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 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)