Word: laughton
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Jamaica Inn (Mayflower). Fans of Director Alfred Hitchcock had a surprise in store for them when they got the wrappings off this Hitchcock picture. They found it was no Hitchcock but an authentic Laughton. Scarcely a shot in the whole picture revealed the famed British director's old mastery of cunning camera, sly humor, shrewd suspense. But Charles Laughton's impersonation of a Nero-like Cornish squire who is the paranoiac brain behind a gang of land pirates was magnificent in the eye-rolling, head-cocking, lip-pursing, massively mincing Laughton style...
People who like their melodrama raw and in big gulps get their fill. Those who would swap a third-rate Hitchcock any night for a first-rate Laughton get an even break...
Maureen O'Hara is a touchy, spunky, comely 18-year-old, as Irish as a banshee, with a lilting Dublin brogue. Like Mrs. Charles Laughton (Elsa Lanchester) she is a redhead. Before making Jamaica Inn, she studied at the apprentice school of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, did bits on the stage for a short time, bits in pictures. Though she was short on experience, one screen test convinced Actor-Producer Laughton that he should cast Maureen O'Hara in Jamaica Inn. Impressed by her success in that picture, RKO last month signed her to play Esmeralda...
Here is a picture done in the grahnd mannah, with wild rides and murky skies, pistol shots and the aroma of intrigue. Charles Laughton and Director Hitchock have joined forces, gathered around them an imposing array of writers and actors, and produced one of the best pictures of the year. The flamboyance of Laughton and the high-strung tension of Hitchcock direction complement each other perfectly. The result is high adventure worthy of Dumas combined with the trip-hammer pace of a first-rate detective story. Maureen O'Hara, Laughton's much-heralded colleen, is not, however, the sensation that...
Wrens. Another able War I veteran runs the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens"), a unit of 2,000 who work at naval bases as cooks, bookkeepers, cipherers, but none on ships. Their head is Mrs. Laughton Matthews, daughter of Sir John Laughton, the naval historian, and sister of a lieutenant commander on the Royal yacht. A weatherbeaten lady seadog, she was the first woman administrator sent to base in the last war, spent the peace with the girl scouts. Her women wear navy blue (with blue rating marks instead of the Navy's red), get paid...