Authors: Simon Callow
No such task was ever attempted by any actor in any other von Sternberg movie, except, of course, Jannings in
The Blue Angel
; but any comparison of the two performances leaves Jannings behind in a morass of face-pulling and sentimental manipulation. The
actuality
of Laughton’s performance remains shocking today.
But to von Sternberg the success of the scene was his: he had tricked the actor, as so often before, into giving a performance. Well, perhaps the trick would work again. He scoured the script for other instances in which Laughton’s alleged masochism could be activated in the film’s favour. And he found a scene in which Claudius had to be kicked through a door, fall on his face and say – it was his bridal night – ‘This is not how I would have chosen to appear before you.’ Laughton asked for someone actually to kick him into the room. ‘My assistant gladly volunteered to perform this service.’ Laughton was kicked into the room. He fell. And then he dried up. He couldn’t remember his line, his one simple and obvious line. The scene was repeated. Same thing. And again. If Laughton’s masochism was being given a night out, so was the assistant director’s sadism. Finally, they broke for lunch. ‘Laughton went off to eat as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.’ After lunch, same thing. And again. Von Sternberg sent for Korda; ‘my peculiar type of wizardry, if such it be, had come to an end.’
Korda’s quite different wizardry was equally unavailing. Filming was abandoned for the day.
Even if this account is, as usual with von Sternberg, both one-sided and distorted, there is no doubt that Laughton was behaving strangely. If so, it is hardly surprising. Constitutionally incapable of ‘just getting on with it,’ he had somehow, up to this point, been able to engineer situations in which he was able to function as a creative artist, somehow finding the equation between self-exposure and the technical frame within which to shape the material thus mined. Faced with
an
absolute refusal to acknowledge let alone abet the processes by which his creations were achieved, he was thrown into a state of paralysis. Temperamentally incapable of standing up to the harsh dictatorial style of von Sternberg, he adopted a defensive posture: he retreated into babyhood. In what amounts to a satirical parody of how von Sternberg wanted him to behave he was in effect saying: you want to tell me what to do? All right, tell me: everything, every movement, every gesture, every word, tell me when to get up and when to sit down. Tell me when to breathe. Obviously you feel that my brain, my contribution, are of no value, so I will withdraw both. Then you’ll really be in charge. This posture of Charles, a typical one, simultaneously passive and taunting, drove von Sternberg into a frenzy; it was a mockery of him and his methods; above all, it was an abrogation of his authority, as he had, finally, to admit by calling in the producer.
It was a terrible confrontation which, the moment it became a battle of principle, could be won by neither antagonist. Laughton wept the bitterest tears of his career every night when he went home; he was in agony; but he never gave up his stand: that the actor’s work, in its complexity, difficulty and sheer human cost must be acknowledged and abetted. It was the spigot’s revolt. Laughton was insisting that, as he had proved in innumerable dull and clichéd scripts, he was both the conduit and the source of the liquid. Von Sternberg, implacably opposed to the notion of a co-creator, could not allow this heresy to flourish.
The point of no return had been reached. The final showdown never happened, however, because of the famous car accident in which Merle Oberon, driving home from the studio one night, was injured. At first Korda, despite his love for Oberon, frantically called Hollywood to try to acquire the services of Claudette Colbert; but she wasn’t available. Meanwhile it became clear that the wounds Oberon had sustained were much less than at first appeared; but she was still hysterical from shock, and refused to continue shooting. She was calm enough to receive a visit from Herbert Wilcox, as reported by Philip Jenkinson. Wilcox was surprised at the modest extent of her damage: a facial bruise and a slightly twisted ankle; and more surprised when she said that shooting would have to be abandoned, not because of her, but because of ‘poor Joe’. ‘Where is he?’ Wilcox wanted to know. ‘Charing Cross Hospital Psychiatric Unit.’ Wilcox finally managed to contact him there, asking if he wanted to be visited. ‘Absolutely not,’ said von Sternberg, ‘I’m sick.’
So Korda pulled the plug. Oberon’s accident satisfied the insurance company; Korda was not the loser, financially. He nursed hopes for a remake of the film the following year. He told Robert Graves that it would have to be without Laughton: Korda, said Graves, ‘complained bitterly of Laughton and his intellectualism. It was worse with von Sternberg, who did not humour him.’ Laughton must obviously have been relieved; there was no question of him remaking any of the film, because when his contract expired a couple of weeks later he was due to take up a new contract immediately after, a contract which promised an entirely new direction in his unhappy career: he was to be co-producer of a new company, Mayflower Productions, with Erich Pommer, ex-head of the great German studio, UFA, and, by a nice irony, producer of von Sternberg’s first great success,
The Blue Angel
.
After leaving the Psychiatric Unit, von Sternberg continued on his travels: back to the Far East, above all Japan. Then, somehow, he found himself in France, trying to cast a London-based film of
Germinal
; at the same time he was setting up a film which would restore Austria’s good name in the world. In the grip of demonic energy, he returned to London. ‘A great surge of strength and power had taken hold of me; I was like an electric bulb which gleams with an intensity, too bright a moment before it is burned out … it is not difficult to perceive that I had wound up my inner spring too tightly … I looked out of the window to think it might not be a bad idea to take a little walk; but there was no time to waste, and I turned back to my desk. A few minutes later the concept of time ceased to exist for me, something within me had snapped like an elastic that had been stretched too far.’
Slowly he recovered (‘a human being has reservoirs of energy deeper than the deep seas’); but his remaining career, except for his Japanese film
Anatahan
, is a dismal record of hack-work and co-direction. His main project after the war was a script he had written but which no one would back. It was called
Seven Bad Years
, the years of the title being the first of a man’s life, which, according to von Sternberg, determined the whole of the rest of it; the rest of one’s life was effectively run by ones’s seven-year-old self. Laughton may have been a mess, and difficult to handle; but his pathology was quite normal compared to that of the tiny emotionally stunted autocrat in whose nervous crisis
I, Claudius
is but an episode.
Mayflower
MAYFLOWER PRODUCTIONS WAS
started with the utmost seriousness and the highest hopes. Pommer, in flight from Hitler, originator of the films (
Caligari, Mabuse, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis
) that had made the German cinema the most vital and the most beautifully produced in Europe, was a guarantee of integrity and high production values: Caroline Lejeune had written, in 1931, that ‘it would not be possible to present a complete impression of the better movie in Europe and America without some mention of Erich Pommer. He is that phenomenon so dear to the brighter journalism, a ‘mystery man’; the public does not know him, and even the men most closely associated with studio politics find it difficult to agree on the subject of his activities … his name across a film stands sturdily for box-office value, but it carries with it, at the same time, a definite promise of intelligence. It represents a certain scope of thought, a certain novelty and audacity of treatment; it represents a standard set high through many years of film experience, a product rigidly maintained above a certain demarcation line.’ In associating himself with Pommer, Laughton had scored a coup.
Laughton’s intention was to revolutionise film-making. He was no actor-manager, planning a series of vehicles for himself; on the contrary, reported
Film Weekly
: ‘he believes and hopes the star system will gradually die out’. Instead ‘team work among actors in films should develop … if a permanent company could work together as in a repertory theatre they would create something new and exciting.’ He believed, moreover, that the writer was central to the development of the medium, that Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov had written their immortal plays for a known company of actors and actresses. The same system should exist in films. ‘When the new medium starts to produce its own writers, then will begin the period of great movies.’
As for himself: ‘I’m not going to play any more emperors or figures of genius. I don’t like it – ‘exposing the extraordinary instead of illuminating the ordinary.’ I’m going to look for more human parts to play. The Blighs and Barretts can have a rest for a while.’
So the great experiment began. He flung himself into the unaccustomed role of executive, appearing daily at his office, sporting tie and suit and shoes not merely laced up but actually polished. He and Pommer (a third partner, the shrewd Scot, John Maxwell, who had
built
up the ABC chain and was a central figure in many deals of the British film industry of the thirties, was not concerned with artistic policy) assembled a programme with a distinctly middle-brow slant. Writers, if not exactly Shakespeare, Molière or Chekhov, were well represented: Somerset Maugham (
Vessel of Wrath
); Clemence Dane (
St Martin’s Lane
); and Daphne du Maurier (
Jamaica Inn
). There was some semblance of a permanent group of actors: Robert Newton and Tyrone Guthrie, for example, would appear in two films each, as would Elsa Lanchester; and Laughton, though a central figure in all three (he was, after all, the company’s main asset) had surrounded himself with very good actors in sizeable and meaty roles.
Things started well enough with
Vessel of Wrath
. The adaptor of the Maugham story, Bartlett Cormack, was also designated director, but the strain of a major location shoot led him swiftly to the bottle, and Pommer took over. The result is the most visually stylish and most coherent of the Mayflower films – rather beautifully shot, in fact, both on location in the South of France, and on Tom Morahan’s convincing jungle sets, with Jules Kruger’s photography creating the shadows which were the hallmark of UFA films. Robert Newton, in the days before the words ‘Arr, Jim lad’ had ever passed his lips, makes an interestingly world-weary district commissioner with a fitful French accent; Tyrone Guthrie plays a bird-like caricature of a missionary, madly exaggerated but funny and vivid; while Lanchester plays the missionary’s sister, the longest, most central role of her career. Happily, it’s also one of her best. Laughton is Ginger Ted, the beachcomber of the American title, an agreeable sot and reprobate, who spends most of the film avoiding Elsa’s reforming ministrations. Their relationship – again with an autobiographical thread: it was she who had put Charles into the suit, tie and shoes of his producer’s uniform after all – is played with some passion and realism, and does rise to a real encounter between the opposed forces of hedonism and Christian do-goodery (much hated by both Laughtons). His performance, in particular, is a real celebration of easy carnality as the native women of the island to which he is exiled caress and pamper him. The film contains an indictment of colonialism of a romantic kind, as Lanchester strides through the milling natives, trying to force Christianity on them. Its last scene presents a witty reverse of the film’s main situation when Ted and Martha (Lanchester) return from the East Indies to run a hotel in suburban England – strictly teetotal, at Ted’s insistence.
All in all the piece is charming and fun and very well made and
perfectly
honourable. The Brave New World of Film it wasn’t, however. Laughton made a point of admiring his Ginger Ted in preference to other characters he’d played: ‘I think it is my most significant role to date’. Which is just silly. ‘I am a little weary of playing heavy, humourless characters,’ he said, quite understandably, but the part lacks the tension of Laughton’s relationship to it – as in
If I Had a Million
, for example – and thus fails to be memorable.
His account of the genesis of the role is interesting in this connexion: ‘
Vessel of Wrath
resolved itself into a much broader comedy than we at first intended. I thought, when I started work on the characterisation, that the pathos and the humour would be fairly divided, but Ginger Ted turned out to be a much funnier character than we had anticipated … I have learned never to force a characterisation into a specified mould, but allow the character to build itself up from the material. Ginger Ted, I discovered, evoked more laughter than sympathy, so I let him go his own way.’ It is hard to imagine Bligh, or Rembrandt, or Nero being arrived at in this way.
Producing as well as acting in a movie (or play, for that matter) is a curious and unsatisfactory combination of duties. It requires the development of a sense – the planning, budgeting, organising sense – which is best left to another person. Directing and acting in the same film, though not without its disadvantages, is simply a bringing together of two complementary aspects of the creative work. The producer has to concern himself with how that creative work can be realised with the minimum compromise; the word compromise should not even be in the vocabulary of the other two. For Laughton, however, Mayflower must at first have seemed an ideal opportunity to divert his huge energies away from the exhausting and nearly dementing labour of giving birth to
major performances
; acting would be just one of his activities; the pressure would be off.
He was right: the pressure was off – but was also gone from the centre of his performances. This still left a lot, but it meant that they became particular rather than universal, and Laughton became a character actor, purveyor of personality studies instead of matrices of the human experience.