Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), based on the popular namesake novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable as Bligh and Christian, respectively. The film's story was presented, says Dening, as "the classic conflict between tyranny and a just cause"; Laughton's portrayal became in the public mind the definitive Bligh, "a byword for sadistic tyranny". The two subsequent major films, "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962) with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, and "The Bounty" (1984) with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, largely perpetuated this image of Bligh and that of Christian as tragic hero. The latter film
Charles Laughton in the brief segment of "If I Had A Million", directed by Ernst Lubitsch. He appeared in six Hollywood films in 1932. His association with director Alexander Korda began in 1933 with the hugely successful "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII), for which Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also continued to act occasionally on stage, including a US production of "The Life of Galileo" by (and with) Bertolt Brecht. Laughton soon gave up the stage for films and returned to Hollywood, where his next film was "White