Amazing Charles Laughton

The Great Makeover of 1954
By Clare Elfman

Fat, boozy, overbearing Henry Hobson has three daughters. (Turn-of-the-century England.) They run his successful boot shop, they clean, cook, and serve his dinner when he decides to come home from a drinking bout with his buddies at the Moonraker. Now it’s time to marry off the two youngest. But the oldest? What, marry off Maggie? He chokes on his ale, coughs a phlegmy, boozy cough: Our Maggie is too useful in the shop. Anyhow, she’s an old maid, almost thirty, a bit ripe. Who would want her?

But Maggie has other ideas. Down below, in the dark, dim-lit bowels of the shop where the boots are made, sits an illiterate, unwashed guy who sports a homemade bowl-around-the-head haircut, and long underwear which goes the winter season without a wash. A simple guy, but oh does he make boots. Maggie stamps on the cellar door. He rises out of boot-maker’s hell, blinking in the light. What is it, Miss Maggie? And she tells him what. He’s for her. She’s going to marry him. He’s dizzy, he falls into a chair. He’s the best boot-hand in England, and she sees a life with him. But he sees the boss’s daughter! He’s shocked! But he doesn’t love her! No matter, she has enough love for them both, and she’s going to have him. And here begins an “extreme makeover,” unmatched in film comedy.

Hobson’s Choice was a big comedy hit of 1954. The fat, drunken father is the comparable Charles Laughton, who played the crippled hunchback in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) and the crusty, maddeningly obstreperous lawyer in Witness for the Prosecution, where he pits his wits against Marlene Deitrich.

The dirty, unwashed, unlettered oaf is the great John Mills. (See him also as the young country boy who receives Great Expectations in the 1946 film. In that one, see the young Alec Guinness and the very young Vivien Leigh.)

Hobson’s Choice contains two must-see scenes: one classic wedding night scene, which all the contemporary bedroom scenes with their nudity and on-screen humping cannot match; and a drunken moment when the totally sloshed Hobson lurches out of the bar and begins to follow the image of the moon which leads him to the brink of disaster. (Music by Malcolm Arnold who went on to write the score for Bridge over the River Quai.)

Watching these classics with solid storyline and world-class actors is more than watching a great film. It’s sitting through a lesson in contemporary social history–a trip back to the days when the wedding vow “‘til death do you part” didn’t mean just until the first tummy-tuck or tushy-lift. I invite you to compare the scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where her lover drops the towel to reveal his you-know-what full view…and the excitement of the wedding night where an illiterate, inexperienced young man, just fallen into a world he can dream of but not yet understand, has to enter the door of his wedding night bedroom…and perform.

Hobson’s Choice is directed by the incomparable David Lean.

Factoid: One of the young Hobson sisters is played by Prunella Scales, later seen in the hilarious John Cleese comedy series (1975) Faulty Towers. And Charles Laughton was gay long before the closet opened, and yet married the incomparable Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein). His own description of himself: “I look like an elephant’s behind.”

Gals, do yourself a favor and watch Maggie create the perfect lover and husband. Perhaps there is an unwashed boot-hand in your cellar just waiting for a makeover.