After World War I, Lanchester started the Children's Theatre, and later the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub at which modern plays and cabaret turns were performed. She revived old Victorian songs and ballads, many of which she retained for her performances in another revue entitled
Riverside Nights. Her first film performance came in 1924 in the amateur production
The Scarlet Woman, which was written by
Evelyn Waugh who also appeared in two roles himself. She became sufficiently famous for Columbia to invite her into the recording studio to make 78 rpm discs of four of the numbers she sang in these revues, with piano arrangement and accompaniment by
Kay Henderson: "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father" and "He Didn't Oughter" were on one disc (recorded in 1926) and "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin" and "The Ladies Bar" were on the other (recorded 1930). Her cabaret and nightclub appearances led to more serious stage work and it was in a play by
Arnold Bennett called
Mr Prohack (1927) that Lanchester first met another member of the cast,
Charles Laughton. They were married two years later and continued to act together from time to time, both on stage and screen. She played his daughter in the stage play
Payment Deferred (1931) though not in the subsequent Hollywood film version. Lanchester and Laughton appeared in the
Old Vic season of 1933–34, playing Shakespeare, Chekhov and Wilde, and in 1936 she was
Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook in
J. M. Barrie's play at the
London Palladium. Their last stage appearance together was in
Jane Arden's
The Party (1958) at the
New Theatre, London. Lanchester played supporting roles in
The Spiral Staircase and ''
The Razor's Edge (both 1946). She appeared as the housekeeper in The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven playing the bishop, Loretta Young his wife, and Cary Grant an angel. Lanchester played a comical role as an artist in the thriller, The Big Clock (1948), in which Laughton starred as a megalomaniacal press tycoon. She had a part as a painter specialising in nativity scenes in Come to the Stable (1949), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (1949). Here she performed her solo vaudeville act in conjunction with a marionette show, singing somewhat off-colour songs which she later recorded for a couple of LPs. Onscreen, she appeared alongside Danny Kaye in The Inspector General (1949), played a blackmailing landlady in Mystery Street'' (1950), and was
Shelley Winters's travelling companion in
Frenchie (1950). More supporting roles followed in the early 1950s, including a 2-minute cameo as the Bearded Lady in
3 Ring Circus (1954), about to be shaved by
Jerry Lewis. She had another substantial and memorable part when she appeared again with her husband in
Witness for the Prosecution (1957) a screen version of
Agatha Christie's
1953 play for which both received
Academy Award nominations – she for the second time as Best Supporting Actress, and Laughton for the third time for Best Actor. Neither won. However she did win the
Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for the film. Lanchester played the role of Aunt Queenie, a witch in
Bell, Book and Candle (1958), and appeared in such films as
Mary Poppins (1964), in which her husband's goddaughter
Karen Dotrice also starred,
That Darn Cat! (1965), and ''
Blackbeard's Ghost'' (1968). She appeared on 9 April 1959, on
NBC's
The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. She performed in two episodes of NBC's
The Wonderful World of Disney. Additionally, she had memorable guest roles in an episode of
I Love Lucy in 1956 and in episodes of NBC's
The Eleventh Hour (1964) and
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1965). Lanchester continued to make occasional film appearances, singing a duet with
Elvis Presley in
Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), and playing the mother in the original version of
Willard (1971), alongside
Bruce Davison and
Ernest Borgnine, which scored well at the box office. She was Jessica Marbles, a sleuth based on
Agatha Christie's
Jane Marple, in the 1976 murder mystery spoof
Murder by Death, and she made her last film in 1980 as Sophie in
Die Laughing. She released three LP albums in the 1950s. Two (referred to above) were entitled
Songs for a Shuttered Parlour and
Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room, and were vaguely lewd and danced around their true purpose, such as the song about her husband's "clock" not working. Laughton provided the spoken introductions to each number and even joined Lanchester in the singing of "
She Was Poor but She Was Honest". Her third LP was entitled
Cockney London, a selection of old London songs for which Laughton wrote the sleeve-notes. ==Personal life==