CHARLES LAUGHTON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1940, Page 9

CHARLES LAUGHTON

INTERESTING BIOGRAPHY. When Charles Laughton decided to follow the stage instead of the sea, the English navy lost a second-rate admiral, and the stage and screen gained one of, its foremost figures. The decision of this eminent English actor to emulate the career of Sir Henry Irving instead of that of Lord Nelson, came as a severe blow to his parents. From the time of his birth in Scarborough on July 1. 1899, they had been intent on making him a midshipman, and in time and with luck an admiral on a quarterdeck. But Laughton, however, evinced a decided preference for Shakespeare over seamanship, at the early age of twelve, and stuck to his guns. The best land job Laughton could find was clerking at a London Hotel, the Claridge. The lobby was a clear-ing-house of faces, noses, gaits and accents, and Laughton, fascinated in

watching, them, almost forgot to add his figures. In time, however, he became hotel cashier, then resigned to enter the war.

After the war, he decided to indulge his dramatic propensities, and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In April, 1926, Laughton got his first part in a Russian play, acting one of those psychopathic characters which would win him undying fame in the theatre. Although he made a late start, he worked to the front rank of London stage players in almost no time at all.

Laughton made his screen debut in an English film called “Piccadilly,” later crossing to America to make films in Hollywood, the first being “Devil and the Deep” for Paramount. Fol-

lowing that he appeared in varied roles in such pictures as “Ruggles of Red Gap,” “Les Miserables" and “Mutiny on the Bounty.” His latest picture is Paramount's “Jamaica Inn,” a lusty story of the Cornwall wreckers a century ago. Charles Laughton has brown hair and grey eyes, and is 5 feet 101 inches in height. He is married to Elsa Lanchester, stage and screen artist.