Being a sport

I just came across a few caricatures from Hollywood stars by Chilean artist Jorge Délano "Coke". You'll see a cartoon of Charles among them. It comes after caricatures of Bette Davis, Basil Rathbone and Ronald Colman, and I'd like to give you an approximate translation to English of the captions of those images.

"Coke" writes:

The great Bette Davis wasn't annoyed by this sketch.

Contrarely, Basil Rathbone was furious when he saw his. "I've never had such a nose!", he exclaimed indignant.

Ronald Colman was offended, too. "I'm not that old!", he grumbled. Both of them forced their drawings to be retired from the exhibition. "Where did the English sense of humour go?" I wondered.

Charles Laughton gave me the answer when he praised his caricature. He wrote the following in my album when he signed it "God forgive you! My wife says it's brilliant!"

This makes me think that much has been written about Charles dissatisfaction with his looks, and Oh, The Unhappiness About it, and blah, blah, blah...

Still, if you step down from commonplace bus, it's obvious, from this little anecdote, that Charles coped much better with a caricature of his looks, than either Ronald Colman or Basil Rathbone, who would be no doubt be regarded by the general public as more attractive, and from this story come as men rather insecure about his (better) looks.

So you see, while Charles was self-conscious about his looks, he could live with it... and he had real English sentido del humor.