Leap to Fame

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 756, 31 August 1929, Page 30

Leap to Fame

CHARLES LAUGHTONS UNCANNY SENSE OF CHARACTER HOPE OF ENGLISH STAGE j “Charles Laughton continues to go | from strength to strength,” wrote Alan i Parsons in his criticism in The London “Daily Mail” of “Beauty,” the new : play at the Strand Theatre. Iu this play this remarkable young actor has come back to the stage. Mr. Laughton is the great “hope” among English character actors. About three years ago he gave up hotel work and determined to try acting. His progress has been extraordinary. He has played a succession of dissimilar parts and in almost every one the critics and the public have acclaimed him. He was an Italian journalist in “Naked” (by Pirandello), an American in “The Happy Husband,” the name characters in “Mr. Prohack” and “Mr. Pickwick,” the Belgian detective Poirot in “Alibi,” and a degenerate in “A Man With Red Hair.” Now he is playing an ugly, shy, gauche French astronomer in “Beauty.” Mr. Laughton, who is a Yorkshireman and still under 30, is, in his own words, “experimenting at present.” He refuses to be tied down to any definite type of part. He is short, stout, not good looking, and his voice is by no means attractive, but his sense of character is almost uncanny.