Page "Charles Laughton" Paragraph 22

He directed several plays on Broadway.

His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a full-length stage dramatization by Herman Wouk of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny.

The play, starring Henry Fonda as defense attorney Barney Greenwald, opened the same year as the film starring Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg 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 characterizations 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.