CELEBRITY HOMES: Charles Laughton and his Home in the Huntington

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Special to the Palisadian-Post

In 1899, a future Hollywood star named Charles Laughton was born in a hotel that his parents ran in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. By 1941, the now-famous actor of film and stage had upgraded his quarters to the 14900 block of Corona Del Mar.

The French and Spanish Mediterranean estate was built in 1934 and located in the Huntington. The house had enough rooms for Laughton to have rooming guests of his own if he and his actress wife, Elsa Lanchester, had so desired. Charles and Elsa frequently entertained inside their 9,000 square-foot home that she once referred to as “an elegant house on the Pacific Palisades.” Mingling guests would be treated to furnishing pieces designed by Art Deco furniture maker Paul Frankl.

The back of the house had many glass windows that offered guests, such as silent-film comic Charles Chaplin, views of the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, the backyard sits atop the bluffs of Pacific Palisades where you can see past Pacific Coast Highway and the beach sand to the sparkling waters of the Santa Monica Bay.

But the crown jewel of the home of the man who played Quasimodo in the classic 1939 film called “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was not the ocean view its backyard offered. No, it was the garden that was on display in its backyard. Southern California historian Kevin Starr detailed the garden in his book, “The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s.”

Starr wrote that Laughton and Lanchester “had one of the best-known gardens in the region.” The garden had “a riot of orange and banana trees, fuchsias, camellias, roses, the Laughton garden was especially famous for its night-blooming cereus. Once or twice a year, the Laughtons would give evening parties when the cereus bloomed. Huge perfumed flowers would start to appear at nine in the evening, and by two or so in the morning they had wilted away as guests kept their vigil.”

The house and its beautifully unique landscaping demonstrated what Lanchester once put on paper about the couple: “Houses and places and flowers and trees always played a principal part in our life.”

Though Laughton loved his Palisades home, prior to moving in he was quoted in Architectural Digest confessing he pined for his native England. “It would be very convenient for myself if Hollywood moved to London,” he said.

Making trips to America, beginning in 1931, and ultimately moving here permanently proved a good career move for Laughton. He would quickly win an Oscar for Best Actor for playing the title role in the 1933 film, “The Private Life of Henry VIII.”

In 1935, Laughton co-starred with Clark Gable in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” playing Captain Bligh. In the film, the characters played by Gable and Laughton are at odds with each other. Off screen, the actors despised each other, as well. So much so, the production itself was thought to be in trouble at one point.

Despite their differences, both actors turned in masterful performances for the film shot on Catalina.

So, by the time Charles and Elsa bought the Corona del Mar property, Laughton was at the top of his celebrity. Not that the portly actor enjoyed public adulation. “It’s got so that every time I walk into a restaurant, I get not only soup but an impersonation of Captain Bligh,” he once complained.

Bruce Zortman worked with Laughton during the last years of the actor’s life. He was a dialog coach for him on the film “Advise and Consent,” which was released in 1962, the same year Laughton passed away. Zortman primarily served as a researcher for Laughton’s literary anthology, “The Fabulous Country.”

Near the end of his life, Laughton turned to Zortman for help on a special project. As Lanchester confirmed in her memoir, “And finally, when Charles was really dying, Bruce sat by his side because Charles said he wanted to dictate a book about his own life.” And though no autobiography came out of the dictated notes, Zortman recently published a booked titled “Charles Laughton: A Brief Biography and Two Plays.” The book is based on his experiences with the actor.

In a free-ranging interview for this article, Zortman, now in his mid-80s and possibly the last living personal staff member of Laughton, put forth some insight on the actor’s personal life. Charles “never drove. He ran into a lamppost and that was the end of his driving experience,” he said.

Furthermore, Laughton often would forsake his status symbol Thunderbird and his chauffeur. Instead, Zortman was asked to take him around in his VW Bug. The main reason for this was that Laughton “didn’t want people to recognize him.”

Zortman also remembers Laughton as a Shepherd’s Pie-loving man who “never degraded me in any way.”

Asked about how Laughton and Lanchester interacted as a couple, the Laguna Hills resident confirmed that their marriage was nonconventional. “No one could understand their relationship,” he said. Other biographers have written how both the actor and actress had friends who were more than just friends. But Zortman said of the pair that he’d “always got the feeling he needed her, and she needed him.”

In the late 1940s, Laughton was experiencing a financially trying time. This, combined with part of his backyard sliding off the bluffs due to a sprinkler left on while the couple went on vacation, made the couple want to part with their beloved Palisades home. Laughton sold the home in 1949.

Years after the sale, Zortman spoke of being with Laughton inside the actor’s summer home in Santa Monica Canyon. Laughton would on occasion point across the canyon toward his former Palisades home and simply say, “I had a home right over there.”