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Charles Laughton, Father of Talk Magazine

Timothy NoahPosted Wednesday, July 18, 2001, at 2:31 PM ET

If it weren't for Charles Laughton, the rotund and brilliantly hammy actor best known for playing Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, there would be no Talk magazine. To Chatterbox, this is the most interesting revelation in Judy Bachrach's bracingly savage new book, Tina and Harry Come to America. Even though the Laughton link has been reported now and then in the past, Chatterbox was unaware of it, and he suspects most other people were unaware of it, too. It works like this: In 1939, on the eve of Britain's entry into World War II, Tina Brown's father, the British film producer George Brown, married the red-haired Irish ingénue Maureen O'Hara. Laughton, who had appeared with O'Hara in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn, immediately whisked O'Hara, then 19, off to Hollywood. Here is how Charles FitzSimons, O'Hara's younger brother, explained it to Bachrach:

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Charles Laughton literally rushed my sister from the altar of the church, where she and George were married, to the town of Southampton, where the Queen Mary was sailing to the States--and off they went. George Brown and my sister never saw each other again. In Hollywood, Maureen lived with our mother in the Garden of Allah Hotel.

The details remain a bit cloudy because O'Hara refuses to speak about it. According to Bachrach, O'Hara's mother was present at the wedding ceremony. According to George Brown's obituary in the Independent this past January, Laughton's wife, Elsa (Bride of Frankenstein) Lanchester claimed that O'Hara and Brown were married without Mrs. O'Hara's knowledge and that when Mrs. O'Hara "discovered a wedding ring in O'Hara's handbag as they were en route to America, she and Laughton confronted the actress and she admitted her marriage," with the upshot that O'Hara divorced Brown in 1941, and that Brown married Tina Brown's mother, Bettina Kohr, in 1948. (According to Bachrach, the Brown-O'Hara marriage was annulled.) If the Independent version is true, it would seem that Mrs. O'Hara was at least as responsible as Laughton for the creation of Talk magazine. Alternatively, if you want to take a broader historical view, you could blame it on Adolf Hitler.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

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Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: Nobody was very inerested in Tina Brown or Talk, but the Laughton fans had their say. Louis Rice, here, wanted to remind us that Laughton might be better-known "playing Henry VIII (for which he won an Oscar), or for Quasimodo, or for the great defense attorney in Witness for the Prosecution."]

I enjoyed this historical vignette, but I must take exception to your characterization of Charles Laughton as a ham. In all humility, I believe I recognize a ham when I see one. Robert Preston and Kevin Kline head the list, in my judgment. In contrast, I've never seen Charles Laughton give anything other than a sensitive, finely nuanced performance. And that includes his portrayal of Quasimodo. My late father regarded Charles Laughton as the finest actor of his era and said that he could make you cry by reading the telephone book. Having recently seen Witness for the Prosecution for the first time, I find that my father's judgment was sound. That being said, I'm sure there was no malice intended on your part. Keep up the great work

--Marty Fridson

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Anyone who has not seen Alfred Hitchcock's very early movie Jamaica Inn is missing the cream of Charles Laughton's talent. He combines the arrogant savagery of Captain Bligh with the smug twinkle-eyed corpulence of the lawyer in Witness For The Prosecution. Plus: Maureen O'Hara's debut, Leslie Banks in a terrific tragic-thug role, and young Robert Newton (who later played Long John Silver--"Arrrrrrrrgh, matey!") as the (rather bland) good guy.

--Theodore Shulman

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(7/19)

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