The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (239 page)

Many of his “great performances” have dated badly, but one achievement grows richer with every viewing: his only direction,
The Night of the Hunter
(55), is one of the masterpieces of American cinema. It is proper to give some credit for it to James Agee, Stanley Cortez, and Robert Mitchum, but the Hans Andersen–like clarity of the conception, the extraordinary mythic precision, and the ease with which the film moves from nightmare to lyric—those great virtues come from Laughton. Better still, the movie brings to life a chill, dewy innocence enough to dissolve the rabid grasp of hatred.

Laughton, a Catholic and the son of hoteliers, went to Stonyhurst and had to battle against family opposition to go on the stage. He was led to film acting by his theatre work and by his marriage to Elsa Lanchester, who was making two-reelers. He made a few films in England, including E. A. Dupont’s
Piccadilly
(28),
Comets
(30, Sasha Geneen), and Herbert Wilcox’s
Wolves
(30), before taking the play,
Payment Deferred
, to Broadway. Although hesitant, Laughton eventually accepted an offer from Paramount. Inevitably, his looks meant that Hollywood employed him in grotesque roles. His first film in America was James Whale’s
The Old Dark House
(32), made for Universal while Paramount searched out parts for him. In fact, the studio never came to terms with Laughton. He made
The Devil and the Deep
(32, Marion Gering);
White Woman
(33, Stuart Walker); lampooned De Mille’s
The Sign of the Cross
(32); was memorable in his episode of
If I Had a Million
(32, Ernst Lubitsch); and luridly fearsome in Erle C. Kenton’s adaptation of H. G. Wells’s
Island of Lost Souls
(33). Otherwise, he was loaned to MGM for the unsuccessful movie version of
Payment Deferred
(32, Lothar Mendes).

It was in England, for Alexander Korda, that he achieved stardom, and an Oscar, in
The Private Life of Henry VIII
(34). He returned to Hollywood, to a personal friendship with Irving Thalberg and four of his most famous roles: the father in
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
(34, Sidney Franklin);
Ruggles of Red Gap
(35, Leo McCarey); Javert in Richard Boleslavsky’s
Les Misérables
(35); and Bligh in
Mutiny on the Bounty
(35, Frank Lloyd).
Ruggles
now looks the best survivor of this period, if only because the character is more lowly and more truly observed. In masterful parts, Laughton snarls and leers like a showoff who despises movies—or himself for working in them.

And, indeed, Laughton disliked Hollywood; Thalberg’s death was only one reason for his second departure. Back in England he played
Rembrandt
(36) for Korda and began the illfated
I Claudius
for Josef von Sternberg. The material that survives from that venture shows how far Laughton reached out for a nonrealistic type of acting—a hint that he may have been frustrated by the limits Hollywood set upon his exaggeration. He now joined forces with Erich Pommer to act in and produce
Vessel of Wrath
(37) and
St. Martin’s Lane
(38, Tim Whelan). But after acting in and producing
Jamaica Inn
(39, Alfred Hitchcock), he returned to Hollywood and worked intensively throughout the war: brilliant as Quasimodo in Dieterle’s
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(39); in Garson Kanin’s
They Knew What They Wanted
(40);
It Started with Eve
(41, Henry Koster);
The Tuttles of Tahiti
(42, Charles Vidor); an episode in Duvivier’s
Tales of Manhattan
(42);
Stand by for Action
(42, Robert Z. Leonard);
Forever and a Day
(43, Lloyd); Renoir’s
This Land Is Mine
(43)—another of his simple, decent, rather shy men. After
The Canterville Ghost
(44, Jules Dassin) and a very subtle, conscience-stricken man in
The Suspect
(45, Robert Siodmak), he returned to colorful ogres:
Captain Kidd
(45, Rowland V. Lee); laying his hand on Ann Todd in
The Paradine Case
(47, Hitchcock); and
The Big Clock
(48, John Farrow).

Laughton’s decline dates from this period and seems to reflect a growing realization that few films could contain him:
Arch of Triumph
(48, Lewis Milestone);
The Girl from Manhattan
(48, Alfred E. Green);
The Bribe
(49, Leonard);
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
(50, Burgess Meredith);
The Blue Veil
(51, Curtis Bernhardt);
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
(52, Charles Lamont); Herod in Dieterle’s
Salome
(53); and Henry VIII in George Sidney’s
Young Bess
(53).

Working more in the theatre again (and holding acting classes), he made only five further films: tedious in
Hobson’s Choice
(54, David Lean); overdone, but Oscar-nominated for
Witness for the Prosecution
(57, Billy Wilder); a good Gracchus in
Spartacus
(60, Stanley Kubrick);
Under Ten Flags
(60, Diulio Coletti); finally, with charm and distinction, as Senator Seab Cooley in Preminger’s
Advise and Consent
(62).

Stan Laurel
(Arthur Stanley Jefferson) (1890–1965), b. Ulverston, England; and
Oliver Hardy
(1892–1957), b. Harlem, Georgia
Turn to Hardy in any alphabetical order and you find: “See Stan Laurel.” In reference books, therefore, the fat and the thin have been reversed.

Critical estimates usually comply with that rating, just as accounts of their working relations make clear the greater creative contribution of Laurel. Here, for instance, is Leo McCarey, the most creative director involved in any of their films: “[Laurel] was one of the rare comics intelligent enough to invent his own gags. Laurel was remarkably talented, while Hardy wasn’t. This is the key to the Laurel-Hardy association. Throughout their lives (I was one of their intimates), Laurel insisted on earning twice as much as Hardy. He said that he was twice as good and twice as important, that he wrote the film and participated in its creation, while Hardy was really incapable of creating anything at all—it was astonishing that he could even find his way to the studio.”

That says a lot about their onscreen chemistry if only because it is invariably the gormless Laurel who spoils the dainty and painstaking plans of Ollie. There is not much doubt that, on a day-to-day basis, Hardy was content to turn up and fall in the whitewash. Whereas Laurel conceived gags, planned stories, and consulted in the direction. In which case, Laurel must take some of the blame for the dull gags, ruminating stories, and characterless direction—all of which run through their movies. Equally, let us give credit to Stan for the sudden strokes of invention, like the moment in
Swiss Miss
when Stan despairs of getting brandy from a truculent St. Bernard, consoles himself by plucking chickens, only for the dog to think the shower of feathers is snowflakes and disgorge his brandy.

But the critical relegation of Hardy is mistaken: he brought such variety to the humiliation of the fat man of ideas by the slender simpleton. Perhaps the invention was McCarey’s or Laurel’s, but Hardy had a marvelous babylike dignity in suffering, as witness this account by McCarey: “[Hardy] was playing the part of a maître d’ who was coming in with a cake to be served. As he steps through a doorway, he falls and finds himself on the floor, his head buried in the cake. I shouted to him, ‘Don’t move! Above all, don’t move! Stay like that, the cake should burn your face!’ And, for a minute and a half, the public couldn’t stop laughing. Hardy remained immobile, his head in the cake!”

So much for the argument that Hardy created nothing. In submitting endlessly to disaster, he took upon himself the mantle of suffering that has always earned more laughs than haplessness. The belly laughs of Laurel and Hardy movies usually greet Hardy, or more precisely, his being confounded by Laurel’s simpleton destructiveness. Presence is sometimes as creative as ideas. Laurel and Hardy should be together in reference books, because they needed each other; it was the pairing that made them funny. That is a rarer achievement than is often recognized. Together, the Marx Brothers were a little uneasy, apart from the grindingly worked-out patter scenes between Groucho and Chico. Abbott and Costello proved how much extra Laurel and Hardy added to the thin man/fat man scheme. Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon were essentially loners. The only human pairing to equal Laurel and Hardy is Hope and Crosby in the
Road
films, except that they had the lovely Lamour to bicker over. (The inhuman couple—unrivaled for anarchic comedy—is Tom and Jerry.) Cat and mouse live in a world of their own, occasionally intruded on by the lower legs of a domestic, by a bulldog, or a pretty lady puss. But those are rare interruptions to a sufficient, inescapable antagonism between the two characters. The same applies to Laurel and Hardy. Girls seldom find a place in their world. The boys live together in lodgings; they attend constantly to one another, oblivious of outsiders. I do not mean to be fanciful or to spoil the fun with an unwelcome smear. But the mutual incompatibility and physical confrontation suggests the homosexual implication of Laurel and Hardy. Their need for each other, and the insistent grating of one personality on another, are images of an imprisoning marriage. (In
Their First Mistake
[32, George Marshall], they even “have” a child.) Neither of them is exactly manly; Laurel shuffles and minces like a clown; while Hardy is as overblown as a eunuch. The point need not be pressed. But their modestly funny films have lasted as well as they have because of the emotional undercurrent in their being together.

Laurel was a music-hall comedian in England who went to America in 1910 with Fred Karno. In vaudeville, he often copied Chaplin and made his first short in 1918:
Nuts in May
. He worked in movies from then on, for Universal, Bronco Billy Anderson, and Hal Roach, but without establishing himself in the competitive field of screen comedy. Hardy went into films after having been a cinema owner—thus the pained bourgeois respectability he clung to in every crisis. He worked with Larry Semon in the early 1920s and then joined Hal Roach. Being in the same company, a day arose when Laurel stepped in for Hardy on a film when the fat man was ill or failed to find the studio. They played together in
Slipping Wives
and Roach decided to team them:
Putting Pants on Philip
(27, Leo McCarey) was the first of “their” films. This was the period when McCarey directed most of their shorts—films such as
The Battle of the Century
(27);
Leave ’em Laughing
(28);
From Soup to Nuts
(28);
Early to Bed
(28);
Two Tars
(28);
Liberty
(29);
Double Whoopee
(29);
Bacon Grabbers
(29);
The Perfect Day
(29);
Night Owls
(30);
The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case
(30);
Another Fine Mess
(30);
Beau Chumps
(31); and
Helpmates
(31).

In 1931, they made their first full-length feature,
Pardon Us
(James Parrott). Gradually, their shorts stopped. McCarey had left them, and it is possible that Laurel’s ambitions exceeded their abilities. The shorts are less flawed by tedium and plotlessness. One short made in 1932,
The Music Box
(Parrott), is arguably their best. Their full-length pictures were
Pack Up Your Troubles
(32, Marshall and Raymond McCarey);
Fra Diavolo
(33, Roach and Charles Rogers);
Sons of the Desert
(33, William A. Seiter); and
Babes in Toyland
(34, Gus Meins and Rogers). After 1935, they made no more shorts, and concentrated on features:
Bonnie Scotland
(35, James Horne) and
The Bohemian Girl
(36, Horne and Rogers). There was bad feeling now between Laurel, Hardy, and Roach, with frequent talk of breakup. But they stayed together for
Our Relations
(36, Harry Lachman), which Laurel produced;
Way Out West
(37, Horne);
Swiss Miss
(38, John G. Blystone); and
Blockheads
(38, Blystone). At this point, they severed their connection with MGM–Hal Roach; after
Flying Deuces
(39, Edward A. Sutherland);
A Chump at Oxford
(40, Alfred Goulding), the story of which came from Harry Langdon; and
Saps at Sea
(40, Gordon Douglas), they parted company with Roach.

The “boys” stuck together and formed a production company of their own, but were forced to seek aid from Fox and MGM:
Great Guns
(41, Monty Banks);
A Haunting We Will Go
(42, Alfred Werker);
Air Raid Wardens
(43, Edward Sedgwick);
Jitterbugs
(43, Malcolm St. Clair);
The Dancing Masters
(43, St. Clair);
The Big Noise
(44, St. Clair);
Nothing but Trouble
(44, Sam Taylor); and
The Bullfighters
(45, St. Clair).

That really was the end, twenty years before Laurel died. They made one more film, in France,
Robinson Crusoeland
(51, Léo Joannon), and Hardy appeared, alone, in
The Fighting Kentuckian
(49, George Waggner).

Piper Laurie
(Rosetta Jacobs), b. Detroit, Michigan, 1932
Somewhere deep down in the Hollywood papers (all the reports, all the stories), there may be an explanation of how the name “Piper Laurie” came to be, and even a joyful self-tribute from the person who came up with the fabrication. What does it say? Cute, tomboyish, melodious, Scots perhaps? And what warning signs were there, in the late forties, in an actress named “Rosetta Jacobs”? The young woman from Michigan may have hated the name, eventually, yet she never changed it. Few Hollywood veterans have taken her leaves of absence—and few can point to a role that did as much to change the dramatic place of women in pictures as that of Sarah Packard, beautiful, wounded, limping, and expecting the worst in
The Hustler
(61, Robert Rossen). Laurie was nominated for an Oscar for Sarah (she lost to Sophia Loren in
Two Women
). But Sarah still seems like a woman any man touches at his peril. She is so strong that her eventual fate is a matter of bleak tragedy. If only someone had remembered her in
The Color of Money
.