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)
The Martian (du Maurier novel) The Martian (du Maurier novel) The Martian, by George du Maurier, published in 1898 is a 471-page, largely autobiographical novel, the author's third. It describes the life of Barty Josselin as told by his close friend Robert Maurice, starting from their school days in Paris in the 1850s. Written in long descriptive passages with very little dialogue and many digressions, the book had considerably less success in its time than its predecessor, the popular "Trilby". Barty Josselin and Robert Maurice are English boys attending the Institution F. Brossard, in Paris. Barty is "a handsome, high-spirited, mischievous, and gifted fellow, thoroughly