Charles Laughton had already played the role of Hobson when he was a teenager on stage in his native town of Scarborough.
In the middle of the movie, Henry Hobson (Charles Laughton) staggers drunk out of his favorite bar, "The Moonrakers", and pursues the full moon's reflection in a puddle. This is likely an allusion to the legend of the Wiltshire moonrakers. An exciseman caught smugglers using rakes to retrieve barrels of contraband brandy hidden in a pond, but they explained they were after a wheel of cheese, pointing to the reflected moon. So the exciseman laughed at them and left them in peace.