Charles Laughton - Private Life and Death

Private Life and Death

In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became American citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957) — Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won. Laughton and Lanchester had no children.

Laughton's bisexuality has been corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians, However, actress Maureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, claimed that Laughton told her that he and his wife never had children because of a botched abortion which Lanchester had early in her career while performing burlesque and that indeed his biggest regret was never having children of his own. In her own autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged having had two abortions in her youth (one of the pregnancies purportedly by Laughton) although she didn't mention whether this had indeed left her incapable of becoming pregnant again. According to her biographer Charles Higham, the reason she didn't have children was that she didn't want any.