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During the war years, Laughton was restless. He tried to lose himself in his collection of art (Renoir, Cezanne, Utrillo), and in organizing classical jam sessions. Then he began dropping into U.S. Army hospitals, where he read aloud from Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Aesop, Thomas Wolfe, the Bible. Says Laughton: "The men in the hospital, unlike the people in the theaters, when they didn't understand said so out loud and if I didn't understand either I learned to admit it . . . And when I did understand and they did not, I knew I wasn't doing it right and wrestled with it until they did . . ." The attention he got from the wounded soldiers first led Laughton to suspect that a lot of Americans want more than comic books in their literary diet. He passionately urges people to read to each other at home (see box). He is convinced that it is the sort of shared experience that draws families and friends closer together.
Man in a Bar. Three years ago, Laughton did his reading on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town TV show. At the moment he went on the air, a young man named Paul Gregory happened to drop into a Manhattan bar. He stared entranced at the bar's TV set as Laughton .dramatized his readings by balletlike turnings of his heavy body, ducking his dewlapped chin into his collar, shooting sly glances from his spaniel-sad eyes. Greatly excited, Gregory phoned Laughton at his hotel, went up to see him the next afternoon, and stayed long into the night. By the time he left, he had convinced Laughton that he should go on a cross-country tour and make people pay to hear his readings.
Gregory's career had been almost the reverse of Laughton's. A remarkably handsome young man, Gregory complains that people were always trying to make an actor of him and ignoring his undeniable talents for business and organization. After bit parts in movies and radio, he had finally got the sort of job he wanted, as a concert manager for Music Corporation of America.
Laughton's solo reading tours were made under M.C.A. sponsorship, but 30-year-old Gregory quit his job and went into business for himself to manage the First Drama Quartette (which plays Don Juan in Hell). He claims that his four prima donnas display surprisingly little temperament. Laughton, says Gregory, "has a reputation for being difficult, and he can be extremely difficult. But Charles and I work very well together." Agnes Moorehead and Cedric Hardwicke have the controlled emotions of veteran troupers. The only near blowup was caused by Boyer, who got a case of nerves during the chaotic train and plane rides of a series of one-night stands. Boyer called in Gregory and announced that he was quitting. Gregory silkily assented, but added, as an afterthought, that the instant Boyer left he would be served with a $100,000 lawsuit for breach of contract. With Gallic practicality, Boyer calmed down.
Terrible to Terrific. The success of Laughton's readings has revived a critics' wrangle over the quality of his acting. Opinions range, as they always have, from terrible to terrific. One noted Broadway director calls him "100% true-blue ham." But British Cinemogul Sir Alexander Korda insists that Laughton is a genius. "He has a feverish will for being superlatively good, a wonderful sincerity.''