Charles Marquis Warren in a play entitled "No Sun, No Moon", which was staged at Princeton University. Warren decided to go to Hollywood in 1933 when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took an option on the play. With the help of his godfather, Warren secured a position as a staff writer for the studio. His early assignments included working on the scripts for "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and "Top Hat" (1935) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He made the latter film on loan out to RKO Radio Pictures. Warren eventually left Hollywood for New York where he found success
Charles Laughton and José Ferrer as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét's "John Brown's Body", a full-length poem about the American Civil War and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power, Raymond Massey (re-creating his film characterisations of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown), and Judith Anderson. Laughton did not appear himself in either production, but "John Brown's Body" was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks. Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden's "The Party"