Charles Laughton (26 page)

The two men were not locked in conflict; nor was one trying to dominate the other. There was not even a great temperamental difference. In fact their superficial similarities are very striking: two portly scions of Jesuit colleges, not quite gentlemen, sexually complex, and closely involved in their work, with the darker impulses of humanity. Their self-presentation, however, and above all their artistic means, were radically different. Hitchcock all laconic containment and ellipsis, Laughton naked exposure and bold statement; or, in the simplified terms in which the confrontation was perceived, Hitchcock the pro, Laughton the amateur.

Laughton’s block was due to the absurdity of the newly-confected character, which he tried to fill with some sort of meaning. At first he was completely stumped, and wouldn’t go before the cameras at all: the film had to be shot around him. Then, according to Tom Laughton, he got drunk one night, came to the studio hungover after a sleepless night, and was suddenly able to play the character: a hangover can indeed often dispel self-consciousness, as can tiredness, and being in love: concentration is by no means always achieved by concentrating. But, though he’d devised a satisfactory make-up, and had a sense of the man he was playing, he still couldn’t find how he should walk, so he persuaded Hitchcock to shoot him only in medium close-up: that is, from the chest up. Desperation again; then, his old
Scarborough
acquaintance Eric Fenby, who was composing the score, happened to hum the lilting waltz measure from Weber’s
Invitation to the Dance
. That was it! He could walk. Now Hitchcock was permitted to shoot the whole of him.

This behaviour was, quite understandably, beneath contempt to Hitchcock. ‘The only way to prevent a complete disruption of communication between the director and the star was for Hitchcock to indulge his own fantasies at key points in the narrative,’ writes Donald Spoto in
The Dark Side of Genius
. ‘Thus he instigated the appalling exaggeration of a sadistic scene in which the deranged Laughton, protesting how much he is in love with Maureen O’Hara, binds and gags her. “I am primarily interested,” Hitchcock said at the time, “in the the Jekyll-Hyde mentality of the squire.”’ These scenes, as Spoto says, ‘were the only ones filmed with passion.’

In a much-quoted phrase, Hitchcock later said: ‘It isn’t possible to direct a Charles Laughton film, the best you can hope is to act as referee.’ Laughton ‘wasn’t really a professional film man,’ he told Truffaut years later, ‘it wasn’t serious, and I don’t like to work that way.’ He made many public comments about Laughton, all devolving on the question of his ‘professionalism’. ‘There are many, many artists in the world who are extremely talented and are geniuses, but they never become a pro. I think that was one of his problems – Charles never became a craft professional. He was always an artist and a genius, and he worked that way, so it became a disordered lack of control …’

The question is whether it is more professional to refuse to commit a mediocre performance to film, to whittle and to dig and to probe until something worthwhile has been achieved; or to simply get any damn thing onto the screen, good, bad, indifferent, but
there
. Because that is what Hitchcock did in
Jamaica Inn
, a film whose only possible redeeming feature is the performance by the ‘artist, the genius’ (obviously words of the deepest opprobrium for Hitchcock), Laughton.

It is an uncomfortable performance – uncharacteristically uncertain verbally, with many an um and an ah in the middle of phrases – and it is not a searching one; but it is fun, and it is quite enterprising. From behind his false nose (his first since
Sign of the Cross
) and false brow, he attempts an eighteenth-century feeling, like something out of Fielding: an elegant grossness, gallant and sardonic, and underneath it all, quite, quite mad. There is a flicker of something very nasty in the scene where he attempts to tie up Maureen O’Hara; and when he is
cornered
there’s a certain grandeur to his defiance. It’s not a masterly performance, but it’s an original and, in its strutting, sneering self-satisfaction, a memorable one.

Agate put his finger on the quality it lacked in an ominous analysis presaging an unhealthy development in Laughton’s acting: ‘The whole performance seemed to me to be ‘screen’, by which I mean the film equivalent of ‘stagey’. It had obviously been put together in the studio at the same time as the eyebrows and the nose. Perhaps what most precluded my belief in the character was the actor’s obvious delight in his own creation. One was conscious not of Sir Humphrey revelling in Sir Humphrey’s gusto, but of Mr Laughton revelling in Mr Laughton’s actorship.’ Wonderful phrase: although, of course, it only
seemed
that way. It was a display not so much of bravura as of bravado. Not having found the goods within himself, he was drawing heavily on external skills and invention and, forceful personality and resourceful actor that he was, it is eminently watchable. But Laughton had been worth more than that. ‘Whatever the reason, I had no belief that Mr Laughton’s Sir Humphrey was alive and doing this and that nefarious thing in Cornwall, in the way in which I believed in the theatre that his
Man with Red Hair
was actual and up to the monkey tricks indicated by Sir Hugh.’

That
was what set Laughton apart from other actors. The cost of such performances (and the less satisfactory the script, the more absurd the situation, the more demanding they were) was, however, inordinately high, and, with Sir Humphrey, he just couldn’t perform the miracle. It was some while, in fact, since he had performed that particular miracle: the transubstantiation of lath-and-plaster ciphers into flesh and blood. Perhaps that was one reason for his eager embrace of RKO’s offer of the part of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. Another, no doubt more immediately pressing, reason was that he was now heavily in debt over Mayflower, and RKO volunteered repayment of those debts as part of the five-picture contract they were proposing.

So Laughton sailed off in the tense summer of 1939, away from troubled Europe, away from his aborted career as an actor-producer, towards Hollywood and one last, glorious offering up of his guts and his bowels on the altar of his cruel god. This journey was towards an end of something, not a beginning.

The Hunchback

IT HAD BEEN
Thalberg’s idea, originally, to re-film the famous novel. Lon Chaney had had his greatest success in the 1923 version, directed on spectacular settings by Tod Browning. Chaney’s performance is touching, only moderately deformed, and, of course, silent. The performance is in a line of tough losers in which the older actor specialised. RKO actually used the sets from the 1923 film, but in every other respect it was intended to be, and was, totally different.

William Dieterle was the director chosen by Pandro Berman, head of the studio. He came fresh from a string of biopic successes starring Paul Muni, and there is a didactic strain in his writing about film that is prominent in his approach to
The Hunchback
. ‘Film art is yet in its childhood. As time goes on, the motion picture artists, not the directors alone, will continue and eventually win their fight for creative freedom, for the benefit of better pictures, to enlighten intelligent audiences.’ Sentiments that could equally have been uttered by Pommer and Laughton. The difference, of course, was that Dieterle had a studio behind him, and within its limitations, he produced honourable work for them. He was a Reinhardt man, acted for him (opposite Elisabeth Bergner), and finally co-directed the film of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
with him. Like all of Reinhardt’s disciples and colleagues – like Reinhardt himself – he had a keen sense of the actor and his contribution. ‘All I can say now is: the personality who is not an actor is to me impossible – I prefer the actor with personality. It should never be necessary for the director to compel an actor to create something that is not in him.’ Dangerous words from someone about to work with Laughton, who had no interest in
personality
and whose conception of the task of acting was all to do with releasing something in himself that may well appear not to be in him. However: ‘the director must achieve a proper creative state, which will help the actor to the birth of inspiration. The rest will come about subconsciously – by nature. Not the actor alone, but all co-operators, whom I consider as important as the director himself, give of their best only in a favourable atmosphere, which is the supreme task of the director to create. How can anyone, not to mention an actor, work, if he is embarrassed, or if he feels a sense of inefficiency, or failure? To create success one has first to create the spirit of enthusiasm; that is, the spirit of success. This works miracles.’

These are exemplary sentiments, and quite rare in Hollywood,
1939
. Dieterle was firm but courteous. His image as ‘von Sternberg and water’ seems misplaced and perhaps derives from his sinister habit of wearing white gloves to direct – because, he claimed, in his days in the Berlin theatre when he was acting or directing he was frequently called upon to shift the furniture. As he had a neurotic fear of dirtying his hands, he adopted the gloves. It seems to have been his one eccentricity. No suffering on Charles’ part can be laid at his door. If Charles suffered – and he did, hugely, titanically – it was because he needed to, because he wanted to – because he had to. Something in the part and the project drew him hypnotically towards the pain it contained. This was over and above the pain of Quasimodo’s predicament, his sense of ugliness, his sense of rejection, his physical suffering. It was all of these, with which Laughton could of course so readily identify – but it was something more: some kind of world-pain, world suffering that was sucking his soul out of him. He was not conscious of political events but even he was aware of the impending conflagration. His memories of Flanders 1919 were still vivid and frightening, and informed the emotional state that was welling up inside him.

The make-up, that famous mask of mangled features, had taken months to evolve under his impatient direction. Perc Westmore, inventor and perfector of modern movie make-up, and ten kinds of a swine, was Laughton’s personal make-up expert (Jack Warner lent him to RKO for $10,000). He produced version after version for Laughton, only to have them rejected after a moment’s consideration. Charles knew what he wanted; and finally he got it. But he and Westmore were at loggerheads from almost the beginning. Laughton had spoken to him of the need for the hump to be heavy: Chaney’s, made by himself, had weighed a ton; Laughton wanted the added input of that extra burden – every extra ounce of pain, from whatever source. ‘Why doncha just
act
it?’ says Mister Westmore, and Laughton roared at him: ‘Don’t ever speak to me like that again, you
hired hand
’ and stormed out. And indeed, it was an intolerable impertinence on Westmore’s part. He committed the offence Laughton could never forgive: he belittled Laughton’s labours. ‘Get on with it,’ he was saying. But Laughton’s taunt hit Westmore’s raw nerve: ‘hired hand’! Westmore had laboured since he was thirteen to establish respect for what he rightly considered his art.

So once again, Laughton was fighting a battle of principle. He had a ruthless and powerful opponent in Westmore. When the make-up, both face and hump, were finally ready to both their satisfactions,
Westmore
called up his kid brother Frank and told him to skip school for the day: there was something he wanted him to see. So Frank came with his brother to Laughton’s caravan, where he was introduced as an assistant. Laughton (as Perc had promised) got down on his hands and knees (‘like a pig,’ said Perc) and struggled into the hump – an aluminium scaffold filled with foam rubber, over which a thin layer of elastic was stretched. Perc started to fit the mask. Laughton was by now sweating copiously. Everything was going just the way Perc said it would. ‘I’m thirsty, Perc. Give me a drink, will you?’ says Laughton, right on cue. ‘Sure,’ says Perc, approaching him with a 7-Up bottle which he shakes up and down. ‘No Perc, no, you wouldn’t!’ cries the kneeling and trapped actor. ‘Oh yes I would,’ says Perc, and sprays the contents of the bottle over Laughton’s face. Then he goes round to the other side of Laughton, and kicks his arse. ‘That’s for all the grief you’ve given me,’ says Perc. ‘I brought my brother today because I needed a witness to say this never happened, if you try to say it did. But you won’t, Mr Laughton, you won’t.’

Frank Westmore, the kid brother in question and Perc’s admiring biographer, doesn’t record Laughton’s reaction to this somewhat unusual development in the relationship of actor and make-up expert. Perc Westmore, on his brother’s evidence, was clearly something of a brute (he drove his father out of the family business), and Laughton, of course, must have made many people feel they
wanted
to give him a good kick, but this is
hors limites
as far as any tension in working relationships go. And yet Laughton said and did nothing. He took it, just took it, languishing in the limbo between
his
pain and humiliation and Quasimodo’s, topping up the misery levels on every possible occasion.

‘Charles started the part with a kind of theatrical idea, which he carried around inside him as a pregnant woman does her baby,’ wrote Dieterle. ‘He was not able to play his part until it was ripe within himself.’ Almost von Sternberg’s words; but this time without irony. Perhaps there was Sternbergian sarcasm in his voice when, on the first day of shooting, with a thousand extras ready and costumed on the old Universal lot, and the entire massive team poised for action, Laughton said that he was unable to play the scene: ‘please, Charles, the next time you are not ready, let me know it previously so I can plan accordingly.’ But Laughton’s reply obviously struck him deeply: ‘Sweltering under his heavy rubber make-up Charles muttered in a tormented voice, “I am sorry, I am so sorry, but I thought I was ready, but it just did not come, but it will come and will be good.”’