Frank Lawton, Father and Son

There were two generations of thespian Frank Lawtons, their combined careers spanning nearly a century.

The family name was originally spelled “Laughton”. If there is any connection to British actor Charles Laughton it is centuries in the past; Frank Lawton’s family came to America in the 1630s. The first Frank Lawton (Frank Mokeley Laughton (1855-1914) was born in Hartford, CT. He joined up with the Eureka Minstrels in 1874, and formed early partnerships with Lew Dockstader, Billy Mitchell (not the air force visionary), Joe Sparks, and others. He learned to sing, dance, play the bones, and — what was to become his specialty — tunefully whistle. This must have been in demand in minstrelsy, it was what Al Jolson was known for early in his career as well.

Lawton traveled with musical comedy companies like those of Charles H. Hoyt and Sol Smith Russell starting in the 1880s, and also worked the vaudeville circuits. By the ’90s, Britain and Australia/NZ were included in the scope of his touring. From 1894 to 1897 he was married to Virginia Earle, a major star at the time. In 1898 the Berliner Gramophone company made a recording of Lawton’s whistling act. At around the same time Lawton joined the cast of The Belle of New York starring Edna May. The show went to London, and Lawton remained there permanently after it closed in 1899. He married a chorus girl named Daisy May Collier in 1902. She bore him four children. Lawton went broke self-financing a show in 1913. The collapse triggered a long illness. He died the following year. By then, his namesake was on the scene.

Thus Frank Lawton the Younger (1904-1969) was a British actor. Lawton is best known for his screen credits, though there are fewer than three dozens of them. Several are well known. His credits include Alfred Hitchcock’sThe Skin Game (1931), the title role in David Copperfield (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936), The Devil Doll (1936), The Mill on the Floss (1936), The Winslow Boy (1948), and the Titanic telling A Night to Remember (1958, in the plum role of Bruce Ismay). You’ll note a couple of Hollywood films in that tally. He tried his luck there in the mid ’30s, but fodder like The Invisible Ray and The Devil Doll was plainly not to his liking. During the same period he was in four Broadway productions: The Wind and the Rain (1934), Promise (1936), French Without Tears (1937), and I Am My Youth (1938). Shortly after that, the Second World War arrived, and Lawton put his career on hold to serve his country.

In 1934 Lawton married English actress and performer Evelyn Laye (1900-1996) — not to be confused with Evelyn Kaye. The pair co-starred in a British television series called My Husband and I in 1956. Lawton’s last credit was an episode of the British show The Human Jungle starring Herbert Lom in 1963.

For more on vaudeville, where Frank Lawton the Father toiled for years,please read No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.