Charles Laughton (14 page)

It’s an original piece of acting, its preposterousness suggesting a real malevolence, a kind of absurd comic destructiveness which in a more credible setting, and with better support from the other actors (Lombard, with whom Laughton could establish no rapport whatever, is really quite sensationally bad), might have been very striking indeed. ‘Mr Laughton’ said the
New York Times
, ‘has an enormous variety of technical tricks of voice and expression, and he can enliven a performance even when it does not seem worth the trouble … he provides another of his mincing portraits of murderous and pathological scoundrels, leavening the character with his own brand of sardonic humour.’

Charles Bickford plays the mate, well, and though, apparently, they didn’t get on, they act together very successfully. In particular Bickford’s entrance brings forth a remarkable display of flirtatiousness from Laughton, an eyeing up and down and a batting of eyelids that adds another dimension of ambivalent malevolence to the character.

Laughton used to invite the juvenile lead, Kent Taylor, and Bickford, to his dressing-room, where he would rehearse scenes with them, often suggesting interpretations quite different to those of the director, which were, apparently, adopted. It takes a peculiar force of personality, or at least a peculiarly high professional status, for this to be acceptable to other actors – not to mention the director. Usually it is regarded as a breach of etiquette. Everything, of course, depends on the manner of doing. Very probably, if later reports from other Laughton films are to be believed, he would suggest a mutual examination of the scene in question, but then quickly take the lead – become a teacher. He had certain intentions for his character; he knew it would be impossible for him to achieve them in isolation; so he attempted to ‘guide’ the other actors towards complementing his work. It has never been suggested that he ever imposed reactions, inflexions or gestures on his colleagues.

He was already taking a close interest in the whole film, never simply
turning in a performance
; and on a film like
White Woman
, the
prevailing
cynicism and perfunctoriness of the approach would lead him to more frequent interventions.

It is not necessarily a recipe for becoming liked.

Old Vic

AS LAUGHTON RETURNED
from America to begin rehearsing at the Old Vic, he was wired by Korda not to disembark at Plymouth, to carry on to Cherbourg where Elsa would meet him and travel with him to Paris for one of the world premières of
The Private Life of Henry VIII
.

The morning after, they read the brilliant notices at Le Bourget airport, hopped on the plane, and returned to London to start rehearsing
The Cherry Orchard
in the Waterloo Road that afternoon.

This breathtaking and rather enviable itinerary – wrapping one movie, attending the glittering première of another, starting rehearsals for an eight-month season of leading classical roles – reveals a small fact of some academic interest; namely, that Laughton was not contracted to the Vic Season, as Guthrie misremembers and most other accounts repeat, because of his success in
Henry VIII
on account of its not yet having opened. He was none the less already known – and perceived – as a
Hollywood
actor. Harcourt Williams in
Old Vic Saga
refers to him as ‘the man from Hollywood’; and on the last night of the Vic Season, the gallery-ites called out ‘Good Old Nero!’

The Cherry Orchard
was the second play in the season, which had somewhat unhappily begun with
Twelfth Night
, featuring the eccentric casting of Lydia Lopokova, Mrs Maynard Keynes, exprima ballerina in the Diaghilev Company. Not only her Russian accent but also her habit of illustrating her emotions with expressive hand gestures had proved baffling; nor had another of Guthrie’s innovations, a permanent setting designed by the distinguished architect, Wells Coates, met with much enthusiasm. It gave the production, in Guthrie’s words, ‘a suggestion, not of Illyria, but a fancy mess ball on a battleship.’ However, it was a strong company, which, minus Mme Lopokova, went on to the Chekhov play: Athene Seyler as Mme Ranyevskaya, Leon Quartermaine as Gayev, Ursula Jeans, Flora Robson, James Mason, Marius Goring in other parts. The translation was by Guthrie’s brother-in-law, Hubert Butler –
light
, clear, fast-moving; very different, like the production itself, from the twilight Chekhov favoured by the English stage of the period. ‘There must be a translation in manners as well as in language,’ Guthrie wrote in the programme note. ‘I hope we have not so botched the attempt as to substantiate the conception that Chekhov is “morbid” or foster the idea of “Russian gloom.”’

The Laughtons had arrived halfway through rehearsals, and critical comment noted a certain unease in Charles’ first night performance as Lopakhin. Fleet Street, of course, had been baulked of its first night sensation. It wanted Charles to split a gut, raise the roof, whip up a storm or, just as acceptably, fall down a great hole. Agate (who had expected none of those things) observed: ‘Mr Laughton as was to be expected, made more of Lopakhin than has ever been made in this country. But,’ he continued, ‘as was also to be expected, this great artist put no more into the character than Tchekhov intended, thus blasting the hopes of anybody looking to see him gaze out of the window solicitous for bodies interred in the cherry orchard!’ The photographs of the performance suggest a completely real, socially awkward kind of business man (he played the part with a distinct Yorkshire burr) with some emotional depths. Alec Guinness remembers Laughton’s work as deeply impressive: subtle and delicate. In an end-of-season retrospective, Agate writes: ‘His Lopakhin in
The Cherry Orchard
was a superb study of character in the best sense of that word, and that it was not hailed as the finest piece of acting in town, which it demonstrably was, can only be attributed to the fact that the part is not a spectacular one.’ Realism was at the heart of Laughton’s approach: if his dramatist had written an extravagant character, to whom sensational events occurred, then Laughton sought the reality of situation and character, and it was that, as Marius Goring has pointed out, that so astonished contemporary audiences. Accustomed to
Grand Guignol
as they were, they were astounded to have it taken seriously. When melodrama is played like Tom and Jerry, that is, nobody’s really hurt, then it’s harmless. If the dreadful events of
Maria Marten
or
The Bells
become real, they are deeply distressing to behold. What made Irving great was what made Laughton great. In a sense, it requires greater reserves of passion and imagination to carry those plays off than when you’re supported by a text of distinction with a mature world-view.

But the same realism that had animated those contrived vehicles, when brought to a play of Chekhov’s resulted in the same truth-to-life; the life was simply a less sensational one.

It was the third production of the play in which he’d appeared. He’d done it at RADA (Yasha – the part played at the Vic by James Mason) and at Barnes. Later, in Los Angeles, he played Gayev in his own production. He would seem to have been supremely equipped to play in Chekhov, and any picture of Laughton which takes no account of this virtually unknown side of him is partial. The phrase most often used of Chekhov is also the one which perhaps best describes Laughton’s work: poetic realism. Barnstorming, ‘hamming’, the things of which he’s most often accused, were modes into which he fell at the end of his career when he had transferred his creative aspirations into other media.

His next part was Henry VIII. By this time the film had had its spectacular premiere which Charles had attended with all six wives. On stage it was bound to disappoint, and duly did. Elsa pertinently observes in
Charles Laughton and I
: ‘after seeing a close-up of a character the ‘flesh’ is bound to be rather a comedown.’ Shakespeare’s character lacks the range even of the character in the film; and Guthrie’s production (the first of several of a play which was to become his party-piece) was full of free-wheeling invention which only served to underline the weaknesses of the play and distract attention from the central figures. Flora Robson scored a success as Queen Katharine; Marius Goring was singled out for his Cardinal Campeius; Robert Farquharson, rumoured black magician and model for Dorian Gray, made a somewhat chilling impression as Wolsey; and the costumes, a mixture of John Armstrong’s from the film for the king, and Charles Ricketts’ from the Casson-Thorndike production of a few years before for everyone else, were acclaimed.

But Laughton disappointed. If Laughton
v
The Bard was the name of the game, then he still hadn’t quite engaged. He was warming over something he’d done before. ‘I am going to the Old Vic to learn how to speak,’ the world famous film star had announced with touching humility. On the first day of rehearsals Lilian Baylis had said to him referring to an interview he’d given: ‘We’ve all heard you sleep with Shakespeare under your pillow, dear. What we want to know is, can you speak his beautiful words?’ (A successful plea of justifiable homicide could surely have been submitted on less provocation.) But it was what everybody wanted to know. And
Henry VIII
couldn’t possibly tell them. So it was something of a non-event.

Agate had not liked the film, or Laughton’s performance in it: ‘a bundle of buffooneries,’ he called it. ‘His performance in the play has
a
distinction unattempted in the film … given Mr Laughton’s interpretation, his performance must be hailed as virile and lusty and full of animal spirits’ but ‘one regrets Mr Laughton’s choice of reading.’ During the same week, Clifford Bax’s modest play on the same subject,
A Rose without a Thorn
was revived, with Frank Vosper as Henry. (‘Much the better play … the best Henry the modern stage has seen or is likely to see … if you met him in his nightshift, you would still know him to be King of England.’) The comparison between the two actors (‘I don’t want anyone to run away with the notion that I hold Mr Vosper to be a better actor than Mr Laughton!’) hinged on this question of kingliness. Agate the historicist and Agate the snob may have combined in disapproval of Laughton’s revelation of the tribal chieftain underneath the velvet and gold thread; to us, it seems highly authentic, straight from the pages of Lacey Baldwin.

Agate’s running commentary on Laughton’s development is fascinating and enviable. He seemed passionately to care about the actor’s growth, above all that he should know himself for what he was and cultivate himself within that knowledge. He freely used the word great in these public progress reports, and seemed to challenge Laughton to fulfil the claim. ‘On the whole,’ he says of the film performance, ‘it is no more than what one expected of him, which in the case of a really great actor means that he has failed. For the really great actor always gives you something which you did not anticipate.’

Laughton’s Angelo was something which no one anticipated.
Measure for Measure
was rarely revived, on the grounds of both structural weakness and scandalous morality. The board of the Old Vic needed some persuading to include it in the season. Baylis didn’t much care for it, either; on the occasion of its last revival she had told the director, Harcourt Williams, ‘if we were doing it to help a
clinic
, that would be all right, but …’ It was not thought to be particularly rewarding for the actors, either: the Duke a windbag, Isabella a prig, Angelo a cold, unattractive figure, with few lines to boot. ‘The trouble with yer Angelo,’ said Donald Wolfit to Marius Goring, ‘the trouble with yer Angelo … is yer
duke
.’ All this was transformed after Guthrie’s production.

For this, the dear old Permanent Setting finally came into its own, with its twin columns, its platform and tiring room, and the steps leading down from either side, while curtains billowed all around. It enabled Guthrie to move the action along at great speed, while concentrating the focus for the numerous duologues; its formality was
well
adapted to his satirical sense of the play’s
deus-ex-machina
dénouement. ‘Since what obviously sets out to be a tragedy peters out halfway through the evening, the resolution has been wisely taken to turn the rest of it into the best kind of Cochran revue.’ (Agate, of course.) The costumes were largely responsible for the visual dimension of the production, and were universally admired (‘unimaginably lovely’). Roger Livesey manfully tackled the part of the Duke; James Mason didn’t think much of his own performance as Claudio when he wrote his memoirs, but was well enough liked at the time; Elsa Lanchester played Juliet and, as a singing page, sang ‘Take, O take those lips away’. Flora Robson, who played Isabella, wrote Guthrie, ‘suggested an uncompromising and splendid young Scotswoman in difficulties on the Continent.’ But then he thought both Robson and Laughton ‘were oddly and wrongly cast. Laughton,’ he said, ‘was not angelic but a cunning oleaginous monster, whose cruelty and lubricity could have surprised no one, least of all himself.’ But Laughton, with perfect textual justification, chose to play Angelo the other way round, as it were. Instead of playing the traditional cold puritan who is overwhelmed by violent and unprecedented desires, he played a man who has long repressed nameless longings, which now demand expression. One need barely speculate on the source of this interpretation; to which he added contemporary overtones of the rising Fascist dictators. What was remarkable, though, was not the interpretation, but the realisation.

Even now, the photographs of the production have the power to disturb. John Armstrong’s costume for him turns Laughton into a terrible black bird, or, as many observers felt, a bat, while his features are full of dark malignant horror: ‘When the actor shows us Angelo in the scene where he bargains with Isabella, brooding over the girl like a lustful black bat, he gives a glimpse of such murky depths in the man’s nature that we no longer despise him for his sins. Instead we admire him that he fought his temptations so long.’ This acute account – by W. A. Darlington, in the Daily Telegraph – is a masterly description of the Laughton effect. He doesn’t tell you what to think or feel – he neither manipulates nor editorialises – he brings you face to face with the thing itself. That scene, according to Fabia Drake, was so overwhelming ‘that an inner, awful excitement generated itself throughout the audience. When … Isabella says, as she leaves him. ‘Save your honour,’ Angelo replies, in an aside to himself, ‘From thee even from thy virtue.’ All the horror of what we sense may come to pass was encapsulated in those hardly-breathed six words.’ Fabia
Drake
accounts the performance ‘one of the four truly great performances in a long lifetime of theatre-going.’