76.21

Letter to Elsa Lanchester. In Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography, by Charles Higham, 197–198. Mailer wrote to Laughton’s widow detailing the five days he had spent with him discussing a screenplay for The Naked and the Dead (48.2). Laughton finished a draft of the screenplay, but because of financial problems he never completed a final version and the film was produced by Paul Gregory for Warner Brothers, “with very inferior results,” according to Higham. See 87.3.