Charles Laughton Wrath" (US title "The Beachcomber") (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, in which his wife, Elsa Lanchester, co-starred; "St. Martin's Lane" (US title "Sidewalks of London"), about London street entertainers, which featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and "Jamaica Inn", with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton, about Cornish shipwreckers, based on Daphne du Maurier's novel, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s. The films produced were not commercially successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy only when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role (Quasimodo)
Guy du Maurier Guy du Maurier Guy Louis Busson du Maurier DSO (18 May 1865, London, England – 9 Mar 1915, Kemmel, Flanders, Belgium) was an English army officer and playwright. He was the son of the writer George du Maurier and brother of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and the actor Gerald du Maurier. He was educated at Marlborough and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and in 1885 became an officer in the Royal Fusiliers. He served in the Second Boer War, where he commanded a mounted infantry regiment, earning the Distinguished Service Order in 1902. He achieved notoriety in 1909 as the author