A TOUR OF “HELL” IN EVENING DRESS

“Before there were regional theaters, there was Charles Laughton. Today most people remember him for having played Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the snarling Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, but between 1949 and 1952 he spent much of his time not in Hollywood but on the road with Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead. Billing themselves as the First Drama Quartette, these four middle-aged stars barnstormed from coast to coast, performing George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell in sports arenas, banquet halls and civic auditoriums that had never before offered anything more daunting than fluffy farces like Arsenic and Old Lace…”