Charles Laughton (42 page)

While there is no gainsaying the skill of the film-making in a technical sense, it almost completely fails to create the feeling of the
original
play, whose freshness and reality are overlaid by a heavy coating of stylisation and self-consciousness. In a brilliant study of Lean’s films, Michael Anderegg observes that Lean’s ‘mannered, detailed style turns the film into what might be described as a gothic comedy or baroque farce … he borrows stylistically from German Expressionism, employing its elements to lend a patina of the psychological to what started life as a slight portrait of English provincial life. A highly uneven film results, at once comic and grotesque, sombre and light-hearted, psychologically compelling and yet filled with stock characters playing out stock situations.’ In fact, Brighouse’s play is rather more than a ‘slight portrait of provincial life’: it’s a trenchant account of women’s position in a male world, the overthrow of tyranny and the emergence of a human spirit from its chrysalis. It’s also very funny and very moving; in fact, everything a play written for Miss Horniman should be. Its impact, however, both comic and emotional, depends on belief in its characters and situations. Here, this belief is denied, killed by excessive love. Lean’s camera (and above all, alas, his wonderful composer, Malcolm Arnold) so relish every moment that the audience can never connect with the play for themselves. Look! Lean seems to cry, here comes Mr Hobson.
Isn’t
he a funny old chap! Ho ho! Whoops a daisy! He’s nearly fallen over now! At which Arnold obliges us with woozy trumpets and farting tubas. It is the film of a man totally lacking a sense of humour. Laughton’s performance only compounds matters. Here again is his repertory of comic biz, but now self-conscious whereas in
Abbot and Costello
he had been abandoned. Here he most distinctly is
not
having fun. More serious, however, than the terrible slow-motion poutings and blinkings and shakings of his head in disbelief is the fact that we can’t see who he’s supposed to be. On no level does he convince as Hobson – neither as a father, as a tyrant, as a shoemaker, even as an alcoholic; nor does he offer any other reality. He never, therefore, seems any kind of match for Maggie, nor does this plight, unlike Willie Mossop’s, matter at all. In fact, the situations of the film seem to fall away as we watch two actors who know what they’re doing confront another who is severely (and very prominently) floundering. The part didn’t need Laughton; it would have been much better for everyone if it had been played by some strong, straightforward character actor. If, however, Laughton had decided really to inhabit the rôle, to penetrate to the heart of his relationships with his daughter and with the bottle, he might have transformed the part and the film. But he didn’t. An earlier Laughton would have; but now it just wasn’t
worth
the fag. So he did ‘comic business’, which delighted the director, who, as Anderegg points out, far from trying to contain or curb him, ‘clearly showcases and abets Laughton’s interpretation’. Both the opening sequence, where Hobson’s entrance is built up to almost spooky tension, and the famous sequence (a technical achievement of the greatest virtuosity) where Hobson chases the moon from puddle to puddle, only render the character less conceivable in any human terms; he becomes a figure of almost poetic menace. The same applies to his alcoholic hallucinations – actual monster mice, who take us into a world of expression as far away from the author’s Manchester School realism as one can go.

But at least Lean’s stylisation is fully achieved; Laughton appears – this is rare enough in his work to require comment – at no point in the proceedings to have decided what he wants to do. It is perhaps an instance of the man on the way from John O’Groats to Land’s End actually getting
lost
at Beachy Head. He had, it is sometimes suggested, a notion that Hobson, with his three troublesome daughters, was a Lear-like figure. It seems far-fetched, but one should never dismiss any of Laughton’s insights. The problem is that the idea never manifests itself. The explanations for this failure are no doubt very prosaic. He was extremely unhappy during the making of the film: Korda put him up in a hotel that he loathed because it was near the studio; his old friend Robert Donat who was to have played Willie Mossop had dropped out because of ill health; he loathed Brenda de Banzie, all the more, no doubt, because he must have realised that she was giving a wonderful performance (‘Ideal’, says Mr Anderegg); he was fighting with Paul Gregory nightly by telephone; and he had boyfriend trouble. Finally, though, the explanation is even simpler: he didn’t want to do it. It didn’t interest him. He didn’t want to immerse himself in that man and that world. He loathed having to play so many drunk scenes (‘seen enough of ’em in Scarborough as a lad,’ he used to say) and – it was difficult. He was now interested in practising his craft, of which he was a master. He didn’t want struggle – not with acting, at any rate. He looked to that now as a source of relaxation and money. And so the performance in
Hobson’s Choice
has the appearance of a famous pianist being asked against his will to play a piece at a party: grudging and half-hearted. With a personality of his size and expressiveness, this might seem intentional, might seem to be part of the performance. But it wasn’t; it was Laughton, not Hobson.

At the end of an unenthusiastic account of
John Brown’s Body
(on grounds of poetic worthlessness and over-complication of staging)
Eric
Bentley made a remarkable analysis of Laughton’s current state:

It matters nothing that Mr Laughton’s work cannot be defined as good drama or good theatre – provided it be good something. My real complaint is that it is, for this artist, not good enough, and my hunch is that it is an evasion. An evasion of theatre. Mr Laughton walks round and round theatre like a dog that cannot make up its mind to sit down. He tries the movies. He reads aloud in hospitals. He recites the Bible to schools. Or on TV. He invents the Drama Quartette. He trains a Drama Trio. Meanwhile, he falls in love with literature and therefore with Thomas Wolfe. It is all an evasion.

Evasion is certainly the word for his performance in
Hobson’s Choice
. As for the rest, he hardly had time to think. He was riding a switchback called Paul Gregory.

Laughton returned to America to discover that Gregory had, for once, overreached himself. His generally reliable instincts had led him to Herman Wouk’s best-selling novel,
The Caine Mutiny
, and in order to persuade Wouk to sell him the rights, he signed up Henry Fonda to play the prosecuting counsel, Greenwald; before, that is, he
had
the rights. This proved persuasive, and Gregory then somehow got RKO, who were at that moment setting up the film that Edward Dymytryk directed and in which Humphrey Bogart played Captain Queeg, to allow him to put the play on before the film was released. The setting up of packages was Gregory’s special gift and this was one of his best. On the strength of it he booked and sold out 67 out-of-town dates. Despite the large cast, it was another minimally-set, easily-tourable piece of the kind he and Laughton had done so well with. The only difference this time was that there was no Laughton. Gregory offered it to various directors, including Harold Clurman (whether he cried ‘I am Clurman!’ by way of refusal is not recorded). Finally, he took a gamble on a respected actor who was just starting to direct movies: Dick Powell. The gamble failed, as was immediately evident to everyone in the cast, though, not, as is so often the case, to Powell himself.

The script had been fairly directly drawn, by Wouk himself, from the chapter in the novel which describes the court martial. It read at four hours, and had no dramatic shape. Powell had experience neither of the theatre nor of editing scripts. He seemed not to see that there was a problem, concentrating on tiny details. When he got them right, he’d say ‘Print it,’ as if it were a movie. Charles Nolte, playing Lieutenant Keith, said that he seemed to be under the impression that if there were any problems, they could all be sorted out on the cutting-room
floor
. The cast’s anxiety was not at all relieved when they saw the unmistakable bulk of Charles Laughton appearing at the back of the rehearsal room. He was Gregory’s partner, after all. This could mean the closure of the show before it had even opened. Instead, of course, Laughton took over, the same day Powell was summarily dismissed. ‘Dick, I have some bad news for you.’ ‘Is Fonda going to leave?’ ‘No,’ said Gregory, ‘you are.’

Laughton’s priority was to get the script right. Over one weekend he hacked an hour out of it. His instinct, according to all reports, was infallible; but his manner was brutal. He shook the play and the cast by the collar, without regard for feelings.

Charles Nolte, keeping a diary of the production, gives a vivid account of what it was like to be directed by Laughton.

He looked out between his puffy skin, and I could only see little slit eyes, cold pale blue, between the folds of flesh, ‘You have a terrible vocal habit, absolutely terrible. MUST get rid of it at once. You’re UNLISTENABLE, absolutely intolerable. I can’t hear a word you’re saying when you open your mouth. Utterly impossible, do I make myself clear?’ All too clear. I sat rather stunned, while across the table Jack Challee drummed softly with his pencil. Nobody else spoke a word, and I didn’t open my mouth. When we read the scene again, he launched into me once more. The others retired discreetly to the TV screen and the World Series, but I felt sure they could hear. ‘This upward inflection, where did you get it? Didn’t anyone ever tell you about this before? It’s something which must be corrected at once. Now I won’t harp on this because it’ll probably make you feel self-conscious, but you MUST work on it.’ We were alone. The blood had drained from my face. ‘Say something! Tell me what you did today’. I haltingly started to talk. We got on the subject of sailboats, why I’ll never know. He mimicked my voice-pattern, rising inflection on certain words. ‘You hear that? It’s false. It means I’m not sincere, I’m not telling the truth. It’s bad.’ And an audience simply WILL NOT listen to it! Rid of it, get rid of it.’ He hunched over: ‘You must have more than a beautiful body and face to be in the theatre, unless you’re content to be a whore. There’s more to it than that! You understand me, you understand what I’m trying to say?’

Three cast members walked out; bitter resentment and distrust were engendered in some, not least Fonda, who felt that his friend Lloyd Nolan, playing Queeg, was, as a result of the cuts, being handed a starring part, while he was having one taken away. To
placate
him, Laughton concentrated greatly on the last scene, a sort of coda to the trial in which Greenwald, having won the case for his client, throws a glass of wine in his face as a mark of contempt for the liberalism and anti-authoritarianism he feels he represents. Fonda both demanded and resented the inclusion of this scene, and indeed nursed a deep sense of grievance against Laughton throughout. This finally broke at a rehearsal on tour when, Laughton having made an observation on some military detail, Fonda said: ‘What do you know about men, you fat, ugly, faggot.’ Laughton never spoke to him again, even when, in
Advise and Consent
(1961) they acted together.

The play fulfilled its triumphant tour, and when it arrived in town, in June 1954, Laughton received his traditional encomium. Under the heading, ‘Austerity the keynote,’ George Jean Nathan wrote: ‘Integrity and restraint mark Charles Laughton’s direction throughout. A man of long experience with ‘readings’, Laughton has great respect for the author’s text. He never overdoes, never sacrifices an honest but straight remark for a cheap laugh, never distracts from the lines by directorial embellishments.’ His work on the text had obviously been remarkable. He and Wouk had worked together for hours and days on end until they had a play instead of a script. The published text is dedicated to Charles. In
Tell Me a Story
, Laughton writes about a moment in their work together:

I was feeling uneasy about the play. It was not bolted together. Certain short passages in the play needed expanding to serve as arrows, pointing to the climax. One morning I tried to tell Herman what I was thinking and I failed to communicate with him. It is almost impossible to be articulate about the form of a work of art. You have only to listen to the drivel people talk in front of paintings in a museum to know this. When I am not articulate I sound long-hair-pretentious and impractical. Herman got edgy. I got edgy. And neither of us liked this.

‘Let’s go and look at pictures,’ I said. I have often found the harmony of good painting will restore my balance and I hoped it would have that effect on Herman too. We went to the Boston Art Museum, which has a great oriental collection. We were standing in front of a Japanese screen. The screen is in black and white and the main pattern is composed of monkeys with long arms in the branches of trees. The monkeys are painted in tones of grey. Across the screen from left to right, small birds are flying in a descending arc. The birds are painted in deep black and, so to speak, seal the pattern of the picture.

I said, ‘The birds are missing.’ I looked at Herman. He was blushing.

‘Damn you, Charles, damn you,’ he said and he burst out laughing. The screen had said what I had been unable to say.

The following day we had a script with the necessary emphases beautifully written. They contained some of the best thoughts in the play. Then the play held together.

His comment to Wouk is so like so many things he said about his own performances: had it not resulted in remarkable results, it would have seemed like purest bullshit; because it did, it merits attention. He was obviously trying to by-pass the literal brain, both as an editor-director and as an actor; trying to winkle out the organic life. Evidently, with
Caine
he succeeded (it was equally successful when Franklin Schaffner staged the production for television). But in a sense, Fonda was right. It and its world were nothing to Charles. He had functioned as a play doctor, performing his drastic surgery with skill and relish; and, of course, there is a peculiar exhilaration about putting right someone else’s mistakes. But his service to the play and its author led him, for structural reasons and in order to keep his star happy, to put his name to a play whose climax appears to be a denunciation of values which Charles espoused, and an exaltation of values he utterly rejected: militarism, command, hierarchy. Eric Bentley was not the only critic to find this last scene regrettable; he put his objections more wittily than most: