Though celebrated for his dramatic roles - in particular, his Academy Award-winning turn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), his Oscar nominated performance as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and his sympathetic portrayal of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Charles Laughton was a born comedian, and an Abbott and Costello fan to boot. When the opportunity presented itself for Laughton to work with the manic ex-vaudevillians, producer Alex Gottlieb told screenwriter Howard Dunsdale "We got Laughton for Captain Kidd - can you come up with something?" Laughton had already played the historical figure in Rowland V. Lee's budget swashbuckler bio Captain Kidd (1945) and merely loosened up his interpretation (and lost the historically inaccurate Cockney accent) for Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952), a SuperCinecolor musical set during the days of high seas piracy. Though the classically trained Laughton initially had difficulty matching the rhythms of long-time improvisers Bud and Lou, he eventually learned to toss out the script and work the funny, enjoying this opportunity to play "the bloodthirstiest rogue in all the world." Laughton would borrow cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, for his directorial debut, The Night of the Hunter (1955), while the film's assistant director, Robert Aldrich, directed his first feature the following year, with the baseball drama Big Leaguer (1953).

By Richard Harland