Letter to Elsa Lanchester
Mailer's letter to Charles Laughton's widow, printed in Charles Higham's biography, recounting the five days he spent with Laughton on a never-completed screenplay of The Naked and the Dead.
A letter to Elsa Lanchester, printed in Charles Higham’s Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography (1976). Mailer wrote to Laughton’s widow detailing the five days he had spent with the actor discussing a screenplay for The Naked and the Dead (48.2). Laughton finished a draft but, owing to financial trouble, never completed a final version; the film was instead produced by Paul Gregory for Warner Brothers “with very inferior results,” in Higham’s words.