Word: laughtons
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Island of Lost Souls (Paramount) offers to connoisseurs of acting an opportunity to observe Charles Laughton in the role of a depraved physician who sets up a physiological research station on a remote Pacific isle and comes to a bad end at the claws of a crew of extras made up to resemble subhumans. If the principal role in this garish adaptation of H. G. Wells's Island of Doctor Moreau had been entrusted to some one else, it might very well have emerged as a routine nightmare, notable mainly for the presence of Paramount's highly publicized...
Richard Bennett, as the steel magnate who decides on his deathbed to dispense his fortune in million dollar lots to names in the city directory, acts consistently well throughout the production. Charles Laughton gives the best, but unfortunately shortest, performance; Charlie Ruggles makes a very amusing clerk in a chinaware store; Wynne Gibson overacts as the prostitute; Alison Skipworth and W. C. Fields provide much needed comic relief; and May Robson, in one of her first appearances on the screen, gives one of the best pieces of acting in the picture. Individually, the shots are generally well-directed and effective...
...lodging house who uses it to light a cigar. A bedazzled Marine (Gary Cooper), an ex-vaudeville actress (Alison Skipworth) and her husband (W. C. Fields), a condemned murderer (Gene Raymond) are also among Mr. Glidden's beneficiaries, as is a miserable fat clerk (Charles Laughton). This clerk waddles to the office of the president of his concern, pauses to straighten his necktie, then opens the door. What he does next is impossible properly to describe. The last recipient of Mr. Glidden's largesse is Mrs. Walker, the most energetic inmate of an old lady's home...
...story of The Sign of the Cross, included in the repertory of every stock company in England since it was first played in 1895, is obvious devotional melodrama. Nero (Charles Laughton) orders his lieutenant, Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), to clear Rome of Christians. While doing so, Marcus falls in love with a Christian girl named Mercia (Elissa Landi). This makes the vicious Empress Poppaea (Claudette Colbert) jealous. Marcus Superbus tries to persuade Mercia to become a pagan. He fails. Nero wants to forgive her for being a Christian but Poppaea, to save Marcus from what she considers a misalliance, refuses...
...Massey, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas) are insulted by their hosts, a family of Femms who are living in seclusion to avoid being hanged for murder. While the Femms and their guests are dining on cold roast beef, boiled potatoes and stale bread, more motorists arrive, a Welsh millionaire (Charles Laughton) and his tricky mistress (Lillian Bond). The type of hospitality to be expected in an establishment of this sort reaches its peak when the butler, who is queer when sober and mad while drunk, gulps down a bottle of gin and opens the door of a room which contains...