when his co-star was involved in a terrible car accident that put her out for over a year. I documentary call called the epic that never was is available on the Internet and the scenes that were shot and finished a wonder and would have been Lawtons greatest film.

[@stanedwards309]

It's wonderful watching the raw footage. Besides wonderful actors, it's a beautifully designed, lit and photographed film.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

So sad I Claudius was never made. I saw the parts that were filmed on video. Laughton tears at yr heart strings. That film would have been one of the greatest ever.

[@ellibod1]

Everyone knows the moon is Charles Laughton

[@limey1able]

Wasn't he responsible for bringing Maureen O'Hara to the States?

[@johnohara197]

Yes you are correct !

[@Tabish29]

Him and O'Toole had this great diction

[@randysills4418]

*He and O'Toole...

[@lutherfox5744]

Witness For The Prosecution, The Bribe and White Woman are some of my favourite Laughton flicks.

[@lliamjurdom9505]

Laughton real old fashioned English Acting .... deserved a knighthood !!!!

[@afrogirl757]

All his movies are my favorite but he's delicious in the silly Ruggles of Red Gap.

[@timcarpenter2441]

In Spartacus, he let his Yorkshire accent shine, and in that role it seems so appropriate, ever more so vs Olivier’s clipped presumptive tones.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

Ye, but Olivier's clipped presumptive tones suited the character of the Roman Crassus.

[@timcarpenter2441]

@@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633 I agree - it was the vs being in conflict and contrast of the two characters in the film. Olivier was awesome, especially when he lost his temper "Great heaven;y merciful gods!" 🙂

[@ricardocantoral7672]

This was an okay documentary. This doesn't really get into the Charles's personal life. I highly recommend the 1978 Hollywood Greats documentary on Laughton which featured interviews of those who knew the man personally.

[@lutherfox5744]

Cary Grant and Laughton had the same cadence in their manner of speaking.

[@hughmacdonald3595]

Lol. Thanks for the reply. Ask Scotty Bowers and Tyrone Power about Mr. Laughton being a diva. Or Ms. Lanchester. Great actor. Odd human being.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

He was a genius. Geniuses aren't like ordinary pple.

[@hughmacdonald3595]

Being a diva and acting like a moron socially isn't excused by "Geniuses aren't like ordinary ppl," and to call an actor a genius is...odd at best. Actors play make-believe for a living, memorizing lines written by other people and trying to project emotion, all while avoiding, during a live performance, having the audience jeer or throw rotten tomatoes at them. Please use the word genius to describe people who actually are (Leonardo, Newton, and Curie, are). Chefs, actors and Kanye West aren't.

[@arsenal10141014]

A giant on screen

[@stephaniestanley8041]

He would have been great as Churchill. He was greater than Olivier.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I was mad about Olivier, but I have to admit that he was greater.

[@AdamAus85]

Shame they had no time or much interest in Jamaica Inn. Good movie

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I agree.

[@juttamaier2111]

Who would have thought that there are so many marvellous parts for an overweight, "plain" (aka ugly, which always fascinated me) actor. Thank god he lived in a time when film was invented and generations to come can enjoy his exciting performances! Like Ustinov, too. Fat actors these days are just fat.

[@ExiledGypsy]

Rubbish. Laughton was jalouse of Clark Gable because at the time Gable was the epitome of masculinity at the time and Laughton hated his own looks. That was the tragedy of Laughton. I think, I was 10 years old when I watched his Hunchback of Notre Dame in black and white late at night with my mum. I was so upset that I kept crying, making my mum laugh that only made me angrier. That was when I fell emotionally in love with cinema rather than just the excitement, I saw in WWII films. But I never thought how close to the reality of his life the script was until recently. That role must have been written for him by Victor Hugo well over a hundred years before Laughton was born. He was truly an extremely complex person. A combination of extraordinary intrinsic talent, monstrous cruelty and yet such childlike sensitivity that made women want to mother him. He was bullied in boys boarding school for being fat. Something that I remember from my boarding school days about the English culture. These are the kind of cultural traits that are supposed to make men out of boys. Anyway, he ended up hating how he looked but also learned how to pretend and started to appreciate the power of aesthetics. So, he wanted to be an actor from early childhood but probably for all the wrong reasons. He was pobably the bet of all the famous Shakespearian English actors that came after him. He wrote the book that Lawrence Oliver, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, and Richard Burton followed, ending with Antony Hopkins who is really the last of the breed. He got married and remained in love with his wife to the end even though soon after marriage his wife found out that he was a homosexual with a penchant for violence. He wasn't your submissive camp type; no, he was into paying rent boys and having rough sex with them. Off course then they would follow him and try to blackmail him by threatening to tell his wife. But he told his wife instead of paying them. He fell to the ground and cried like a baby and told her. Her reaction was as unexpected as his decision to tell her. She accepted it and supported him. They had a lot more in common to allow homosexuality to stand between them. I think, he was a kind of ambivalent homosexual. His sexual urges were all mixed up with his heartrate of his own image and appreciating aesthetics of a beautiful man. I think, Laughton's trauma of his school days made him look at these pretty boys as idiots who didn't appreciate beauty. So, he was releasing his pent-up anger on them during the process of the sexual act and the orgasm gave him the endorphin that soothed his anger, at least until next time. The strange part is that his wife for unexplored reasons found good looking men revolting. So, they had a bizarre inverse common ground that neither of them probably noticed before they got married. Stranger than that is that his wife stayed with him but never wanted to have children from him. This is the most counterintuitive part. I don't think Laughton was the kind of homosexual who couldn't get an erection with a woman in bed. We know that there are a lots of married couples whose sexual trajectory is not as straight forward as the Church would like it to be and a lot of them go on and procreate anyway. That is the evolutionary doctrine or dogma if you like. So, what went wrong? After all this anti-conventionalism, placing the spirit of love above its earthly pollutions when it came down to it, were they just as conventional as the Jones’s? Either that or neither of them wanted to put another soul through the pain that is human existence despite all its beauty.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

Well put. Elsa didn"t want children bc she had had a traumatic abortion.

[@milliesmith5068]

Did he ever become a SIR.?

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

No.

[@johnohara197]

Terrible documentary which has been cut and is missing significant parts , no mention of his personal life that he was a bisexual , which had a profound impact on his life , total waste of time.

[@americanwoman445]

What,? That's what is wrong with this generation, who cares if he was bisexual, that's his business. Does everyone have to know goes on in your bedroom?

[@geminisundone]

@@americanwoman445 Couldn't agree more. I couldn't give a toss about his sexuality.

[@teddyruxspin8480]

@@americanwoman445 he gorfed massive amounts of sausage

[@johncumiskey672]

​@@americanwoman445 I understood that his wife was trouble by, his boy desires . It's never nice when someone destroys another's life , to protect their own. Thankfully times have moved on , and hopefully for the better ..

[@davidburbage3348]

And they couldn't even get Elsa's last name right!

[@hughmacdonald3595]

Discovering Charles Laughton is just another day tripping over another actor diva.

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

I'm sorry, I think you've missed the boat entirely.

[@hughmacdonald3595]

lol. hardly

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

@@hughmacdonald3595Pretty shallow. Not getting the man who"s probably the greatest actor ever. So many petty pple around.