INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES LAUGIITON
READING these articles has given me quite a turn. We have been married for the last eight and one-half years, and in life, as in her style of writing, Elsa is a sweet, unsophisticated, and even naive person; but suddenly, through an apparently chance but invariably carefullyworked-out remark which has probably taken weeks of thought, you feel somewhat as if you had been kicked by the hind leg of a giraffe.
As I read through these articles, I said to myself, ‘Dear Elsa; bless her heart; the little pet’; and suddenly I came across a line which made my bones rattle inside their covering of fat. Mind you, in her relationship to me these blows would always be salutary and invariably thought out for my own good — like castor oil in childhood. But the little brute does enjoy summing up relationships and situations in one shattering line. To keep her friendship you certainly have to be able to ‘take it’; but it must be worth it, for she has never lost a friend.
For the sake of my personal comfort I should have liked to blue-pencil a very great deal of these articles, but actually the only thing that disappeared was an elaborate exposition of her point of view on strip-tease, and this went only because it was dead news anyhow. To have edited these articles would only have given a false impression of her point of view of me, and it would have been a beastly shame considering all the cigarettes she has smoked and all the pencils she has bitten through.
This is the nicest husband-and-wife story I know. I was cast in On the Spot, Edgar Wallace’s play, in which I had to wear smart clothes and go around the stage kissing the women. I came home one night in a state of despair, sullen and nasty, and said to Elsa: ‘I know they won’t stand for this. I have got a face like an elephant’s behind, and in this play 1 have got to do the big sex act.’ She turned round on me like the proverbial tiger cat and whipped out: ‘How dare you presume you are unattractive! Hold your shoulders back, keep your head up and smile, so that I can hold my head up with other women.’ Can you beat that? I owe her plenty. — C. L.
I
I HAD never met Charles before we played together in Arnold Bennett’s Mr. Prohack, though he had seen me many times before on the stage. I was introduced to him at the first rehearsal. The romantic aspect of our association was not, perhaps, immediately apparent. In Mr. Prohack I always looked upon Charles as a great actor — automatically. I did not say, ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ I knew, automatically, that he had this talent as well as I knew my own foot. If I had been full of a sort of respectful awe we should not have had any relationship at all.
You know, in the theatre we tell each other the latest risqué stories; one can say the beginning of our interest was apparent in so far as I never exchanged such stories with Charles, which may or may not have meant anything — I don’t know. He may have exchanged them with other people, as I probably did. I remember we remarked about it afterwards — that we did not do that. I don’t know why. It may have been my reticence with a man I admired.
I should say we became engaged just before Charles went into The Man with Red Hair in 1928, and Alibi. That ran a year. Then he did Mr. Pickivick at the Haymarket. We got married after that, and for our honeymoon went to Switzerland — to Arosa — in February. Our visit was in time for the winter sports. Charles had been before and was good on skis. I had never skied, but as I was a dancer everybody told me, ‘You will do it in a minute; it’s very simple, you know. You have the right balance and everything.’
So I traipsed up the first mountain and tried to keep up with Charles. People said, ‘The skis are six feet long and the snow is very soft. If you fall you cannot hurt yourself. You just fall. Put your arms out and drop in the snow.’ Actually I went down like a daddy longlegs, and, being double-jointed, I completely collapsed. When I fell I let myself go, and if you collapse sideways one ski cuts you right in the middle. That is what happened. I went down heavily and also got one of the ski sticks right in my mouth and had to extract it like a tooth! Altogether it was a very, very bad show.
From Arosa we went on to Italy, and visited Naples. I was wildly excited about Vesuvius, but Charles was scared to death by it. Charles hates elemental displays of any sort, whereas if I could see a hailstone as big as a football I should be enchanted by it. I love thunderstorms, rough seas, volcanoes. Charles loathes them. I know it is usual for women to dislike these things. Women are supposed to like sweets and men not, but it is absolutely the other way round. Women hate sweets, and men absolutely wallow in coconut cakes and horrible things like that. That’s true of Charles as well as of other men. The same applies to all those theories as to what women like and do not like — I have never found them true.
I think the dislike of rough seas, thunderstorms, and so on is hereditary. Charles’s mother is afraid of thunder. If a child is brought up to see people hide under blankets when a storm is on, the child naturally thinks it is dangerous. I was brought up to stand at the window and watch lightning, but not to hold a pair of scissors in my hand at the same time. That’s all.
Vesuvius was in an average state when we were there — which means the whole centre of the earth seems to rumble under your feet, then about every four minutes there is a terrific shooting up of rocks and muck and stuff, all red. Afterwards an enormous cauliflower of yellow smoke comes out, which becomes white as it goes into the sky. We both went up Vesuvius. I wanted to stay and watch, but Charles was not only frightened but worried by it. It disturbed his inside. One goes up with twenty or thirty people, and I noticed that a lot took one look and walked straight back to the funicular railway. That sort of thing does upset some people. It feels as if the rumbling were in your inside. Being the centre of the earth, it has some sort of direct action on one. I felt it myself, as well as Charles, but I liked it.
Our best acting relationship was in The Tempest, when Charles was Prospero and I was Ariel, which worked very well as a stage relationship. I do not know why it is, but few people can stand up against Charles on the stage. I do not think I have attracted attention because I am married to him, but because I am not frightened of standing up against his acting. As a matter of fact, that point became very apparent in Rembrayidt. We understand each other so well, being married, that we can do better teamwork on the stage or films.
In an acting relationship like that in Rembrandt it is a hard thing to look at each other in that natural way for the camera that one has learned to do through living with a person for several years. It is rather shocking to have to do that in a show, but it works if you can. You don’t have to remember how you look at a person you live with. You just have to be yourself, but when you get home you feel as if you had given yourself away, and that your private life has been exposed. It is rather like going to bed in a shop window. It is dangerous for one’s real relationship. I have never felt that quite so strongly as in Rembrandt.
Then there was Henry the Eighth, when I played Anne of Cleves with Charles. Again, the scene I had with him was picked out as the best in the picture. It is true, we rehearse between ourselves a lot, but something happens when you know the person and his speed of talking and all his little habits. If you put your hand on the hand of that person you don’t feel you have got to act a reaction. There is a ‘natural naturalness’ which we arc not unconscious of when we are acting together. In Henry the Eighth, that scene with Henry’s dislike of Anne of Cleves also affected our real behavior. He really thought I was Anne of Cleves, and I thought he was somebody whom by various wiles I must try to avoid.
When Charles was in The Barretts of Wimpole Street — I did not play in that — he would come home occasionally a little like the domineering father. When he revealed any tendency in the home to be like Air. Barrett, I said, ‘Ah-ah,’ and tried to show him that he was still acting, and not himself— that he must not bring the stage home like a dog bringing a bone into the house.
II
To give a true picture of Charles’s future I feel I ought to hark back a little to his past. In school he was not brilliant at any subject except mathematics. He hated games, which always gives a boy an uncomfortable time at school. He did not then know what he wanted to do, but at any rate he acquired a capacity for concentrating on and carrying out any object he had in mind. I think he must have inherited this quality from his mother, who has the same determination and organizing ability. When she married Charles’s father they bought a small hotel, and it was her overwhelming determination that built up the Pavilion Hotel, Scarborough, the forerunner of the three hotels now carried on in Scarborough by Charles’s mother and his two brothers.
The three boys were brought up in a hotel, which of course is not exactly a home. They had no permanent nursery, and were always shifted about from 19B to 22A according to the summer or winter season. A hotel certainly does not provide an atmosphere conducive to inviting one’s friends to tea, and for this reason all three brothers now find the usual approaches to friendship a little difficult. Even now I have to apply friends to Charles like a poultice, but then they stick like clams — he gradually takes them to him and they become permanent friends.
In trying to tell you about Charles’s childhood I have been asking him for more detailed recollections that might show when he first wanted to be an actor or thought of the stage. He said:
‘I remember I was abnormally interested in pierrot troupes which I saw on the sands at Scarborough at a very early age when I was not allowed to go to the theatre. I, of course, always had to disappear when the velvet bag vras handed round, as I had nothing to put in it.
‘I remember some time later I even took great pains to build a model theatre. My brother, in a rage, bit off the heads of all the marionette performers I had made. But then I had a cousin who was even more given to theatricals than I was and he is now a partner in a steelworks in Sheffield — so what?
‘Once when I was very small I was walking with my mother across the fashionable Spa Bridge in Scarborough, and I saw what I thought was a very lovely lady indeed. Probably I picked her out because she was a little more highly colored than the other lovely ladies. I asked my mother, “Who is the pretty lady?” and she replied, “Hush, dear! That’s a theatrical.”
‘Later on my mother, to my great shame, sometimes used to introduce me as “My eldest son. He’s artistic.”
‘At school I won some sort of prize for mathematics — Heaven help me! — and I chose for my prize an edition of Shakespeare bound in tree calf. I thought to myself: One day this will become the most famous edition of Shakespeare in the world, the much-thumbed copy of Charles Laughton. I was about twelve and I really honestly thought this,’
Charles’s family did not take kindly to the idea of his becoming an actor when he finally decided upon it. It; was decreed instead that he was to learn the hotel business from the bottom up, and, as he had no definite cause to object at that time, he allowed himself to be sent to Claridge’s. Besides, London was the big city with the big theatres. This was early in 1916, he had just left school, and he was then just sixteen.
‘I was sent to Claridge’s in London,’ Charles says, ‘and was in turn bill clerk, control clerk, and cashier’s clerk. I was paid ten shillings a week and my keep, and later on, I think, twelve and sixpence a week. It was when I was at Claridge’s that I got really hopelessly bitten by the stage. I spent every penny I made on the galleries of the London theatres.
‘ I went to see Chu Chin Chow thirteen times, A Kiss for Cinderella about ten times, Razzle Dazzle, the revue at the Drury Lane, eight or nine times, and I became a rabid fan of both Sir Gera ld Du Maurier and Miss Hilda Trevelyan, who appeared in A Kiss for Cinderella. If anybody had slurred their names in any way I would have fought him to the death.
‘When I was at Claridge’s I naturally got to know a lot of the staff, a very large percentage of whom are still there to-day. One of the pleasantest things in my life is, if I go into Claridge’s restaurant, the way my old friends look after me. They pretend they don’t know me, but like to show me off to any important people I may be dining with by taking special care of me. They have been known to whisper to me when taking my chair from me: “These are n’t your kind of people, Charlie, are they?” “No,” I have reassured them.’
Charles did not become of military age until the last year of the war, but nevertheless he saw a good deal of it. He got sent straight to the front and was badly gassed just before the Armistice. He had been at a public school and could have got a commission, but he said: —
‘Something told me I might not be the kind of fellow to take command of men under fire, and so I stubbornly stood out against having a commission and was conscripted into the ranks. Being a “softie” at the moment, I was naturally extremely frightened of what I was about to experience. However, it did not take me very long to learn to fight and to do what I was told. Sometimes it is a good thing for young people to have a complete change of environment at an impressionable age. The war was more of an upheaval than a change. One experience, which I would rather not talk about, took away my sleep intermittently for two years afterwards, though, looking back, I admit the war probably had a toughening effect on me.’
III
When he was demobilized, Charles went back to Scarborough and started work in the family hotel. He was good at the policy of the hotel, but apparently bad at looking after the detail. This job took up all his working hours, but he turned to amateur theatricals as a recreation. At this time it could only be called a hobby. Charles loves to talk about these amateur days.
‘I was asked to join a company of amateurs called the “ Scarborough Players.” We did Trelavmey of the Wells, and I played the part of Sir William Gower. I must have been exceedingly bad. We then did Hobson’s Choice, which was a real box-office success. You know the usual signs: opening without any ballyhoo, empty for the first day or so, and then the word going round that it is a good show and nobody being able to get a seat at the end of the run. That is real success: opening without ballyhoo and people telling each other. Then we did a programme of four oneact plays. We had a lot of fun in those amateur days, and we worked with a very great deal of enthusiasm. It must have been an unhappy experience for my parents to watch all my energies going into “theatricals” instead of being concentrated on the family business.’
This being the case, it became clearer and clearer that there was nothing for it but for Charles to go on the stage. He must have known it for many months before he decided to drop this bombshell on the family. In Charles’s case it was an enormous decision to make, for if he had failed they certainly would have been within their rights in saying, ‘What did we tell you?’ for after all there were a life career and security waiting for him in the hotel business. On the face of it, he had nothing which might convince them that the stage held any opportunities for him. He was not good-looking, he could n’t sing, he could n’t dance, he did n’t even have a very good speaking voice as yet, and he did n’t look like an actor — although I might add he actually has a typical ‘actor’s mask.’ (It is all very well to discover this after the event!)
The shock must have been doubly great to the family, since he had not shown any visible signs of courage, but there is one thing that Charles has always had, and that is courage enough to gamble with his career. He will not gamble with anything else, — money, friendship, or health, — but every twist and turn in his career has been a daring choice of ways.
Talking about this critical time, he said to me: —
‘What broke the ice was my brother coming home one day (he was learning farming and auctioneering) and complaining to me about my being the eldest son, and having the business. I told him that he could have the business as far as I was concerned, as I wanted to go on the stage. My father was very pleasant about it, but my mother was a little doubtful. However, they made me an allowance, and I was allowed to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where thinking about acting ceased to be a crime and became a cardinal virtue.’
Charles carried off the Gold Medal from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to where he was living — a small bedroom in Long Acre; and after the first job at the Barnes Theatre he started the search for work. It was not a hopeless search, since he was often offered similar parts to the one in The Government Inspector at a comparatively large salary, but he said to himself, ‘I won’t be typed’ — which meant that he had to wait two or three months to get a different kind of part at less money. This happened time and time again. Heaven knows, he has reaped the benefit of it since. It meant an enormous amount of heartbreak to make a success in one part at three pounds a week and be offered a similar part at thirty pounds a week, and to say, ‘No, I would rather wait.’
Eventually he got the part of Ficsur in Liliom, at the Duke of York’s Theatre, in December 1926, with Ivor Novello and Fay Compton. He made a great success in this part, and I think it was at this time that I first heard his name. I heard it off and on until I met him, and have a faint recollection that the name ‘Charles Laughton’ belonged to a fat man who was going to be ‘somebody.’ I was in a play at the Everyman Theatre called The Pool and we made every effort to get him for the part of my lover, but failed.
After Liliom he played General Markeloff in The Greater Love with Sybil Thorndike and Basil Gill. I asked him what he felt like when playing with these famous names, and he said: —
‘It was a great experience acting with such people as Sybil Thorndike, Fay Compton, and Basil Gill. I used to watch them night after night through cracks in the scenery, and wonder how they got their effects — they always seemed to be so sure. I don’t know now any more than I did then.’
He next appeared as Mr. Pratt in The Happy Husband, and as Count Pahlen in Paul the First in 1927. Paul the First was one of the plays produced by Komisarjevsky in a season at the Court Theatre, so, while playing Count Pahlen in this play at night, he was rehearsing for Mr. Prohack during the day. The rehearsals were exciting and enjoyable, for it was an exceedingly good cast and we all were very happy in our work. Charles played the lead and I played his secretary, Mimi Winstock. It was n’t a very large part, but I drew the same salary as Charles — such were our relative positions at that time.
Many people who have acted with Charles have stated that he is difficult to act with, as he has never developed any recognized stage technique. It is for this reason that perhaps one could call him a gifted amateur, Charles himself agrees with this view, and says he is afraid he will remain so. Yet there is no one who is easier to work with, and no one who personally has taught me more about acting.
Charles continued his stage career, but his health at this time was not good. He was in The Silver Tassie and one or two plays that did not run so well. His voice became very bad, and all the critics said, ‘How long is this chap’s voice going to last?’ He used to be constantly troubled by sore throats. For a whole year his voice grew steadily worse, and he became worried about his career. It was like beating a dead horse to try to speak. The voice is a nervous thing. What with first-night nerves and bad throats, the future looked anything but rosy.
It became exceedingly worrying. Charles used to have a dreadfully husky voice in all his early successes, a completely different voice from that of to-day. At first the press were kind. They always noticed it, however, and it was rather hurtful. They then lapsed into tolerance — ‘Oh, well, he’s a wonderful actor. It’s too bad about his voice.’ Finally Charles decided to go and have his tonsils out. It is clear that if he had not had that operation things might have been different. It was unpleasant during that period, because it was the only obstacle to fame that stood in his way. To a person who has clear-cut ideas as to what he wants to do and how to do it, such a trouble was nerve-racking.
We went to Italy after the operation and when we came back Charles had a year’s run in On the Spot, a play specially written for him by Edgar Wallace. It is interesting how this play came to be written. Edgar Wallace sent for Charles one day, and so off he went to his flat in Portland Place. Edgar stalked round the room telling Charles a possible story about something like the Düsseldorf murders taking place in St. John’s Wood. He was very sincere in wanting to write a play for Charles, but he must have had a lacklustre look in his eye, for Charles did not catch any enthusiasm from him.
I believe it must have been a copy of Time that was lying on Edgar Wallace’s desk, and it was open at a page which showed a photo of a most villainouslooking man, with a black bang of hair over his forehead and black bloodshot eyes. Charles asked who he was, and Edgar began describing the bloodthirsty horrors of this man’s life — his coldblooded shootings, his many mistresses, and the floral funerals he gave to people he bumped off. Charles said, ‘Why not write a play about him?’ Edgar said, ‘Too vicious.’ Charles said, ‘Notoriously box-office.’ Edgar said, ‘ Hm . . .’ and Charles began to detect a gleam in his eye. Charles said, ‘He would have a purple carpet and a golden organ.’ Edgar said, ‘He would get rid of the bodies in the sofa.’ And for two hours suggestions flew from both of them like sparks. Charles came home pale and tired, and said, ‘I believe Edgar is going to write the play of his career.’
On the Spot was written in two days. The script was hardly changed during rehearsals. Edgar Wallace must have made a great deal out of the play — but of course it was only one of his many side lines.
After that we acted together at the St. James’s Theatre in Payment Deferred, in which I was Charles’s daughter, aged twelve. It was a grim play and rather a strain. It was a really frightening study of a murderer. All I can remember is that it seemed to be raining every day during the production — there was a sort of thick fog over everything. Life became rather a drizzle outside our home. It was a dreary time because it was such a dreary play. It hit the bottom, you know. When the curtain went down we would have a stiff whiskey to pick us up a bit, and we used to go to supper in a restaurant where there was a band playing. We did that more than we have ever done before or since, to offset the effect of the play. It is a fine play, but too near the bone.
In theatres there is always a little peephole through which you can look at the audience. You often see people get their handkerchiefs out, and put their heads down during a play, but in Payment Deferred I saw people throw their heads right up and cry, which is very extraordinary — there were tears running down their upturned faces. People are usually ashamed of crying in a theatre, and try to hide it. In Payment Deferred they cried openly. In that, as in all his performances, Charles more or less showed people that it might be themselves they were seeing.
Charles tries to portray a character so that everybody in the world can identify himself with it. He wants people to see themselves, to imagine that in certain circumstances the character portrayed might be themselves.
That is what makes people understand. If an actor can do that, however slightly, it is a very important asset. I think Charles’s work is essentially an effort to show different men in an absolutely universal light; to show Englishmen as the whole world will understand them — not Englishmen for Englishmen, but Englishmen for Spaniards and Englishmen for Italians, so that they say, ‘Yes, that’s an Englishman.’ I think that is why all Charles’s performances seem as if they were on a larger canvas than the other performances. When seeing Mutiny on the Bounty people all over the world have been inclined to say ‘That’s Captain Bligh’ rather than ‘That’s Charles Laughton.'
We went to New York in Payment Deferred. Mr. Gilbert Miller wanted to present Charles in New York, so it was a Gilbert Miller production. The London success was repeated. But the New York success was something new for Charles. Neither of us had ever been there before.
Although we did not realize it at the time, this trip to New York was to be the beginning of Charles’s career as a film actor. Charles had not thought of being a film actor. He was interested in the cinema, and had done one or two bits in England, but nothing of any consequence.
When film offers came in, Charles was offered more money for signing a long contract for stories over which he had no choice than he is now getting for single films, but he would never sign for a long contract or for a story he did not know. With all this going about and being taxed in two countries and so on, we should have liked the money. But Charles has never put that first. He has always tramped the world for stories. After all, if you get paid a hundred pounds a week, and have ten failures, you do not keep on getting a hundred pounds a week. Better to have ten pounds a week for the rest of your life and good work.
IV
We returned to England, and three days afterward Paramount offered him The Devil and the Deep, with a fairly reasonable contract — that is, two films a year for three years, which was not a long contract and not a very big tie. Anyway it was the smallest tie that had been offered him, but also less money. Our friend Benn Levy was on the script. Charles cabled Benn Levy, and asked, ‘What’s the story like?’ Benn advised him to do it. A few quickly exchanged cables, and we had only been in England three days when we left again, this time for Hollywood and The Devil and the Deep.
As to Charles’s reaction — he was not even happy at that time. It is very disturbing suddenly to be offered a fortune and to keep your head. It was a great strain, and we used to sit around and say, ‘Well, after all, we can go on living in a liltie flat. It won’t hurt us.’ He was not fighting against a film career; he wanted to do films, but he was not going to start in something that was going to kill his possible future.
The executives in New York did not understand him. They had never met anything like that before. I was not present at any of the interviews, but I think they were talking a completely different language. They knew this man had made a success and they wanted to buy him. That was their usual method. I do not think they were annoyed; rather they were completely puzzled by Charles; they just had no point of contact.
Once in Hollywood, everything was different. Nobody had ever heard of him or his New York success. When we actually arrived there, he just had his contract and a part in The Devil and the Deep.
Film hours everybody knows, of course. Charles left the house about six or seven in the morning, and usually returned about half-past seven or eight at night for dinner. I occasionally went and had lunch with him at the Paramount studio, where we first met Josef von Sternberg, whom we both became very fond of.
By the time Charles got back home in the evening he would be very tired, and we were just obliged to go to bed. There is one thing in Hollywood: if you do go out to a dinner or party while you are working you hardly ever have to say ‘Good-bye’ to your hostess, and you certainly don’t have to apologize for leaving early. I wish people would get into that habit in England.
Of camera experience, and by this I mean a very, very long step from stage technique, — a giant stride, in fact, — Charles knew there was a lot to learn, but he was at that time innocent of how much. On the stage you have to enlarge everything a dozen times, so that it will reach the back of the gallery and at the same time not lead the front row of the stalls to think that you are a ham. But on the screen you always have to understate, and bear in mind that you are playing right up against the audience and that everybody is even nearer than the front row of the stalls. The public is as near to you in a close-up as your own image in a shaving mirror, so that batting an eyelid is batting an eyelid and you dare not exaggerate by one hair’s breadth.
Charles was quick to grasp this difference, but suffered agonies in controlling his gestures, although he found little difficulty in projecting his thoughts through his eyes in a close shot; for he is, I think, in stage acting, one of the few actors who always feel things emotionally before interpreting them physically. Charles, among other actors for the films, eventually learned which was a good take and which a bad one, because if you truly feel something under the eye of the camera it is as if you had suddenly found a pearl for which you had been searching a very long time.
Charles has always liked Hollywood. From the first, he loved the sunlight. He, of course, knew that he was a beginner and was very humble. He used to watch Gary Cooper acting in The Devil and the Deep. Many people say that Gary Cooper is just a good-looking man and acts unconsciously, but the moment Charles saw him he said, ‘This man is a terrific actor.’ Gary can flick a cigarette, and the timing is so perfect that you could watch him do it a hundred times and never get quite the way he does it. He likes to pretend he is just a good fellow, but he is really aware of what he is doing, which means he is a conscious actor, not just a consciously good-looking man.
Gary Cooper was in The Devil and the Deep, and Tallulah Bankhead also. They used to work at night, a lot because it was a submarine picture, with many exteriors, and complete silence was needed. The longest working hours Charles has ever done were on that picture. There was one twenty-three-hour effort. I was with him then. We got up in the morning at seven, and it was light when we went home the next morning.
This was a shot showing Charles hacking open the bulkheads and letting the water in on himself, and then sitting in a chair until the water rose up over him; he had actually to let the water rise up over his face for the close-up camera. It was a wonderful shot, and, since it was rather dangerous, they had an oxygen apparatus and everything necessary in reserve. Charles got so into the mood of this shot that I became scared and started to think he was seriously contemplating suicide, because he always adjusts himself to what he is doing and really feels it. When the water was over his head the camera had to continue to shoot on the water for some time, giving the impression that the body was still underneath. I feared that, not wanting to bob up, he might take some mouthfuls of water.
In one ‘take’ the fireman thought he was not coming up, but Charles was actually swimming underneath. The fireman plunged in, fully clothed, to rescue him from drowning!
The ten takes that were necessary were all made on the same night. There was a kind of dressing room on wheels in which Charles could change. He had two suits, and as he got one wet, he took it off and they rushed it in and ironed it out again while he put on another. I think he drank quite a lot of whiskey in the intervals to keep out the cold. Of course, when you are working on your nerves and getting cold under water, whiskey does not make you drunk. You know, when you have a fever you can drink alcohol and it does not affect you at all. He drank whiskey and did not get a cold, but he got very morose. I put that down to the suicidal scene in which he had to play. All the others were feeling grim, too. They said to me, ‘Charles is in a pretty bad way, isn’t he?’ We all got into a bad state of nerves.
After The Devil and, the Deep there was a rest for a week or so. Charles wanted to do a De Mille picture. He knew that at that time a De Mille picture attracted world-wide attention, and that it is better to show your little finger in a boxoffice picture than to play the lead in a non-box-office one. Although he had made an enormous impression in The Devil and the Deep round the Hollywood studios, it was not yet released, and so it was a good thing to get into a big picture. The Cecil B. De Mille film was his second one for Paramount. It was The Sign of the Cross and Charles took the part of Nero. Charles enjoyed playing this part. He thought Nero’s love of jewels and resplendent garb and all his petty foibles silly and comical. He said of Nero; ‘If you actually saw him in real life you would want to laugh. The only thing that made him a sinister figure was the power he possessed. Anyone who can have a man thrown to the lions is bound to be sinister.’
It was very funny in the restaurant or anywhere about the Paramount lot during the shooting of The Sign of the Cross. If you saw a bunch of clean-shaven brutal men with hair on their chests you could be sure they were barbarians, but if you saw a lot of weak, kindly old gentlemen with staffs and long white beards you were quite safe in saying, ‘Those are Christians.’ Cecil B. De Mille made the difference very marked — perhaps to make sure that the lions did not eat the wrong people.
During that first visit to Hollywood, Charles also did Payment Deferred for Thalberg and M-G-M, and that is what sent me home. I had played the part of his daughter when the play was produced in London and New York, but of course Charles was not yet ‘box-office’ in Hollywood; they had to surround him with names, so they put Maureen O’Sullivan into the part of his daughter, which was hurtful to me. If someone had then said ‘ Box-office ’ to me I should have said ‘Why?’ — I did not understand. Now I know that the bigger the name the better, and that the only thing for me to do is to get my name bigger and not question other people’s names.
Before I came home I went to see Irving Thalberg. It was the first time I had met him. I think if he had seen me earlier I should have got the part of the adolescent in the film, but he had thought, ‘Oh, Charles Laughton’s wife — what the hell does she look like, I wonder.’ I was sitting in his office, I remember, when Thalberg walked in. He looked at me, went to the door, and shouted to someone outside, ‘I told you to send Mrs. Laughton in,’ and they replied, ‘We have sent Mrs. Laughton in.’ Then he looked at me again and said, ‘Are you Mrs. Laughton?’ Of course I went in a simple hat and frock and looked as adolescent as I could. That was after Maureen O’Sullivan had been cast, but I had thought to myself that when I did meet him I would show him that he had made a mistake.
On my return to England I was introduced to Alexander Korda. I met him for the first time in the Grosvenor Street office. Korda knew I was married to Charles, and possibly that added a little to his charm of manner. He immediately suggested a film for both of us that was never made and has been completely forgotten. Anyway, he told me the story: it was called A Gust of Wind — quite a lovely French story. He wanted Charles to do the leading part and thought I could play opposite him.
Charles had worked in England with Komisarjevsky, the Russian stage director, and with Dupont, a film director. My first impression of Korda was that he was like these two people: his intelligence, manner, and culture were similar. It was a quick first impression.
I thought, ‘Charles will like this man,’ and I wrote to that effect to Charles: that here was a man I thought he could really work with. He did n’t reply. Charles never replies to my letters at all. I may write to him once a week, maybe once a fortnight, but I don’t get any answer. Charles hates writing letters, but he cables night letters about twice a week. You can send quite a lot for ten shillings in this way, and if there is any very important news, or if you feel desperately lonely, you can telephone. That costs two or three pounds. When you are separated there is not really much point in writing letters when you know a person well. Nowadays I. am not likely to sit down and write some pseudoliterary splurge to Charles. I might give myself pleasure, but not him.
V
For many years people have taken one look at Charles and said, ‘You know, you ought to do Henry the Eighth.’ It is an obvious remark — rather like saying, when there is a blue sky, ‘Is n’t it a lovely blue sky?’ To tell the truth, I believe the first person who ibought of it for a film was a friend of ours, John Armstrong the painter. He was introduced to Korda, and eventually designed the costumes for Henry the Eighth.
At first the film was to be called Henry VIII’s Fourth Wife, which was I, Anne of Cleves, because it was to be a film about us two, and because all the comedy that was, I suppose, to be got out of the picture appeared to be in relation to that queen. However, another wife came in, then another, as it became obvious that what the public knew about Henry the Eighth was that he had a lot of wives, and that’s what they wanted to see. Korda was right. The revised version developed into a much better picture.
Those were the days when one did the best one could wit h a piece of string and a drawing pin. Henry the Eighth was produced for, I think, about 50,000 pounds, which is little money for a comparatively big film. If the same film were now made at Denham it would cost at least twice that. It might be asked, ‘Why not go on with the drawing pin and string?’ I think the answer is because the odds are against getting the same good results twice. A film company thrives on its high average, not on its flashes in the pan.
Three or four months passed during the making of that picture — it took such a long time to prepare. Charles himself took a great deal of trouble to probe the character and period of Henry the Eighth before starting the picture, and while doing this he persuaded anyone connected with the film that he had any contact with to do the same. I remember his insisting on taking Korda to Hampton Court to see the architecture and pictures; also Vincent Korda, Alex’s brother, who made such a marvelous job of the sets. As far as I know, neither of them had been there before.
Charles read every possible book he could get on the subject, and saw numerous Holbein pictures of Henry the Eighth. Gradually the character began to soak in. One day he would think he had got the walk, the next day he would lose it. And then he would get a look in the eye for one scene and let that set for a few days. Eventually I should say he found himself living in the part. I myself was, of course, soaking up Anne of Cleves in my little way on the side. I suppose Charles and I are like a couple of sponges when studying a part. We absorb every bit of information that comes in useful, even to snatching at characteristics in our closest friends if they fit.
There were such a lot of alterations and holdups that in the end Charles was called back to Hollywood before Henry the Eighth was finished. They shot Charles in his scenes, and we did the rest after he left. He was about six weeks actually shooting the picture. He saw the cut version of it. for the first time in America, and was as surprised as everyone to see what a good picture it proved to be.
In October 1933, Charles came back to England and joined the Old Vic — Sadler’s Wells Company. We were both in that. It was a nine-months season, but Charles missed the first play because he could not get back in time. The first production was Twelfth Night. He only got back in time to rehearse for one week as Lopakhin in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard.
During those days we had no flat in London because of all the going back and forth, and we lived in a modern apartment house at Bury Court, Jermyn Street — really service flats, and convenient for the Old Vic, since we did not have to go through traffic. We could go through St. James’s Park and over Westminster Bridge. Although it was a poky sort of existence, studying our parts in a couple of rooms and a bathroom, we had a marvelous time.
At the beginning of the Old Vic season I had taken the flat in which wc arc now living. It required, however, the whole of the nine months of the season to get it prepared, because windows had to be enlarged and two of the rooms made into one. It was a very Victorian flat when we took it, and had to be completely gutted and modernized. My search for it during the early days of the Old Vic season led me to the conclusion that, instead of going to house agents when you need a new home, it is better to go to doctors and ask them which of their patients is dying. When I first saw this flat it was so full of Victorian furniture that it looked ready to suffocate anybody. After it had been altered, we lived in it for only two weeks at the end of the Old Vic season, and then wc had to pack up and leave. We were away for a whole year, which was very sad, since we had just got the flat all ready. Still, it was nice to come back to it.
At the Old Vic we rehearsed every day for the following production, starting at half-past ten in the morning and going on until half-past four or five in the afternoon. The curtain rose for the nightly performances at eight o’clock. There was just time to dash back to Jermyn Street for dinner and back again to the theatre.
When the curtain comes down, one is always in a nervy state and wanting to talk to someone. One hears such things as ‘I nearly tripped up on the carpet — God, I sweated!’ and ‘Did you see me try to open the door the wrong way and it hit me in the face?’ You must sit round afterwards and have it all out, and so wc practically lived with the actors — at least with many of them — Roger Livesey, Ursula Jeans, Flora Robson, Athene Seylcr, and others. They would come back to our small rooms, and we would sit shoulder to shoulder drinking beer and eating cold tongue and salad — which was all we could get in a service flat — and talk about the theatre until about two in the morning. Then up again at half-past nine and off once more. It was a wonderful nine months.
I had a lot of success, but was so bad in The Importance of Being Earnest that I dried up at every performance and used to appeal to the prompter, not caring a hoot what the audience thought of me. I just stood and said ‘What?’ and got practically my whole part from the prompter in a sort of despairing condition. I was not suited to the part, but there seemed to be no one else to play it. In a repertory company you have to take what comes. I had successes, but that was my star failure.
Charles was at that time studying Macbeth and was rather worried because, although he took large and small parts with the rest, he had to bear the brunt of the press criticism. He did not go to the Old Vic for publicity, but to work and study, and yet he drew all the attention. Charles thought he could go back on his career and learn the classics by going to the Old Vic and working for small money, but he could not. He went down there to hide, and found himself more in the spotlight than ever because of newspapers making headlines of what they called his ‘spectacular sacrifice.’ Others could give good and bad performances with him, and not be nearly so noticeable as when he gave a bad performance. If you want to hide from the public when you are already in the public eye, you can’t.
(To be continued)
