Word: laughtons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Work on Kwai began late in 1956. Three times Alec had refused the part ("a dreary, unsympathetic man"), and he arrived on location in Ceylon with deep misgivings. They deepened when Director Lean informed him casually that he had really wanted Charles Laughton for the part. Alec brooded, and a couple of days later tried to quit. Lean talked him out of it. "Lean!" snarls one of the crew. "That bloody perfectionist! He shot 30 seconds of film a day and then sat on a rock and stared at his goddam bridge.'' Alec tried to quit again. Lean...
Witness for the Prosecution (Arthur Hornblow; United Artists). "He's like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade." A famed British barrister (Charles Laughton) is referring to his feckless client (Tyrone Power). Indicted for the murder of a wealthy widow, the fellow faces a trial in which all the evidence-a will too timely altered in his favor, a maid who places him in the house on the night of the murder-is disastrously against him. His only hope is the testimony of his wife (Marlene Dietrich). But on the witness stand the wife declares that...
Credits: to Director Billy Wilder, for his usual skillful job, and to Actor Charles Laughton, for an amusing piece of outrageous mugging. His John Bullge at the waistline is absurdly impressive, and his cranks and quiddities are sometimes elegantly sly Churchillustrations...
...Hunchback of Notre Dame (Paris; Allied Artists) offers a Quasimodo (Anthony Quinn) who is as ugly as an iguana, but as lovable as a kitten and no more frightening. In two earlier filmings of Victor Hugo's romance, Lon Chaney (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939) took care to spook the audience out of its wits before building up sympathy for the. lovesick, crookbacked bell ringer. But the current Technicolor version (with a French supporting cast, dubbed-in English) introduces Notre Dame's resident troll tenderly stroking a pigeon on one of the cathedral's balustrades...
Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room (Elsa Lanchester; Hifirecords LP). A fey, offbeat collection of songs both sprightly and shivery by the apricot-haired English comedienne, with tongue-in-jowl introductions by husband Charles Laughton. The selections range from Fiji Fanny, a raucous burlesque of the songs the trade calls "grass-skirt numbers," to a haunted, spine-crawling ditty titled If You Peek in My Gazebo, which tells the tale of a mad New England spinster who sits each evening in a summerhouse on the hill secretly watching the lusty young village bucks stroll...