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 her father. On meeting Tallulah Bankhead, Du Maurier was quoted as saying that Bankhead was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The novel "Rebecca" (1938) was one of du Maurier's most successful works. It was an immediate hit, selling nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. The novel has never gone out of print, and has been adapted for both stage and screen several times. In the U.S. Du Maurier won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. In the UK, it was listed at number 14