Charles Laughton

 I was looking for a good movie on Netflix the other night and ran across one with Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power.  But more of that later.

For movie fans of my generation, Charles Laughton was one of the truly larger-than-life character actors.  He had been trained as a stage actor (played "Lear" in his native England)
but turned to movies in the 1930s.


Here he is in "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933) for which he won the Academy Award as best actor.

 He was the "original" Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) with Clark Gable as "Fletcher Christian".  I still prefer this version, even though Brando's and Gibson's versions would probably play better today.

He brought genuine pathos to "Quisimodo" in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) with the beautiful  Maureen O'Hara.  There are at least three later versions (not counting an animated one) but this one is by far my favorite.

He was in several other great films, way into the 1960s.
Played a great greedy senator in "Advise and Concent" in 1962.
And if you ever get a  chance to see "Tales of Manhatten" his segment is one of the more moving ones.

Which brings us to Netflix and the good movie I was looking for.

Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution"
is one of Laughton's best.  He plays the defense attorney for Tyrone Power, charged with murder.

Marlene Dietrich plays Power's wife.


I highly recommend watching it to see how Laughton commands the camera in every scene. There's the added pleasure of seeing Elsa Lanchester (Laughton's real life wife) as the nurse who tries in vain to get the crotchety old barrister to take his pills.

Watch for an early scene when Laughton uses his monocle as a way of testing a person's honesty.

The ending is something to remember, too.  I think you'll like it.