Charles Laughton
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Charles Laughton | |
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Birthday | |
Birthplace | Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England, UK |
Died | |
Occupation | Actor, screenwriter, producer, director |
Laughton, Charles,
1899–1962, Anglo-American actor, b. Scarborough, England. A large, versatile character actor, Laughton was successful both in films and on the stage. In The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), his lusty portrait of the king, for which he won the Academy Award, was startlingly direct. Other notable roles include Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Advise and Consent (1962). He directed one film, The Night of the Hunter (1955), a forceful allegory of good and evil. In 1951 he directed and starred in a dramatic reading of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell.Bibliography
See biography by his wife, Elsa Lanchester (1938); S. Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (1987, repr. 1997).
Laughton, Charles
Born July 1, 1899, in Scarborough; died Dec. 15, 1962, in Hollywood. English stage and film actor.
Laughton graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1926 and made his debut at the Barnes Theater. He began to act in British and American motion pictures in 1928. A realistic actor, Laughton played in both tragedies and comedies, creating strikingly unique types and inimitably pro-found and vital film characterizations—for example, Henry VIII (The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1933), Javert (Les Miserable* 1935), Captain Bligh (Mutiny on the Bounty), Rembrandt (Rembrandt, 1935), Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939), and Sir Wilfrid (Witness for the Prosecution, 1962). He acted in London, New York, and Los Angeles in the plays of Shakespeare, Gogol, and Chekhov. Laughton directed and starred in Brecht’s The Life of Galileo (1947) and translated several plays.
REFERENCES
lakovlev, A. “Charlz Louton.” In Aktery zarubezhnogo kino, issue 1. Moscow, 1965.Singer, K. The Charles Laughton Story. London, 1954.