LAUGHTON'S FUTURE AS A PRODUCER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 20, 16 October 1937, Page 10

LAUGHTON'S FUTURE AS A PRODUCER

"Charles Laughton, in a few ye'aTS, will be among England 's foremost film producers — one of the first of her really great producers. ' ' It was Erieh Pommer speaking, and opposite us at the luneheon table was Charles • Laughton himself, says a wrxter in a London paper. He was gathering up the script bf Somerset Maugham's "The Vessel of Wrath," which that day he was taking to the South of France for the first exteriors of the first production of the Fommex'-Laughton company, Mayfiower Bietures. Laughton is joint managing director with Pommer: a production executive already, therefore, as well as the star of the picture. JEe evaded Pommer 's compliment by a statement of fact. "I'm an actor," he said. The luneheon digeussion had been about British film production. Pommer insisted, and Laughton agreed, that it had only one fundamental fault — the lack of producers. Mcn of tho typo of Louis B. Mavcr, Sani Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, and tho lato lrving Thalberg. "England has all tho porfoeted machinery for film production which Hollywood has. There is no difference whatever. "The difference between American and British production is that. those men are in America and not in England," said Pommer. -"England must find producers or she will get nowhere," said Pommer.