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)
Daphne du Maurier "Trilby". Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter. Du Maurier's family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont's "Bystander" magazine. Her first novel, "The Loving Spirit," was published in 1931. Du Maurier was also a cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up". As a young child, Du Maurier met many prominent theatre actors, thanks to the celebrity of