***************************************************************************** * T A Y L O R O L O G Y * * A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor * * * * Issue 72 -- December 1998 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu * * TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed * ***************************************************************************** CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Flashes of Charlie Chaplin, Part II ***************************************************************************** What is TAYLOROLOGY? TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life; (b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for accuracy. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** [Other Chaplin items can be found in TAYLOROLOGY 36, 37, 46, and 51] Flashes of Charlie Chaplin, Part II * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * September 11, 1921 Frank Vreeland NEW YORK HERALD Charlie Chaplin, Philosopher, Has Serious Side Charlie Chaplin an egotist--Charlie Chaplin an iconoclast! It hardly seems possible. Yet out of his own mouth the king of the screen comedians convicts himself. "Yes, I'm an egotist," says Chaplin, no matter how hard you protest. "I'm an iconoclast. I love to tear things apart. I don't like them as they are." And it would seem, from the talk he gave the other day at the Ritz- Carlton while stopping in New York on his way abroad--his first trip to Europe in eleven years--that he was as he pictured himself. But it would require the pen of a George Meredith to describe such an egotist. Make no mistake about the quality of self-concentration in him. He is neither overbearing, vainglorious nor snobbish. Those who spoke with him on his visit here found him one of the most affable and engaging of men. There is none of the aloofness in him to be found in screen performers with less than half his success. Nor is he cold and ruthless. When he is in the mood for it--and he acknowledges he is a creature of moods--he can be gay and hospitable even to casual acquaintances. It is simply that he is confident in himself, that he has arrived at his viewpoint deliberately as a result of his career. He might be called an egotist by conviction. For all things are measured according to his personality. Fundamentally, every one is an egotist, more or less, in that vein, but Chaplin is franker about it than most. "Ah, yes," he declares, with a twinkle in his eye, "I think a very great deal of myself. Everything is perfect or imperfect, according to myself. I am the perfect standard." And he waves his hand with boyish yet ironic smile, having settled that. His self-absorption can be understood on this basis, that, now that he is independent, he resents anything which smacks of intrusion from the outside world that would seem likely to control or curb him. There is a hint of a smoldering rebel in him that would have broken out but for his success. Chaplin says positively that he is not soft hearted. Admirers of his tender wistfulness in "The Kid" will scarcely credit it. Yet when anything rouses him a glitter comes into his eyes, almost a fixed, hard stare, that is scarcely the expression of an arrant sentimentalist. Then again, when he speaks of Barrie, a shadowy, dreamy look drifts across his eyes--for his is a Barrie fan. But of that more later. Personality is the most fascinating thing in the world--that study of the common qualities and the unique that link up and separate the great and the small. Chaplin says that nothing in life enchants him quite so much as personality--the human stuff. He himself is one of the most fascinating among mortals. He hasn't the simple, bubbling, direct appeal of his close friend Douglas Fairbanks. He is more subtle. Some one has said that the great of the earth aren't really complex, they only seem so. Yet Chaplin is one of the most complex among men, a fact which leads to some apparent contradictions. One moment he will declare that he is wrapped up primarily in his own concerns; the next he will assert that nothing is of real moment and all life is ephemeral. But that, at bottom, is the expression of a mind quietly secure in itself and disdainful of the world. All this came out in a talk in his suite at the hotel the other day in which he illuminated for virtually the first time the serious side of his nature, and all but psychoanalyzed himself. As he talked readily and pungently, he drank copious draughts of hot water with a pinch of salt, for he has suffered from indigestion and neuritis of late. He curled about the earthenware pots holding this stimulating beverage on the table exactly like a kitten around a saucer of milk, and drank it with his left hand--though he gestured mainly with his right. Those hands of his hardly seem in the flesh to have the delicacy and dexterity they possess on the films, until he moves them in a deft gesture, and then the instinctive grace shows. As he talks he clasps them around his knee, or digs them in his trousers or vest pockets, or thumbs them under his armpits, and on the rare occasions when he is at a loss for a word, he waves the right hand slowly in a circle to one side. His favorite motion would seem to be to consist of brushing the curly locks back from his forehead, or rumpling the gray hair in back. For already, though he is only 32, the snows of time are creeping through his dark hair. Meanwhile, his legs are behaving in an interesting and eccentric fashion, quite as though they belonged to some one else. They will be sprawled straight in front of him, or curled around the rungs of his chair like a school boy, and sometimes one of them will be quite casually sat upon. They are never in the same place for two minutes. The feet were encased on this occasion in leather bedroom slippers, and this, with the neat pin striped suit he wore, gave him not the least air of being dressed to receive company. He lounged back in his chair quite unaffectedly, and there was no suggestion despite the royal, golden decorations of the suite, that there was a king holding his morning levee. From the summit of his thirty-two years and his five feet four inches he was asked to look back upon his life and say whether he was satisfied with it. "I never really thought of that before," he said slowly, rubbing his head. "Of course," he went on with his quick smile, "it's hardly time for me to say at 32 whether I'm satisfied with my life. But I think I am. I think if I had it to live over again I'd do it as I have--only more so. I'd do it with less moderation. "But I'm not satisfied with the world as I find it. There are many things in it I'd like to change. Do I mean political and economic conditions? Well, yes, I suppose I do. "But I'm not soft hearted about them. When I see such misery as that on the East Side it arouses my emotions, but it doesn't make me sentimental. My interest is caught--such things stimulate me. I know that if I found my lot cast there I shouldn't wait very long before I worked myself out of it. "What is the purpose of existence? I don't know. I accept it as it is. After all, what is the value of putting such queries to one's self? It's enough that we're here, that all that has gone before has led up to ourselves. What does it matter what comes tomorrow? So far as we're concerned, we're the crown of the ages. Each one can consider himself the perfect fruit toward which evolution has been working. We're in this world to live--that's enough." Despite this interest in himself, the comedian who has passed the recreation hours for thousands in hilarious enjoyment finds it very difficult to amuse himself in his leisure hours. "I'm really very lazy," he explained with a frank smile. "My working hours are from 9 to 5, and I really don't do anything at all in my spare time. I don't like to make engagements to meet people or to go to dinners. The thought of getting ready for such appointments bothers me. "And yet, when I've finished work I often say, 'I'd like to see so-and- so now.' "'Oh,' they tell me, 'you had an engagement to see him a couple of hours ago, but you broke it off.' "I don't drive my car about much. In fact about the only thing I like to do is just ramble around. I swim a bit, but I'm not a sportsman. Yes, I know there was a picture of me in a magazine dressed in polo costume and standing beside a horse, but that was all a joke. I went down to Coronado to rest up a bit, and there was a friend there who had a complete outfit. He suggested that I put it on just for a joke, and then the picture was taken. "I don't go to concerts and that sort of thing. I used to play my violin a great deal up to a couple of years ago, but since then I've hardly touched it. I seem to have lost interest in such things. Yes, I've composed my own music, I'm ashamed to confess. Were they bright, gay tunes? Not at all--very sentimental ballads. Almost weepy. Some time ago I used to think it would be fine to be the leader of an orchestra. The grace as he waved his baton attracted me, the sense of command. I felt that way when I conducted the Hippodrome orchestra. But somehow I don't seem to care so much about it any more. "Usually, I'm hard put to it till I set to work and amuse myself. I hate to think of the effort it would require to go out and meet people, to go to the theatre. You see, I am lazy. I hate to think of the next picture I'm going to do right after I've completed one. I don't like to choose the idea for the story. I put it off till the last moment. "I put off the day I start to work--and I'm going to defer it as much as possible in the future. I like to remain in a state of pleasant uncertainty until I feel in the right mood to start. I must feel a kind of glow, a sort of white heat or inspiration. Of course, it's impossible to maintain the quality of inspiration all through a picture. You can't really act except in a few scenes. After a time on each picture it becomes mechanical and you find yourself going a bit stale. Toward the end you feel as though you would have to flog yourself to finish it. "So I like to save my acting spirit as much as possible. Some actors insist on acting even when they're rehearsing. I want every bit rehearsed thoroughly, all the technical details worked out very carefully. I say, 'Now, so-and-so crosses the bridge at this point; now I go over to the table; now I lift up this cup.' Then, when all those bits of business have been gone through thoroughly, I say, 'Now we'll act it.' "But I don't want perfection of detail in the acting. I'd hate a picture that was perfect--it would seem machine made. I want the human touch, so that you love the picture for its imperfections." It may be guessed from all this that Chaplin is something of an epicure of emotions, a connoisseur of feelings. He is--that attitude pervades his whole thought. He is inclined to be a sort of professional spectator, looking on and sampling life exquisitely, plumbing every sensation, even despair, for the sake of the adventure in it. Though he was born in France there must be Russian blood somewhere in his ancestry, for he relishes being introspective. "The other night," he said, "I went to the 'Follies.' Fanny Brice is a wonder as a comedian when she says, 'I'm feelin' terrible, t'ank God'; that's a gem. But the rest of the production didn't move me. Even the pretty girls didn't stir me, and usually when I see them on the stage it puts me in quite a romantic flutter. I say to myself, 'You might meet one of them and marry her. There, that girl on the end--maybe she'll be your wife. Who knows?' "Every time I sit down in front at a musical comedy I'm a potential husband. It excites me tremendously, and I like it. But at the 'Follies' I was struck with an impression of straining for effect. I was oppressed, as I often am, with a sense of the futility of human effort. That ovation given to Mary and Douglas the other night at the theatre was immense--but at bottom it amounted to nothing! When you come right down to it nothing in the world really means anything. "When I go to the theatre, so often I say to myself, 'Look at all this noise and bustle going on inside here, while outside real things are happening! Isn't it terrible? Look at that man there, striving so hard to please. He thinks he is important. Isn't human nature fruitless and depressing?' "My mouth is drawn further and further down. I grow dismal and despairing. I realize what a perfectly good time I've having with my emotions. Then I'm happy." And the comedian laughed. "Of course," he went on, "the reaction from such moods is pronounced, and I become quite gay. But I am always impressed with the fact that you can call nothing in life truly great. The best picture that was ever made, when it's shown, well, that's that"--he waved his hand--"and it's over. It's served its purpose, and passed on. Nothing in life is lasting or important. If God were to come along and pick up the Statue of Liberty the world would really go right on as though nothing had happened." The telephone rang, and Chaplin turned toward it eagerly, and listened expectantly as his press agent answered it. "That phone," he said, "has been buzzing constantly since I came here. I never knew I really had so many friends. And in spite of all the calls, each time it rings I'm just as curious as ever. Yet, no call is ever so momentous as I expect. "I'm just as curious about reading fan letters. I get anywhere from 100 to 200 a day. They fascinate me. I hold one in my hand, and say, 'Who knows what wonderful message this may contain?' And the wonderful message is, generally, a letter requesting an autographed picture, that runs like this: "'Dear Mr. Chaplin: I've seen you so often on the screen, and I like you so much. Won't you please be good enough to send me your photo, so I can put it among my gallery of screen celebrities, whom I greatly admire?' "Flattering! "I send out about 4,000 pictures a year. The pictures cost four cents, the postage and mailing another four cents, besides the time of the stenographer to answer the requests--this is on the authority of my press agent. If I once stopped to look through the heaps of mail I get, I'd never do any work. And the letters, once I do look at them, never mean anything. Few intelligent persons write fan letters. And those who do don't make me feel in the least indispensable. I feel the world would get along just as well if I should drop out of it. "You see, I recognize that really too much emphasis is placed on the personality of a play, without distinguishing his personality on the screen from his character off it. He is much different out of a picture from what he is in it. Yet it's that personality they see on the screen, which is really a sort of impersonal quality, that the fans want to know. Of course, if you seek to know an actor just as a regular friend--well, that's different. "But I must admit that I like such interest. When I came here a year ago I thought I'd be unobtrusive. I didn't let any one know I was here. I registered at the hotel under another name. Yet every one seemed to know it presently. This time when I cam East I thought at first I'd do it quietly, without any press agent flourish. I even considered I might go abroad incognito. I said to myself: 'Nobody will know you're around--it won't really make any difference to them anyhow.' Then I told myself: 'Nonsense! Of course it will! As if you could go incognito!' "Besides," and he smiled candidly, "I enjoy it. (I like being patted on the back). So now I'm having a very good time. I'm really taking an emotional holiday. I found I was going stale. Nothing seemed to interest me vitally any more. When I think about my latest picture, I'd say to myself, 'What if it shouldn't be a success?' And I'd answer myself, 'What does it matter, anyhow?' Then I'd start to worry about my apathy, and having really begun to worry once more, I was happy. I enjoy worrying about my work--it keeps me interested. "But this time it wasn't enough. Nothing really roused me but food-- I love food. I'd finished 'The Idle Class,' and I had a number of scenes completed for my next picture. Then one day, as I was in my dressing room, starting to make up I looked at myself in the glass suddenly, and said, 'See here, you're 32, and you haven't been abroad in years. You're not taking any fun out of life. You're going stale.' "Yes, perhaps it was the sight of the gray hairs that did it. Maybe I'd been working on too many pictures in the last year. I'd had a touch of the 'flu,' and that seemed to leave me depressed. At any rate, I decided at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday morning to go to Europe, and at 11 o'clock the next morning I was leaving Los Angeles. The rest of the company had been all ready to go on with the picture, but they're disbanded now. I don't care when the picture is finished. I'm going to have a good time. "I shall go to England, where I hope to meet H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw-- all the big men of that country. What places shall I visit in London? Oh, just 'spots.' I'll take a kind of Dickensian prowl. But particularly I want to see the Kennington road. That's where I lived as a boy. I don't remember what it looks like, but I know I want to see it. "Then I shall go to Berlin. I'm most interested to observe what they've been doing there since the war, especially in motion picture producing. Also I'm going to Madrid--I want to see a real bullfight. No, I don't contemplate playing a bullfighter, though Frank Harris's story, 'Montez the Matador,' would be splendid to put on the screen. "This trip, as I said, will be principally for the purpose of recuperating my emotions. You see, I want to express myself freely. Most of my life I've been so suppressed. When I was struggling along as an actor I was so afraid of what people would think about me. I'd harbor secret thoughts, but I'd be afraid to let them out. Whenever I met a man who dared to express unconventional ideas--ideas I thought were held only by myself--I thought he was a superman. "That's one thing I do appreciate about success. It enables me to do what I please. I can say to myself: 'Let's go to Egypt today.' And I can go. I can think what I please. "That's largely the reason why I don't care much about reading. I don't want to be fettered by other persons' thoughts. When I was about 19 I set out to read at a great rate. But since then my interest has languished. I scarcely read a magazine. Novels don't interest me. I like history a bit. I also rather enjoy modern biographies--stories that get me close to human personalities. The biography of Oscar Wilde fascinates me. But I dislike any suggestion of the mechanical or the non-human in literature. Science? I hate it. "I find myself constantly skipping the plot in a book. You see, I don't want any sense of originality spoiled. I don't want to be bothered by a suspicion, after I've nursed an idea, that I feel would simply paralyze the world, that maybe some one, some where, had written the same thing and I'd read it--and forgotten it. "Yes, I have what I trust is a really big idea for a picture I want to play in. I've carried it around in my mind for a couple of years, the way we all do, and I hope to use it in the near future. It's about a clown. It will show the hardships of his life. It will present him behind the scenes as it's never been done before--truthfully. It won't have any of the sentimental romance you see so often in such plays. It will show how his work is simply bread and cheese to him--merely his means of earning a living, nothing more. And it will reveal his utter contempt for his audiences. "It's like 'Deburau'? I never saw that play and I don't know its history. Of course, this picture will have its comedy, but it will be the most serious thing I've ever attempted. For my custard pie days are over. Yes, possibly I shall do 'Beau Brummell' some day." But though he has renounced the custard pie and all its works he doesn't show the bitterness toward that paramount element in his past career that most converts do toward their early dissipations. When it was suggested that he might be knighted on his trip to England Chaplin, who discounted any rumors to that effect, chuckled as he pictured his coat of arms, with a custard pie rampant. Always, he said, he had wanted to get away from them, from the first. As far back as his earliest days in the movies he had striven to put some real characterization into his parts, and not depend solely on a bakery for his technique. The story of his debut into pictures had a new sidelight shed on it by the comedian. "I was playing at Philadelphia when a strange telegram came to the theatre. It was addressed to some weird name--Champagne, or something like that. At any rate it began with 'Ch,' so I figured it must be for me. It said I was to meet some one on important business in the Longacre Building in New York City. I asked my friends what kind of persons occupied the Longacre Building. They said, 'Lawyers,' which got me excited. "There had been some kind of aunt in my family--a couple of generations removed--who was expected to die some day and leave us all a big fortune. Of course, she was probably mythical--you know how there are stories like that in every family. But I'd heard about her so often, and when I learned that lawyers occupied the Longacre Building I went there expecting that at last my ship had come in. But it turned out to be nothing more than an introduction to the movies. "When I first began to act before the movies I was terribly nervous. It wasn't so much the fact that I was appearing in a strange studio, before cold eyed stage hands. But the Keystone people who hired me had seen me in 'A Night in a Music Hall,' and I was heralded as a frightfully funny man. I had a reputation to live up to, and I felt desperately put to it to make good. And all the other comedians stood around the studio with superciliously twisted mouths and an air of 'Show me.' "That was all the harder because, never having been in a movie studio before, I thought it would be the easiest thing to act before a camera. I figured it would be nothing but walking through my part. Well, I was quickly disillusioned. I had to study the business. I had to get over feeling self-conscious before the camera. The way to do that is to concentrate on your part so hard you lose yourself in it. If you don't you might just as well quit acting in the movies. "Moreover, I had the advantage of a good stage training. Every screen actor would be helped immeasurably by that. I'd acted under an excellent stage director--Quentin McPherson, director for Charles Frohman, for whom, by the way, I appeared in 'Sherlock Holmes.' No, I'll never go back to the speaking stage again. I'm not a very good speaking player, and, besides, an audience means nothing to me. They are just a mass of figures. I like to go off somewhere in seclusion, work out a picture and then suddenly spring it on people and say: "Here, look at it--that's me." "That stage experience gave me quite a lead from the beginning over other movie actors. Very few of them in those days understood the technique of movie acting. They'd walk too fast, or cross over in front of one another with the utmost nonchalance. Besides I was surprised to discover that few of them, even those most concerned in the production of pictures, took it seriously. It was just a cheap sideline with them, a means of making a livelihood. From the first I took it very seriously. I had been deeply impressed, as I still am, with the powerful appeal of the motion picture, with its great circulation, its--what's the word (he snapped his fingers)-- its great scope." Perhaps Chaplin underrates his desire to read, for he is fond of Frank Harris's works, and reads Guido Bruno--both of whom are often an effort for the man in the street. But his reluctance to read, he indicated, is due not only to distrust of having his cinema ideas colored, but also because he doesn't want his writing affected. For Chaplin disclosed that he has secretly been indulging in writing--that he has even been concocting poetry all these years, with scarcely any one suspecting it. "Yes, I've scribbled a great deal," he said. "Poetry and such things. I've never written any short stories nor essays. Most of my writings have been unfinished. I start off at a great rate, and then lose interest. You know how you put a thing aside, promising yourself you'll complete it some day, when you feel more inclined. That's how I've written. "I've projected several full length plays, though I've never done anything with them. But I have taken to playwriting more seriously of late. And--I've completed a one act play." He launched into a description of it, detailing how it was a satire on a certain type of piety, in which a child lay dying while a thunderstorm raged outside and an old crone mumbled pious phrases inside and a man went crazy. A bright little gruesome bit it seemed, though Chaplin added, with a grin, that "It had funny passages in it." The unique point about it was that two mysterious men who sat down in front on the stage during the action turned out in the end to be the author and the manager, who insisted that "this play will never get produced unless it has a happy ending," with which the author agreed. "Probably that author is more fortunate than I am, for I shall most likely never get it printed or produced. I don't expect to present it at my own expense, either. But maybe some day I shall read it to my friends, who may be able to stand anything." That interest in religion displayed in this playlet is one of the underlying traits of the comedian. He considers that many religions in the world's history have been little but "repressions and propaganda." "I have no 'spooks.'" he said. "There are none either in my mind or outside. I don't believe in spiritualism, and, frankly, I don't believe in a hereafter. Life is interesting enough as we have it here--let's make the most of it now." He drank some hot water as he said that--perhaps so much talking had made him thirsty. Moreover, that drink seemed designed not only for his indigestion but to keep him from taking on weight. For, he admitted, "I'm afraid lately I've been taking on avoirdupois, and if I keep on"--he waved his hand with a mock flourish--"I shall lose my ethereal figure." The comedian was not always as sturdy as he now is. When he was a lad in England, he said, he was quite frail. What helped him early in life was long distance running. It does not appear to be generally known that Chaplin at one time was a Marathon plugger. "You see, I have quite a good lung development. And then, my legs were quite well developed from dancing with the 'Eight Lancashire Lads' on the stage. I used to belong to the Kennington Harriers, and thought nothing of running fifteen miles. In fact, I considered going into the Marathon in the London Olympics, but became ill about that time. "I can still run ten miles without minding it. You never lose that stamina and lung power. People are surprised today to know that with my slight figure I can run long distances. Not so long ago I was at the beach with Samuel Goldwyn, and he got up off the sand and began doing some exercises. "'You ought to take exercise, he said. 'Do this every day.' So I said, 'I think I'll run up and down between those two piers about twenty times. Want to try it with me?' He stared at me astonished, for the distance on the sand between the piers was about half a mile. But he and several other film people ran up and down with me a couple of times--then they dropped out. By that time a crowd had gathered around and as I kept going they started up a band. I ran up and down about ten times without any trouble." The one thing that seems to sweep him away in artistic endeavor is dancing. He has the most enthusiastic admiration for Pavlowa. "When I see her floating above me so gracefully, when I look at her face, I see the tragedy of life. I see the hard struggle in her career. Something seems to catch hold of me here." He placed a hand on his brow. "I get all choked up. The rhythm of it carries me away." Of course in film production he is much interested in David W. Griffith. He was much drawn to "The Birth of a Nation, " "Intolerance"--especially the Babylonian episode--and "Broken Blossoms." "Griffith is a real personality, and he manages to convey it on the screen. He makes all his offerings distinct and individual. I always go to see a new Griffith picture. It may be terrible--I may disagree with his ideas--but they're always interesting. His pictures are different." Then Chaplin wrinkled up his upper lip and his eyes in a startling real burlesque of the diabolical mask of the violin player in "Dream Street," and got up off his chair to wriggle in a travesty of the kind of "evil" to which the violinist's playing was supposed to incite the slum dwellers. But Chaplin confessed that it is not often he feels inspired to give such comic travesties. "You see," he explained with a rather wistful smile. "I'm not really a comedian. Except on rare occasions I never feel inclined to try to be funny and carry on in company. Friends never say of me, 'Oh, he's a very amusing man to be with.' Frank Tinney is just as funny off the stage as he is on. I'm not--I wish I were. Mostly I like to be with people with whom I scarcely have to speak a word. All I want to do occasionally is say, 'Um--aa--h'm!' I like people who understand when I do this"--and he pointed deftly to something, jerking his thumb as though he meant the subject to be picked up. "People whose sole conversation is to yawn and say, 'When do we eat?' "Not that I think people talk too much. Very rarely do we really get under the skin of a personality in a conversation. The savages communicate with each other much more definitely and clearly. If they like you they stroke your hair, and so on. We cover up ourselves in words." And then this strange compound of contradictions, who likes Barrie and considers "Mary Rose," for all the fact that it is a bad stage production, one of the most spiritual and delicate masterpieces he has ever seen, acknowledged that he "likes vulgarity, for it is of the masses--of the earth, earthy--and I love that." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [Special thanks to David Pierce for supplying the following article.] January 18, 1922 Thomas Burke THE OUTLOOK The Tragic Comedian A "Close-Up" of Charles Chaplin A frail figure, small footed, and with hands as exquisite as those of Madame la Marquise. A mass of brindled-gray hair above a face of high color and nervous features. In conversation the pale hands flash and flutter and the eyes twinkle; the body sways and swings, and the head darts birdlike back and forth, in time with the soft chanting voice. His personality is as volatile as his lithe and resilient figure. He has something of Hans Andersen, of Ariel, touched with rumors of far-off fairyland tears. But something more than pathos is here. Almost, I would say, he is a tragic figure. Through the universal appeal of the cinematograph he has achieved universal fame in larger measure than any man of recent years, and he knows the weariness and emptiness that accompany excess. He is the playfellow of the world, and he is the loneliest, saddest man I ever knew. When I first heard that Charles Chaplin wished to meet me, I was only mildly responsive. I can never assume much interest in the folk of the film and the stage; their hectic motions, their voluble, insubstantial talk, and their abrupt transitions are too exhausting. But I was assured that Charles Chaplin was "different," and finally a rendezvous was made at a flat in Bloomsbury. He is different. I was immediately surprised and charmed. A certain transient glamour hung about this young man to whose doings the front pages of the big newspapers were given and for whom people of all classes were doing vigil; but, discounting that, much remained; and the shy, quiet figure that stepped from the shadow of the window was no mere film star, but a character that made an instant appeal. I received an impression of something very warm and bright and vivid. There was radiance, but it was the radiance of fluttering firelight rather than steady sunlight. At first I think it was the pathos of his situation that made him so endearing, for he was even then being pursued by the crowd, and had taken this opportunity to get away for a quiet walk through narrow streets. But the charm remained, and remains still. It is a part of himself that flows through every movement and every gesture. He inspires immediately, not admiration or respect, but affection; and one gives it impulsively. At eleven o'clock that night I took him alone for a six-hour ramble through certain districts of East London, whose dim streets made an apt setting for his dark-flamed personality. I walked him through byways of Hoxton, Spitalfields, Stepney, Ratcliff, Shadwell, Wapping, Isle of Dogs; and as we walked he opened his heart, and I understood. I, too, had spent hard, inhospitable hours of youth in these streets, and knew his feeling about them, and could, in a minor measure, appreciate what he felt in such high degree at coming back to them with his vast treasure of guerdons and fame. The disordered, gypsy-like beauty of this part of London moved him to ecstasy after so many years of the bright, angular, gemlike cities of Western America, and he talked freely and well about it. At two o'clock in the morning we rested on the curb of an alley-way in St. George's, and he talked of his bitter youth and his loneliness and his struggles, and his ultimate bewildering triumph. Always, from the day he left London, he had at the back of his mind, vague and formless and foolish, the dream of a triumphal Dick Whittington return to the city whose stones were once so cold to him; for the most philosophic temper, the most aloof from the small human passions, is not wholly free from that attitude of "a time will come when you SHALL hear me." Like all men who are born in exile, outside the gracious inclosures of life, he does not forget those early years; and even now that he has made that return it does not quite satisfy. It is worth having--that rich, hot moment when the scoffers are dumb and recognition is accorded, the moment of attainment; but a tinge of bitterness must always accompany it. Chaplin knows, as all who have risen know, that the very people who were clamoring and beseeching him to their tables and receptions would not before have given him a considered glance, much less a friendly hand or a level greeting. They wanted to see, not him, but the symbol of success--reclame, le dernier cri--and he knew it. He owes little enough to England. To him it was only a stony-hearted step-mother--not even the land of his birth. Here, as he told me, he was up against that social barrier that so impedes advancement and achievement-- a barrier that only the very great or the very cunning can cross. America freely gave him what he could never have wrested from England--recognition and decent society. He spoke in chilly tones of his life in England as a touring vaudeville artist. Such a life is a succession of squalor and mean things. The company was his social circle, and he lived and moved only in that circle. Although he had not then any achievements to his credit, he had the potentialities. Although he was then a youth with little learning, an undeveloped personality, and few graces, he had an instinctive feeling for fine things. Although he had no key by which he might escape, no title to a place among the fresh, easy, cultivated minds where he desired to be, he knew that he did not belong in the rude station of life in which he was placed. Had he remained in this country, he would have remained in that station. He would never have got out. But in America the questions are, "What do you know?" and "What can you do?" not, "Where do you come from" and "Who are your people?" "Are you public school?" Today England is ready to give him all that it formerly denied him. All doors are open to him, and he is beckoned here and there by social leaders. But he does not want them. Well might he quote to them the terms of a famous letter: "The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it...till I am known and do not want it." But twice during our ramble--once in Mile End Road and once in Hoxton--he was recognized, and the midnight crowd gathered and surrounded him. There it was the real thing--not the vulgar desire of the hostess to feed the latest lion, but a spontaneous burst of hearty affection, a welcome to an old friend. He has played himself into the hearts of the simple people, and they love him. The film "Charlie" is a figure that appeals to them, for it is a type of thwarted ambitions, of futile strivings and forlorn makeshifts for better things. As I watched the frail, elegant figure struggling against this monstrous burst of enthusiasm, in which voices hot with emotion, voices of men and women, cried boisterous messages of good will to "our Charlie," I was foolishly moved. No Prime Minister could have so fired a crowd. No Prince of the house of Windsor could have commanded that wave of sheer delight. He might have had the crowd and the noise, but not the rich surge of affection. A prince is only a spectacle, a symbol of nationhood, but this was a known friend, one of themselves, and they treated him so. It was no mere instinct of the mob. They did not gather to stare at him. Each member of that crowd wanted privately to touch him, to enfold him, to thank him for cheering them up. And they could do so without reservations, for they could not have helped him in his early years--they were without the power. I do not attempt to explain why this one man, of all other "comics" of stage and film, had so touched the hearts of the people as to arouse this frenzy of adulation. It is beyond me. I could only stand and envy the man who had done it. Yet he found little delight in it. Rather, he was bewildered. I think his success staggers or frightens him. Where another might be spoiled he is dazed. The "Charlie," the figure of fun that he created in a casual moment, has grown upon him like a Frankenstein monster. It and its world-wide popularity have become a burden to him. That it has not wholly crushed him, ejected his true self and taken possession of him, is proof of a strong character. Your ordinary actor is always an actor "on" and "off;" but as I walked and talked with Chaplin I found myself trying vainly to connect him, by some gesture or attitude, with the world-famous "Charlie." There was no trace of it. When, a little later, I saw one of his films, I again tried to see through the makeup the Chaplin I had met, and again I failed. The pathetic, fragile clown of the films is purely a studio creation, having little in common with its creator, for Chaplin is not a funny man. He is a great actor of comic parts. Every second of his pictures is ACTED, and when he is not acting he casts off "Charlie," drops the mask of the world's fool, and his queer, glamorous personality is released again. He described to me the first sudden conception of his figure of fun--the poor ludicrous fool, of forlorn attitudes, who would be a gentleman, and never can; who would do fine and beautiful things, and always does them in the wrong way and earns kicks in place of acceptance and approval. At every turn the world beats him, and because he cannot fight it he puts his thumb to his nose. He rescues fair damsels, and finds that they are not fair. He departs on great enterprises that crumble to rubbish at his first touch. He builds castles in the air, and they fall and crush him. He picks up diamonds, and they turn to broken glass. At the world's disdain he shrugs his shoulders and answers its scorn with rude jests and extravagant antics. He is sometimes an ignoble Don Quixote, sometimes a gallant Pistol, and in other aspects a sort of battered Pierrot. All other figures of fun in literature and drama have associates or foils. "Charlie," in all his escapades, is alone. He is the outcast, the exile, sometimes getting a foot within the gates, but ultimately being driven out, hopping lamely, with ill- timed nonchalance, on the damaged foot. He throws a custard pie in the world's face as a gesture of protest. He kicks policemen lest himself be kicked. There is no exuberance in the kick; it is no outburst of vitality. It is deliberate and considered. Behind every farcical gesture is a deadly intent. Never do the eyes, in his most strenuous battles with authority, lose their deep-sunken haunting grief. Always he is the unsatisfied, venting his despair in a heart-broken levity of grips and capers. Chaplin realized that there is nothing more universally funny than the solemn clown, and in "Charlie" he accidentally made a world-fool; though, I think, certain memories of early youth went to its making. But I am more interested in the man than his work. When, at four o'clock in the morning, he came home with me to Highgate and sat round the fire, I felt still more warmly his charm and still more sharply his essential discontent. I do not mean that he is miserable--he is indeed one of the merriest of companions; but he is burdened with a deep-rooted disquiet. He is the shadow-friend of millions throughout the world, and he is lonely. He is tired, too, and worn, this young man whose name and face are known in every habitable part of the world. It is not a temporary fatigue, as of a man who is overworking or running at too high a pitch. His weariness, I think, lies deeper. It is of the spirit. To the quick melancholy of the Latins--for he is Anglo-French, and was born at Fontainebleau--is added that unrest which men miscall the artistic temperament. But even without these he could not, I think, command happiness. He is still an exile, seeking for something that the world cannot give him. It has given him much--great abilities, fame, fortune, applause; yet it has given him, for his needs, little. The irony that pursues genius has not let him escape. He is hungry for affection and friendship, and he cannot hold them. With the very charm that draws would-be friends towards him goes a perverse trick of repulsing them. He desires friendship, yet has not the capacity for it. "I am egocentric," he confessed. To children everywhere his name brings gurgles of delight; and he does not like children. He has added one more to the great gallery of comic figures--Falstaff, Pickwick, don Quixote, Uncle Toby, Micawber, Touchstone, Tartarin, Punchinello--and he hates "Charlie." He sat by the fire, curled up in a corner of a deep armchair like a tired child, eating shortbread and drinking wine and talking, talking, talking, flashing from theme to theme with the disconcerting leaps of the cinematograph. He talked of the state of Europe, of relativity, of Benedetto Croce, of the possibility of a British Labor Government, of the fluidity of American social life, and he returned again and again to the subject of England. "It stifles me," he said. "I'm afraid of it--it's all so set and solid and ARRANGED. Groups and classes. If I stayed here, I know I should go back to what I was. They told me that the war had changed England--had washed out boundaries and dividing lines. It hasn't. It's left you even more class-conscious. The country's still a mass of little regiments, each moving to its own rules. You've still the county people, the Varsity sets, the military caste--the governing classes and the working classes. Even your sports are still divided. For one set there are hunting, racing, yachting, polo, shooting, golf, tennis; and for the other, cricket, football, and betting. In America life is freer and you can make your own life and find a place among the people who interest you." And Chaplin has surrounded himself with quiet, pleasant people. Not his those monstrous antics of the young men and women whose light heads have been shaken by wealth and mob worship. He is not one of the cafe-hotel-evening- party crowd. When the "shop" is shut, he gets well away from it and from the gum-chewing crowd to whom life is a piece of film and its prizes great possessions. You must see him as an unpretentious man, spending his evenings at home with a few friends and books and music. He is deeply read in philosophy, social history, and economics. His wants are simple, and, although he has a vast income, he lives on a portion of it and shares everything with his brother, Syd Chaplin. During the day he works, and works furiously, as a man works when seeking distraction or respite from his troubled inner self. What he will do next I do not know. He seems to be a man without aim or hope. What it is he wants, what he is seeking, to insure a little heart's ease, I do not know. I don't think he knows himself. This young man worked for an end, and in a few years he achieved it, and now the world now stretches emptily before him, "and the eyelids are a little weary." I have tried to present some picture of this strange, elusive, gracious, self-contradictory character; but it is a mere random sketch in flat outline, and gives nothing of the opulent, glittering, clustering light and shade of the original. You cannot pin him to paper. Even were he obscure, a mere nobody, without the imposed coloring of "Charlie" and world popularity, he would be a notable subject, for he has that wonderful, impalpable gift of attraction which is the greater part of Mr. Lloyd George's power. You feel his presence in a room, and are conscious of something wanting when he departs. He has the dazzling rich-hued quality of Alvan in "The Tragic Comedians." You feel that he is just the fantastic, flamboyant figure that leads revolutions. And when you connect him with "Charlie" the puzzle grows, and you give it up. The ambition that served and guided him for ten years is satisfied; but he is still unsatisfied. The world has discovered him, but he has not yet found himself. But he has discovered the weariness of repeated emotion, and he is a man who lives on and by his emotions. That is why I call him a tragic figure--a tragic comedian. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [The "Three-Minute Hot Weather Interview" was a regular feature of this newspaper, in which celebrities were to attempt to answer 15 questions within three minutes.] August 31, 1921 Marguerite Mooers Marshall NEW YORK EVENING WORLD Charlie Chaplin Proclaims He Is In the Matrimonial Market Again In Three-Minute Hot Weather Interview Charlie Chaplin, the playboy of the movies, Charlie of the funny feet, the trained mustache, the incredible headgear, handles a three-minute interview with all the care he does NOT bestow on custard pies and cops. Charlie is ever so polite about it, but nevertheless he acts as if he thought The Evening World's hot weather test in mental speed were a bomb of some sort that might go off in his hands. When I saw the brown-eyed, debonair, soft-voiced little comedian in the theatre lobby just after the rehearsal of the next release of his friend Mary Pickford and just before the showing of the newest picture of his friend Douglas Fairbanks, he leaned against the wall for support, wiggled his fingers nervously and took his full three minutes to answer the fifteen questions I had prepared. FIRST MINUTE. Gains on Schedule, but Parries Most Thrusts. It was exactly 17 minutes past 1 when I asked: Q. No. 1--What is it that makes you so funny? Charlie Chaplin (grinning bashfully, so that he showed most of his very white and even teeth, and looking off into space, somewhere over my left shoulder)--I don't know--ask the kids. Q. No. 2--Ought movie salaries to go down? Charlie Chaplin (straightening his drooping shoulders, an indignant inflection in the soft voice)--Certainly not! Q. No. 3--Is the Bolshevik Government going to last in Russia? Charlie Chaplin--I do not know. Q. No. 4--Why don't you want to marry again? Charlie Chaplin (who was recently quoted as saying that he didn't, but who seems to have changed his mind--girls, here's your chance!)--Who says that I don't? Quoting me to that effect was a mistake. I certainly do want to marry again, very much! Q. No. 5--What sort of woman do you like best? Charlie Chaplin (again grinning embarrassedly and tying his fingers into bow knots)--Now, that's hard to answer; I really couldn't say; I couldn't even tell whether she's blond or brunette; I couldn't answer that. Q. No. 6--Are you in favor of an Irish republic? Charlie Chaplin (determinedly playing safe)--I prefer to be discreet and not commit myself. The first minute was gone and we were one answer ahead of the average called for by the time schedule. SECOND MINUTE. Slows Down His Answers, but Holds to Schedule. Q. No. 7--Should women smoke cigarettes? Charlie Chaplin (hesitating, lips moving nervously, then smiling diplomatically)--That depends on the woman. Q. No. 8--Do you believe in national censorship of the movies? Charlie Chaplin (repeating the question to gain time and thinking hard) --Do I believe in national censorship? Yes--if it's intelligent. Q. No. 9--What do you do with all your money? Charlie Chaplin (the hundred candle-power grin again turned on)--Pay my taxes--and spend some now and then. Q. No. 10--What should the Government do to help the unemployed? Charlie Chaplin (who takes a decidedly serious, non-facetious interest to labor and social problems)--They should do a great deal--so much that I couldn't begin to cover the subject even if I took the whole time you allow for the interview. The second minute was up and we had lost our one-answer lead owing to the comedian's habit of stopping to think before he spoke. THIRD MINUTE. Finishes Exactly on Time and Seems Glad It's Over. Q. No. 11--What is the easiest way to make people laugh? Charlie Chaplin (with modest hesitation, although you'd think him qualified to answer this one)--Make them happy, I guess--but somebody else could answer that question a good deal better than I. Q. No. 12--If you were not a movie star, what would you like to be? Charlie Chaplin (with a quiet chuckle)--Night watchman. Q. No. 13--How many custard pies have you ruined since the beginning of your career--a million? Charlie Chaplin--Oh, not as many as that. Say a thousand! Q. No. 14--What is your candid opinion of the Volstead act? Charlie Chaplin (the laugh in his eyes, as well as on his lips, and looking me straight in the face for almost the first time during the interview)--Of the Volstead act? You must excuse me--I don't use such language! Q. No. 15--When are you going to play Hamlet? Charlie Chaplin (although this role is said to be his dearest ambition) --I'd rather read it. What I really want in my future work is to do as I please--to follow my own whim! The interview and the three minutes were over. Charlie seemed glad the bomb had not exploded! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * September 4, 1921 NEW YORK TRIBUNE Charlie Chaplin seemed to be the big attraction on the White Star pier yesterday when the Olympic sailed for Southampton... He posed for the "stills" and the motion picture machines until the operators were satisfied and when it was done he drew his hand across his dripping brow and appeared to be garnering the drops that fell into his upturned hat which he held under his chin. Then with a spoon fashioned from his imagination he pretended to stir the contents of the hat and sprinkle the bystanders. It has been said that Chaplin will go in for the romantic thrillers, the sort of films that Bill Hart produces. No. There was not a word of truth in it. Charlie did want to get a certain Bill Hart story, but he had no thought of forsaking the funny film. It was explained that Chaplin was impressed with "The Border Wireless," which Howard E. Morton wrote for Hart, and had informed the author that he would like to have had it for himself. Mr. Morton asked Chaplin if he contemplated quitting comedy. Charlie then explained that he would have enacted the romantic part portrayed by Hart in his own way, and that the more serious the tale the more ludicrous he would have made it. "The great trouble with writers," said Chaplin, "is that they offer what they think is funny stuff. I want serious stories which I can make ridiculous. I can think of funny things to do with a serious plot. Comedy suggestions injected into manuscripts I get rarely are the ideas I want." Charlie said he would pass a month in England... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [In 1919, Elsie Codd came from England to Los Angeles; she was hired by Chaplin to write publicity for the British press.] October 11, 1919 Elsie Codd PICTURES AND PICTUREGOER Some First Impressions of Charlie Chaplin I. Los Angeles! The long journey was at last accomplished, and I stood, feeling very small, strange and lonely amidst a seething mass of chaotic "arrivals" and "departures," wondering whether my telegram had really arrived and whom they would send to meet me. Then gradually the crowd resolved itself to one figure, a little slight man in a neat grey suit, who apparently expected someone on the "Limited," and who looked as though he were wondering whether that someone had got mislaid en route. At the moment when I decided that I was neither dreaming nor suffering from an optical illusion, the little man focused his attention on a grey hat and a blue coat and skirt, and visibly recalled these garments as important data in an otherwise rather vague scheme of identification. My next impression of Charlie Chaplin was a smile, an English voice, and the warm clasp of an outstretched hand. II. Slowly the big car glided along a bewildering maze of long streets with strange tall buildings, thronged with busy traffic and a cosmopolitan crowd, then gradually the city was left behind and we passed down a wide, smooth boulevard, bordered with palms and pepper trees. On the way he would point out some landmark of special interest--the ruins of the old Griffith Babylon on the Sunset Boulevard, the Sennett Studio, where he made his own first pictures--but I think these remarks were purely incidental, concessions to his role of cicerone showing a little British "rubberneck" the usual sights for the first time. I remember he talked incessantly--little about pictures, a great deal about England and the people "back home." Yes, some day he hoped to see the Old Country again. But when he went he wanted some definite purpose to take him there. Perhaps to produce a play. No, not for the screen--for the stage. It was the dream of his life to write that play, and he had carried the idea bout with him for the last two years. Yes, he acknowledged, almost shyly, it was to be a serious play, centered in a deep psychological problem. "But I don't suppose it will ever materialise," he said, breaking off the subject with a laugh. "I can't write, you know." At last the car slowed down on a quiet avenue and drew up before a quaint row of low timbered-fronted houses, a little bit of Shakespeare's England sleeping beneath the cloudless blue of the Californian sky. "And this," said Charlie, "is the Studio." He was obviously gratified at my delight. In one part we found a village within a village, the "set" which was built for "Sunnyside," and of which the church is still standing today, because Charlie likes its quiet pastoral touch and hates to pull it down. We finished the tour with an inspection of the huge open stage, on which a "set" for the new picture was already in course of construction, then adjourned to Charlie's private office. There he showed me his books and pictures and talked of the things that interest him most--men and women, art and letters, drifting from that point into speculations of a philosophical nature. Charlie is a deep thinker and a brilliant talker. A chance remark will set him off, seeking his way through a maze of speculations, his mind working so surely and rapidly, that you need all your powers of concentration to keep pace with him. His intelligence is marvelously quick and active, and he expresses himself in a vivid boyish way which somehow inspires you with his own enthusiasms. I have never seen a man more intensely ALIVE. He is such a slight little fellow himself, that he gives you the impression of one whose physique is consumed by the very strength of its own vitality. The other day he owned that he wished he were "a tall, fine chap," and guessed his own small build explained his intense admiration of champions of the ring and other big fellows. III. A little tousle-headed figure in a preposterous suit of clothes, surrounded by a crowd of some fifty "extras," cameramen, technical directors, continuity writers and property-men. Charlie Chaplin at work. I believe the thought the uppermost in my mind when I reached home at the close of that long, hot, strenuous day was that I would have liked just at that particular moment to have met the man who asserts that Chaplin doesn't earn that million-dollar salary. And another thing I learnt was that genius is not only the infinite capacity for taking pains, but also that enthusiasm which makes loyal and willing workers, that patience and humanness which alone inspires that spirit which makes a work of genius live. IV. It was late in the morning when he arrived moody, restless and distrait. Hadn't slept all night worrying over some snag in this old story. He also decided he wouldn't use the scenes he had made yesterday. They were no good, anyhow. Nobody to be admitted to his office; newspaper men, interviewers and automobile agents to be shot at sight. With this ultimatum Charles Chaplin retires to the sanctuary to thrash out his problems alone. V. I will conclude these impressions with the recollections of an evening at Chaplin's house. He and his wife had entertained a few friends, and after dinner we adjourned to the music-room, with its quiet, intimate atmosphere of shaded lights. In one corner stood a magnificent concert grant. Charlie loves music. It seems to be the natural outlet for his restless, eager spirit, and whenever I have seen him in that room, sooner or later he invariably responds to the lure of the instrument. On this particular evening he sat there for nearly an hour, playing snatches from "Butterfly," "Carmen" and the "Valse Triste," improvising sad, wistful little melodies of his own, and trying some new records on the pianola. "And this is my favourite," he said, having after a long search at last discovered one he particularly wanted to try. I glanced at the title. It was the celebrated theme with variations from one of Haydn's string quartettes, the melody to which we English have learnt to sing the hymn, "Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him." "I remember I used to think it the most beautiful thing on earth when I sang it as a little boy at Sunday school," Charlie said. "But now it seems wonderful things to me. I seem to see a whole Russian army on a great wide plain, thousands and thousands of them as far as the eye can reach. They are all kneeling in prayer, and the priest passes slowly down their ranks and blesses them with the sacred ikon in his hands." And as I watched him lose himself and all sense of his surroundings in the beauty of that music, I realised that this was a Charlie Chaplin the world has yet to know. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * August 7, 1920 Elsie Codd PICTURES AND PICTUREGOER Sidelights on The Stars: Charlie Chaplin He arrives. And simultaneously a miniature hurricane breezes into the peaceful little English village drowsing in the sunshine, as though that small human dynamo had suddenly electrified the entire surrounding atmosphere with his presence. The arrival is immediately heralded by the bodyguard, vigilantes and watchers at the gate, and the customary view-hallo is raised; "Rollie! Jack! He's here!" Occasionally Mr. Chaplin will relieve the watchers of the formality, suddenly materialise on the premises and announce himself with the triumphant whoop: "He's here!" Which always means that he's feeling "good," and heralds for us all the dawn of a perfect day. Thereupon Rollie and Jack, the trusty cameramen, instantaneously precipitate themselves from some hidden lair and sprint to the projecting room, it being an unwritten law that any person rash enough to attempt an entrance into said projecting room after the doors are closed is liable to be shot at dawn. After ripping open his shirt collar and flinging his latest specimen of flamboyant neckwear on the nearest chair, Charles Spencer will then pass judgment on the scenes that were shot on the previous day. A running flow of Chaplinesque comment will accompany the running off of the film; in fact, a quarter of an hour per diem in the projecting room with Charlie would be an education for any high-class film critic. (N.B. and before I forget it: In the projecting room there stands a sinister instrument strangely misnamed a harmonium, and at this juncture I might add that if the light is too bad for us to "shoot," it is Mr. Chaplin's habit to have it out on that harmonium. On such occasions--a wet and dismal afternoon by preference--he will improvise for hours in minor keys, till you want to lift up your voice and weep. Probably, what with the wet afternoon and the wheezy harmonium and the minor keys, he will go home with a couple of nice new "gags" neatly pigeonholed in that remarkable mind of his, and feel that he has spent a thoroughly jolly afternoon.) But, supposing the day is bright and sunny. No sooner has the film been run off than Charlie is out in the open again. Perhaps there is a new "set" to be inspected, which mysterious ritual is performed by giving an impersonation of a camera lens and squinting through your fingers from various angles of the stage. Or possibly Mr. Chaplin is going to shoot that day a new faction of his story. Then the various actors and their make-ups pilgrimage to the Santuary in order to submit themselves for inspection and approval. Thereupon Mr. Chaplin will run through his mail, retire to his dressing-room, which is partitioned off by a curtain from the rest of his office, doff the well-cut garments he affects as a private citizen, and in due course emerge in his famous reincarnation of a tailor's nightmare. Possibly over the business of making-up he will discuss some tangled know in his "story" with the elect who form his advisory committee. On one occasion I remember him rushing out of his dressing-room in the preliminary stages of making-up, with a towel round his chin, another twisted like a Grecian fillet round his head, to impart the sensational news that he had just solved a problem in the story that had been worrying him for weeks. The twist was as original as it was perfectly logical and natural, and yet it was the last thing that would probably every have occurred to a trained scenario writer. "I just made my mind a blank," he exulted in his vivid, boyish way, "and the idea came in a flash. Can't think why it had never occurred to me before. It only just shows you that the danger we movie folk have to guard against is to allow our minds perpetually to run in the same groove and only think in the terms of the movies." Charlie at work is still the same marvel to me that he was the very first day I saw him in action, only, if possible, even more so. He will be at it six hours on end, without showing a sign of fatigue, his small body perpetually active, his mind working with the precision and lightning rapidity of a steel spring. Some times he will knock off for half-an-hour and go off to lunch on a cup of coffee and his favourite strawberry shortcake, but as likely as not he will send off the others and remain on the lot, too interested in his job to risk any chance of disturbing his concentration. I remember one day we were discussing our ideas of pleasure and happiness, and how Charlie thrilled at the thought of a long walk through the English countryside and a farmhouse meal with fresh bread, dairy butter, new- laid eggs and tea in an earthware pot. "The only things that gave me any real pleasure," he said, "are just the simple things. I'm happiest when I'm working, and the biggest pleasure I get out of life is to suddenly get a real inspiration and land a comedy gag." Sometimes, of course, inspiration clogs. I have known some hot afternoon when Charlie declares he is nearly asleep, and the rest of us are feeling very much the same. Then, by sheer force of will, he will go through a variety of strenuous gymnastics with a tremendous show of energy and "pep." Sometimes, however, it is a case of pure physical and mental exhaustion, the result of several days of almost superhuman effort. Then he abandons all pretence of work and knocks off for a bit, gets out his violin and plays us a tune, gives us a little exhibition of fancy dancing or one of his famous imitations of a grand opera tenor. When the light is good, work may go on uninterruptedly till past five, when possibly Mr. Chaplin will remorsefully remember that at four he had an appointment with his dentist or a special emissary of the Grand Lama. Even then, after he has discarded his screen regalia, he may remain at the studio long after the others have left, working out the next scenes of his story or seeking fresh inspirations over the sweet music of his old violin. On other occasions he will wind up a busy day with a show or a dinner. And so, as Mr. Pepys would say, to bed. "I've had a wretched night," we will possibly hear on the following morning, "hardly slept a wink. But I've had a great idea. Now we'll retake some of those scenes we did yesterday." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * October 1921 Elsie Codd PICTUREGOER [from an interview with Jackie Coogan] It was one afternoon, between scenes, during the filming of "The Kid," that I cornered Jackie Coogan on the set for the purpose of a press interview... It was at this moment that Charlie Chaplin strolled up from another part of the set, and took a seat beside us on the edge of the pavement. "I'm making an attempt," I explained, "to fathom the psychology of a youthful screen star. So far, I find him somewhat detached on the subject of moving pictures. As a man of influence and standing, he will probably listen to you. Please help me out." "You flatter me," Charlie said with a smile, whilst Jackie promptly profited by the occasion to return to his mud-pies. "All the same, I very much doubt whether my influence and standing, as you are pleased to call them, have any bearing on the case in hand. You know," he continued, lowering his voice so that Jackie could not hear, "what I like about that kid is his absolute sincerity. He's one of the few with whom I come into contact who are completely indifferent to my position in this unreal sort of world of ours. He likes me, not because I'm Charlie Chaplin, but because he thinks I'm not a bad sort of scout, though, no doubt, he entertains an even higher opinion of the property-boy and the janitor, because they have so much more time to play with him. But seriously, you know," he said, hitching up his knees in his favourite attitude of repose, "that boy's a genius. He's not only got imagination, but vision. No long, tiresome rehearsals for him! I might labour in vain if I were simply to tell him to 'register' surprise, joy or sorrow in the usual way; but give him an intelligent grasp of the situation in hand, and put it to him what he would do under similar circumstances, and he will instantly key himself to the corresponding emotions. The great thing to be remembered, if the privilege falls to your lot to develop a latent genius, is to allow it the freedom to find itself and work out its destiny along its own lines. That is why, as far as possible, I leave Jackie to give his own rendering of a part, and just content myself with giving him such hints as will make that rendering more perfect from a technical point of view. Such things as camera values, positions and cues have to be learnt, but he is a child interpreting a child's part, and having a natural genius for self-expression, can be trusted to follow his own sense of logical fitness in any situation that presents itself. The task I have set myself to perform is to develop in him a realisation of what personality means in any form of Art, and to make him, above all things, true to himself. Come here, you little miffler," he said, turning to his protege, who was still reveling in the bliss of old clothes and unlimited supplies of earth and water; "tell us what you need most to be a really great actor." "Personality," (No doubt of Master Jackie's conviction on this point, for the promptness and decision of the answer simply didn't allow a loophole for the slightest argument.) "And what does Personality mean?" "Being just yourself and nobody else." "And how do you know a good actor when you see one?" "Oh, that's easy. He acts so natchral, that--that--well, you can't even see that he's acting at all." Not bad for a five-year old, is it? Though I doubt whether I'd ever have got so deep into the matter if it hadn't been for Charlie's assistance. For no sooner was Charlie's back turned than Jackie made a confession. "I'm not so sure that I wouldn't like to be a camera-man," he said with a quaint, pensive expression. "I like to hear those cameras whirr, and turning the handle's great fun. You watch me."... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * August 20, 1916 Grace Kingsley LOS ANGELES TIMES Witty, Wistful, Serious is the Real Charlie Chaplin To interview a man whose idea of repartee might consist in throwing a pie--who might, as a proof of his wit, offer to hurl you over a cliff--how exciting! However, there weren't any pies around the Charlie Chaplin stage the other day. There was only a billiard-room "set" used by the comedian in his latest picture, "The Count," with its comedy furniture lying around in dejected attitudes, as if comedy were indeed a sad business. Which, take it from Charlie Chaplin it is--the saddest business in the world. Charlie arrayed himself in a natty summer suit, with a day off from work, was practicing golf strokes out on the grass plot in front of his studio with Billie the mascot goat of the studio, as principal hazard and sometimes caddy. Away from the Cooper-Hewitts it's a very human, natural, lovable Charlie that greets you. A Charlie with flashes of drollery, and moments of wistfulness, too, such as you see in the pictures. A Charlie of unexpected vanities, and of equally big humilities concerning himself and his achievements. A shrewd Charlie, who is saving his money toward the time when he may do big things. And a Charlie, above all, who takes life and himself seriously, and wants you to take them seriously, too. Maybe it's the background of the poorhouse that makes him serious. You know, when he was a little boy Chaplin, his brother and mother were thrust into an English workhouse. If it hadn't been for the poorhouse, and certainly if it hadn't been for a certain large curly dog, maybe there never would have been anybody in the world earning $670,000 a year and the world would have been out a lot of laughs besides. It was the big curly dog of Chaplin's workhouse period that pulled Charlie out of the river one day when the embryo comedian was in bathing, and had got beyond his depth. Chaplin's present ambition--that for which he is waving? Nothing less than appearing in high comedy on the speaking stage--comedy as high as Pinero or Shaw or Wilde. One believes that he will achieve it, too, even though you smile at the idea that, in the very midst of a funny fall, Charlie may be delivering a Shaw epigram, or that he may be murmuring a Wilde bon mot all the while he is kicking the fat man! "When I arrive in the morning I'm usually gloomy," said Charlie, as he led us out on the big state, "especially when I haven't any idea of what I'm going to do in a scene, as is often the case. Tears bedew my eyes as I put on my make-up, and I weep sadly as I step out on the stage. And as for these gray hairs:--indicating those about his temple over his right ear--I got them all the other day trying to be funny in a ballroom scene. I think any comedian who started out to be funny in a ballroom would have his career blighted at the outset." Chaplin has his comedy "locations" down fine. It's easy to be funny in a billiard-room or a bakery, he says; a bathroom is inherently humorous; one chuckles even at thought of a taxidermist's shop; a taxicab, facetiously nicknamed "the robber's delight," is potentially funny, but ballroom and a horse and buggy are synonymous for sighs. "How did I acquire my walk?" Well, sore feet are always funny to me-- I mean, of course, other people's. Mostly, somehow, they are owned by people with no sense of humor, or maybe a person's sense of humor is in abeyance when he has sore feet. Anyway, it was a funny little old public-house keeper in London, who habitually had sore feet and groaned over them, from whom I learned that walk." "How about the athletic work you do, that we hear so much about?" "No, ma'am. Don't you believe that. Why should a man exert himself needlessly that way? Don't I go to work every morning with my dinner pail, like a stevedore? Why should I swing dumbells when I have to throw people around so as to break things with them every day? Why should I wrestle, even when I have to kick people for a living? And as for hanging to swinging bars, I call a chandelier my second name. I love walking. I walk in crowds, downtown, and think out my plots. People are so sad and so funny, so pathetic and so absurd. I like to frequent parks and cafeterias and other places where crowds go." Charlie Chaplin calls his funny clothes his "salary." And as for his first comedy boots, they were a pair of old ones belonging to Ford Sterling. So that Chaplin both literally and figuratively stepped into Sterling's shoes." "No, I don't own a car. I rent one when I need it. When I was over at the Keystone I bought a car. The first day I ran it it went on a gasoline jib. First it playfully climbed a telephone pole, then it bit me when I tired to fix the speedometer, and lastly, when I got out and tried to pry the darn thing loose from a house it had run into, it jammed me up against a wall and wouldn't let me go. "Concerning my imitators--yes, I have had some funny experiences with them. I met a man the other day, fresh from some place where they don't have any Charlie Chaplin imitators, apparently. He had just seen me an hour before, he said, out in front of one of the theaters. "'Why do you do it?' he asked. 'I think you lose prestige that way-- cheapen yourself!' "'Oh, I don't know,' I told him, 'I hardly know myself why I do it. It just helps keep me busy--that's all--helps pass the time away!'" Back in New York, on Charlie's recent trip, he was standing in a crowd watching an imitation of himself, when a small boy came up and tried to push him out of the way. "What's the matter?" demanded Chaplin. "Oh, git outa me way," said the urchin. "I wanta see Charlie Chaplin. Whada you care about seein' him? Youse guys always gets in a kid's way.!" At another time Charlie had been doing a scene in an alley, and the rest of the company had gone on, while Chaplin stopped to watch a bunch of newsboys shooting craps. Along came a policeman. "Move on!" he commanded. "I'm Charlie Chaplin, and I've been working here!" exclaimed the comedian. "You Charlie Chaplin!" laughed the policeman. "Huh, I guess I know Charlie Chaplin when I see him. You're just one of his bum imitators. Get out!" Charlie is given to spells of moody melancholy. One night he was particularly low-spirited, and when he chanced to meet the joyous Tom Meighan, the latter proposed a slumming party to chase away the glooms. They went down to the old "Mug" saloon on Winston Street. "The proprietor was suspicious of us from the beginning," said Chaplin. "Maybe our clothes were too good. He asked all sorts of questions. 'Do you work on the docks at San Pedro?' 'No, not at San Pedro,' I assured him. After we had spent upwards of 30 cents buying him drinks, he openly voiced the opinion we weren't there for any good. Finally our evidence of overwhelming wealth--we had spent six bits by that time--caused him to decide that such reckless spenders must be from Alaska. After a while, though, he began to look at me closely. A look of amazement stole over his face. 'You ain't--it can't be Charlie Chaplin!' he cried. 'Pshaw,' I answered, 'of course not. I'm a traveling man.' 'I'll bet you are Charlie Chaplin!' he insisted. But when I coyly admitted I was indeed that very person-- "'Aw, no you ain't,' he veered around. 'No man that made $670,000 a year would come to a dump like this!' And no amount of persuasion or proof could convince him." Chaplin has been much taken up by society of late. He admits he rather likes dancing and the role of cozycorner fusser. "But I think," he said slowly and a little sadly, "I think perhaps those people could be very cruel, if--" Did that "if" mean, if one lost one's vogue, his money, his power? Shrewd Charlie. "Anyhow, my work's the thing. Yes, I admit that sometimes I use other people's ideas." Chaplin grinned. "But, oh, the irony of fate! Once last year I made a picture filled with no less than ten masterpieces of other people's creation--and the exhibitors sent it back. Said it was rotten!" Chaplin has a secretary to answer his letters, of which he receives sometimes as many as 100 a day. And his letters are graded and filed! What do you think of that? If you write him an A No. 1 love letter, for instance, or one that's extremely interesting, or one so badly composed that it's funny, that letter goes into a certain pigeonhole and to be kept and taken out and read over again by Charlie at some future day. But if you write only the common or garden variety of love letter, or any other ordinary sort, it is filed in the regular letter file, and after a while is destroyed. He gets letters from everywhere in the world, and is an especial favorite in China and Japan. Following is a postcard which he received the other day from an admirer in Tokio: "Dear Mr. Chapline: Dear Sir: Your kind favour with a pretty photo of you was duly to hand for which I was enormously delighted. Expecting that your work in the M. F. Company will please us more than I saw before, Yours truly, -----." Oftentimes he goes to the theater to listen to comments of his audiences. "And when I hear some of the criticisms, I walk off quickly," he says. For, strange as it may seem, as sensitive to criticism as a child is this famous comedian, who has created a guffaw that is heard around the world, a ripple of laughter that ceaselessly encircles the globe. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [The following interview with Edna Purviance really belongs with her interviews in TAYLOROLOGY 66. But Chaplin does make a cameo appearance.] May 6, 1916 Fred Goodwins PICTURES AND PICTUREGOER The Little Lady of Laughter I want you to imagine, if you will, what a breath of fresh air it was to find when I prepared this interview that I was compelled to speak the truth from sheer want of a means to improve it! Like the "Ernest" of Oscar Wilde's comedy, it's the first time I ever found myself placed in such a position. I suppose Edna has her faults; if she has she is fearfully bashful about them, for in all my intimate friendship with her I have never so far succeeded in bringing one to light. She was with Charlie the first time I met her--in the lobby of the hotel where they were dining--and while that ubiquitous young gentleman was trying to handle three visitors at once she drew me aside and gave me an amusing insight into the various subterfuges he has to practise in order to dispose of the "pests," as distinguished from the legitimate callers. "He hates to do it, you know," she assured me, "but if you only knew the hundreds of inconsequential things people want to see him about sometimes, you wouldn't think hardly of him--or of me--for turning them down." "Of you?" I queried. "Yes, you see, he feels so badly about having to do it that he has to get poor me to answer phone messages and act as a right-hand diplomat!" That's the phrase: "Right-hand diplomat." There you have the whole of Edna's relation to the great little star, for when she is not playing her part before the camera she is managing bits of business for him and sometimes, when occasion demands it, managing him. When I grew to know Edna more thoroughly I was better able to realise just why she is one of the best-loved girls in the whole of this vast industry. The boys of the studio always spoke of her in glowing terms, particularly the many English boys, I noticed, the reason of which soon became apparent. Edna, for a patriotic American girl, is the most English- spirited creature that ever happened. She is, in fact, just that good- natured, hardy, tomboyish type so dear to us Englishmen. Yet, withal, she has the right amount of reserve that goes to make up the ideal girl. "You want to interview me?" she exclaimed, when I told her I wanted to do so for PICTURES. (I had taken her into a candy-store for a little tea-- Charlie having Anglicised her into that habit, which is not a national one in America.) "Why not?" I said, amused at the wideness of her blue eyes. "Oh, don't 'kid' me," she chided, and it took me several minutes and the unearthing of a note-book to convince her that the great B. P. wouldn't be averse to hearing from her something about herself. My point was gained. "Well, first of all I suppose you want me to tell you that I was born--" "Just like 'David Copperfield,' eh?" I agreed. "That was the first chapter of your life?" "Of course it was," she said. "Don't be irrelevant." I subsided, and continued to jot. "Do you write shorthand?" she exclaimed, looking at my book. "So do I-- Pitman's; what's YOUR system?" "'Pitman-Goodwins',' I suppose you'd say--nobody can read it but myself!" She evinced a desire to use her pastry-knife murderously, and I hurriedly returned to my notes. "Well, I was born in 1894, in the State of Nevada--so I'm thoroughly Western, you see. A lot of people have asked me how I came by my peculiar name and this will be a good opportunity to tell them. The name itself is French, of course, and must have come down through several generations-- because nobody ever saw a purely French woman with hair as fair as mine, did they?" She pulled out a strand of very blonde hair--almost white it is, and as fine as spider silk. "I expect I get it from the English side of my family, which is my mother's. But about my name--Charlie says I ought to change it; because nobody can pronounce it; but I hate assumed names, and as mine is so distinctive I want to keep it. Tell people to pronounce it like I do--Pur-vi-ance, with the accent on the second syllable. "When I left high school I became secretary to a firm in San Francisco, and it was there that I acquired the speed at typewriting that I used in that Picture we were in together"--she meant "The Bank"--"but the humdrum life of an office didn't seem to satiate my inborn spirit of freedom--love of adventure I suppose you'd call it--so one day I turned up my position and became a lady of leisure once more. "Time kind of hung on my hands, and one day I thought it would be fun to go out to Niles"--the Essanay head studio near San Francisco--"and see them taking pictures, so I called up a girl chum of mine and we went. "When we got there, they were very kind to us and let us wander around the plant, and then I noticed what a crowd of girls was there. I asked one of the gentlemen what they were all doing, and he said: 'Why, Mr. Chaplin has got five hundred of them to choose his new leading lady from; these are some of the applicants.' While we were watching, a little man with dark curly hair, who had been walking among the girls, looked over at me, and pointing in my direction called out: 'That's the type I want!' I was scared at first, and when the young man who was with him came over to me, I asked him who the little man was. 'Why, that's Charles Chaplin, our comedy star,' he answered; 'he wants to see you about the position.' 'Position?' I said. 'Yes, Miss,' he answered; 'he wants you for his leading lady--just to try-out, you know.' "So that's how I met Charlie. I was not one of the applicants, but the idea of acting in pictures with the comedian I had laughed at so often appealed to me as a huge joke, and I decided that I'd try everything once-- like the Kaiser," she added artlessly. "Never mind the Kaiser," I suggested; "I'm getting interested. And was it a huge joke?" "It was not; before I began to be a picture artist, I had thought myself gifted with a little more than ordinary intelligence. After the first day in front of the camera, I came to the conclusion that I was the biggest 'boob' on earth. "Charlie was very patient with me, though, and after my first picture, in which I think I was terrible--'A Night Out,' you know--I began to get used to the work, and although I have had occasional relapses, as Charlie calls them, I am at least 'camera-wise' by now." "And a very clever little woman," I added, with privileged gallantry. "No, I wouldn't like to believe that. But someday I want to do something REALLY good; I want to EARN the people's regard, don't you know. I don't want them to like me just because I'm lucky enough to be Charlie's leading lady, but because I've done something myself that has appealed to them." "You've done that already, Edna," I ventured. "Look at the letters you get from all over the world." "Yes, that's true; but I want to go on and on and on. I think I've found a business in which I can achieve something, and I want to rise to the top of it. I remember your saying that Charlie is the soul of ambition." I nodded. "Do you believe me when I say that if ambition could get a person on, I'd be the most successful woman in the world?" "Why, yes," I agreed, a bit at sea over the sober channel our interview was taking. "You'll do it, too." She raised her eyes eagerly. "Do you REALLY think that?" she begged. "I'm a pessimist, you know--I never believe anything will happen until it has. "Gee! It's half-after-four, and I promised to see Charlie at the next corner but one." We passed on to the door. "Great Scot! it's pouring," I ejaculated, looking through the glass. "You can't go out in this! Let me go and fetch Charlie down here." Her permission received, I started out, but good luck saved me a wet trip, for at that moment a huge touring-car halted by me and the comedian thrust out his head in greeting. "Hold on!" I cried. "Your precious burden's in here." A moment later the little lady of laughter was snugly ensconced among a lot of rugs, and they were both waving their adieus. In that car were two of the best-known personalities in the world--two "souls of ambition;" one all but fully realised, the other only a question of time. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * July 1930 Jim Tully NEW MOVIE MAGAZINE The Unknown Charlie Chaplin I first met Charles Chaplin at a dinner given by Ralph Block. My first book had been published. Chaplin had read some of the reviews. When we parted that night he asked me to call on him and was kind enough to tell me that he liked me. Several days later I telephoned the studio. Chaplin sent his limousine for me. He was very kind during that first private interview. I was ill at ease. We parted, I think, with a feeling of reserve on both sides. I was not natural that day. Nor was I ever quite natural in all the months that I was to be associated with the comedian. I have always regretted this fact. Paul Bern is ever on the alert to be kind, as hundreds in Hollywood besides myself can testify. He secured me a position with Chaplin. My salary was small, but it was a fair wage, considering what little work I had to do. It was agreed upon between the comedian and myself that he was to sign certain articles which I was to write from time to time. His name had value in the magazine world. After signing two articles he refused to sign more. Feeling the inadequacy of my position, and hoping daily against hope, I remained on the job. Konrad Bercovici, the writer of gypsy romances, once wrote an article on Charles Chaplin for HARPER'S MAGAZINE. In it he did me the honor to call me Chaplin's secretary. He described my entering the room and laying a paper on the great jester's desk. No attention was paid to me. Mr. Bercovici was sadly mistaken. My principal duty with Charles Chaplin was to receive my weekly check. I was merely one of the sad jesters in the court of the King of Laughter. The time arrived to select a leading lady for "The Gold Rush." Dozens of screen tests were made of ambitious young ladies. I often accompanied Chaplin's higher salaried yes-men to the projection room, where we watched as the faces of these inane beauties flashed upon the screen. An ordinary-looking Mexican girl arrived one morning. She had played some years previously in "The Kid." Chaplin was not yet at the studio. The girl was about to depart, when lo--the little jester met up with his destiny. A screen test was made of the girl. Several of us agreed privately that it was the worst yet made. The girl did not photograph. Chaplin watched her features on the screen the next day. In silence we watched him. He rose from his chair. "That's the girl," he exclaimed. A fearful silence filled the room. I walked to my office and allowed the yes-men to argue the great question. Something--perhaps a mood--as he had, and rightly, no respect for my judgment, compelled Chaplin to join me a few minutes later. He entered the room as tragic as Hamlet, hands held behind his back, a frown on his face, as though his next decision would rattle the stars from the sky. "What do you think of her, Jim?" he asked. Having been hungry, and knowing that he would choose the girl he preferred anyway, I parried with, "I don't know, Charlie. She may be all right." The rug on my office floor was vivid red. Chaplin began to pace up and down, up and down, hands still behind his back. His good-looking face bore the same fearful frown. Now and then I would glance at him and then let my eyes rest once more on the scarlet carpet. Suddenly the door opened. The Mexican girl entered. She was cheaply dressed, but her eyes flashed, her teeth were even, her body was so round and supple that one soon forgot the ugly black dress which clothed it. Chaplin smiled benignly, as gracious and charming a smile as I have ever seen. She stood before him and asked, "Well, what is it, Charlie? Am I hired?" The comedian looked at her and then down at his spats, which, actor- like, he always wore. I watched their expressions. The keen, fine face of the actor, mobile and finely molded, was a face that would be noticed in any gathering. The girl watched him, round-eyed, round-faced, full of life. I saw in her then everything which Chaplin did not see--a young woman who seemed to me devoid of spiritual qualities. Chaplin answered at last, "You're engaged." The girl leaped into the air with joy. Together they walked out of my office--to a troubled destiny for the man and a fortunate one for the girl. She afterward had the fine fortune to marry the comedian and garner for herself many hundreds of thousands of dollars. If his marriage was a farce, his divorce was tragic. As Lita Grey Chaplin she brought him as much misery as it is possible for a misunderstanding young lady to bring to genius. She worked in "The Gold Rush" at a salary of seventy-five dollars a week. Mr. Chaplin has no more sympathy with large salaries than any trust. During her stay at the studio, the officials from the Board of Education often called. She could scarcely be forced to study. Her grades were low and she had no interest in books. And to this girl was given by the Fates in marriage Mr. Charles Spencer Chaplin, the most complex of human beings. Just why he remembered Miss Grey from her childhood days and insisted upon making her his leading lady might be worthy the attention of a master of irony like Chaplin himself. He has undoubtedly been away from it long enough to smile--until he remembers the fortune it cost him. And then, if he weeps, he is but human. It is my opinion that Chaplin does not like intelligent men as companions. Elmer Elsworth, one of the most whimsically humorous and highly intelligent men I have known, worked with him for many months. Chaplin once remarked to me that Elsworth was "a real highbrow." Given his choice between such a man and Henry, the heavy restaurant proprietor in Hollywood, the comedian chose the latter. They have been close associates for many years. Chaplin frequents his restaurant and spends hours in chatting with other ephermal film immortals. Chaplin often ridicules sentimentality in others. The publishers of Thomas Burke's "The Wind and the Rain" sent him a copy of that book. It is, so far as I know, one of the most maudlin and sentimental books written an any language. Burke is a product of the same London environment that produced Chaplin. Success has made both men dramatize self-pity. Chaplin read the book with tears in his voice. The true nature of the volume entirely escaped him. Secluded in a bungalow at the far end of the studio, oblivious to everything else, he read and discussed the book at great length. When I asked to borrow the precious volume, he willingly loaned it to me, saying, "Take good care of it, Jim. It's my Bible." The book had touched the misery of his own childhood. After seeing the East End of London, I can understand why. For there poverty is groveling, supine--so listless and beaten that it dares not hope. I said to him, "Charlie, it would be a nice thing to cable Burke and also send his American publishers a boost for the book." He was immediately enthusiastic over the idea. I phrased cablegram and telegram, which he approved. Burke had asked him for an autographed photograph. I found one and took it to him. He frowned. "It's not good enough," he said. In London, four years later, I asked Burke if he had ever received the photograph. "Not yet," he answered. Chaplin has often been called "a maker of directors." During my term with him he had as his lieutenants Charles Reisner, now a successful director; Edward Sutherland, Henry, the ponderous restaurant keeper, and Harry d'Arrast. Monta Bell, the famous Paramount director, had but recently left him to begin his brilliant career. Bell was in many respects the shrewdest and most able man associate with Chaplin. He watched his opportunity and sold himself to Warner Brothers to direct "Broadway After Dark." It was an immediate success and Bell's future was assured. I tried at many different times to get Chaplin to comment on the film. He would not. It had seeped through Hollywood that Bell had been partly responsible for "A Woman of Paris." Chaplin heard the news and made no comment. One of the most surprising qualities about him is his kindness and tolerance toward those who have been none too kindly to him. His attitude toward life is far from gentle, however. People interest him a great deal, though he has no love for them in the mass. In all the months I was with him he expressed no love for the beauty of nature. I called his attention to a gorgeous sunset. He looked with narrowed eyes and said no word. He once, in a whimsical mood, spoke of the fog of London and wished that he might die in it. He told how it draped the buildings and hid their ghastly ugliness. Once, long after I had gone, three men sat a table with him. Being citizens of Hollywood, two of them evidently thought the shortest road to his heart was in disparaging me. Chaplin listened for some time, saying nothing. At last he said, "He can write," and the subject was changed. His mind is ever in a furore. As restless as a storm, it is always charged with wonder. The vagaries of the human brain interest him a great deal. The Leopold-Loeb case kept him enthralled. He often expressed pity for the Chicago anarchists done to death as the outcome of the Haymarket riot. One brave fellow in the early morning hour before his execution sang so that the entire prison could hear: "Maxwelton braes are bonnie, Where early fa's the dew-- It was there that Annie Laurie Gae me her promise true." Chaplin often talked of this incident. Whenever he did, his voice was soft. When not working, which was half the time, it was his custom to telephone from his Beverly Hills mansion each day and request that certain of his employees be sent to him. If the order came late in the evening, we considered it from "the little genius," our pet name for him. One Saturday afternoon I was called for, and upon arriving was told that I was to accompany him to dinner that night. He had suddenly grown tired of two other men and had suddenly desired my company. I saw that he was in a dark mood and, sensing tedious hours ahead, I looked about for a means of protection. Leaving the mansion to go on an errand in Hollywood, I had the good fortune to meet Lita Grey at the studio. Knowing that if she should "accidentally" drift into the Montmartre, where I guessed we would go for dinner, that he would probably invite her to dinner and send me home, I asked her to come to the restaurant. She agreed to make it appear accidental. The plan nearly worked. At eight o'clock that night Chaplin took me to the Montmartre. As we walked nonchalantly toward his accustomed table, he stopped suddenly. For there sat the two men of whom he was tired. Chaplin turned about, saying "No more privacy than a shoe clerk," and walked with me out of the restaurant. We went to another cafe. It also was crowded. His Japanese chauffeur followed us in the car. Chaplin decided to go to the Ambassador Hotel. Once there, we remained at the same table for over five hours. I was completely talked out. Chaplin watched the dancers gliding about. At last a Spanish girl began to flirt with him. My heart beat fast. If she would only come to his table, he might excuse me. I praised the girl's beauty now and then, while the comedian's eyes followed her. Finally, in desperation, I said, "Why don't you chat with her, Charlie? She's very lovely." And the little genius answered, "I'm not in the mood, Jim. It's lovelier just to watch her." He took me home early in the morning. Lita Grey arrived at the Montmartre on time. She found the two men at the table. We had come--and gone. He is the greatest inarticulate ironist on earth. The petty platitudes of lesser men do not conceal from his keen eyes the great truth that life is a bitter business and that mankind does a goose step to the grave. He has the first-rate man's sense of futility. My ingratitude to Chaplin has long been a byword in Hollywood. It has been said that I arrived here a tramp and was befriended by film people, subsequently biting the hands that fed me. This is not true. The two men who made the early days easier for me in Hollywood were Paul Bern and Rupert Hughes. Both are still close to me. My second book was dedicated to Rupert Hughes, my last to Paul Bern. Until this moment I have never troubled to answer any man's charges. My old grandfather used to say, "Kape your head up, Jimmy. Ye've the blood of a wind-rovin' Dane." And so through all the melee of words I have always smiled, and thrown another brick. If it missed, I threw another one. "Payple respect ye more whin they're a little afraid," my grandfather used to say. He was a ditch-digging man of the world, doomed to canker out his life in the saloons of a miserable Ohio town. There was always in his big and turbulent and troubled old head a slight feeling of contempt for everything and everybody. He early inculcated in me that feeling, and begged me to try like the devil to compel life to make way for me. I obeyed the magnificent, mud-bespattered old brigand, and I put him in a book just as he was and sent him to the far corners of the world. If I whimpered in explaining myself now, he'd kick a board out of his coffin. Charles Chaplin and I quarreled over a matter which the intervening years have taught me was my fault. I was entirely to blame. But growth is not given to Irish mortals in a day. Long after we had separated, I was invited to the home of Frank Dazey, with whom I was writing a play. When I arrived, Mrs. Dazey said to me, "Jim, I know you'll be a good fellow, as Charlie Chaplin is coming. Marion Davies telephoned and asked if she could bring him. I knew you would understand." Always self-conscious in company, I wondered how I would act. The newspapers at the time were full of news concerning our quarrel. Chaplin arrived soon afterward. He was charming as sin. Never in all his life had he been more considerate with me. In the presence of all the guests, he put his arm about me. A sublime actor, one can never be sure when he is in or out of a role. Cynical of most things, I still believe that he was sincere that night. If not, he was charming, which is just as well. Later in the evening a charade was played. Charlie picked me for his side. In choosing a word, he said, "Let's pick one of four syllables." And then with pantomime and a look of deep concern, he said, "Lord, I don't know any." The game over, many of the guests chatted in the living room. Wondering if he had changed I began to talk upon a pathological subject. Soon he drew his chair near mine and we talked for a long time. As of old his powerful mind wondered at subjects probably never to be understood. Since meeting him at the Dazey home I have seen him but once. At the time of his greatest trouble, I met him walking in the gathering dusk down Sunset Boulevard. His cap was pulled low over his eyes. His shoulders were drooped. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. His chin was buried on his chest. There was no one within a block of us. My first impulse was to say, "Hello, Charlie," and put my arm about him. I was positive that he would have welcomed me. And yet I hesitated, for some unaccountable reason. Soon his lonely figure melted into the night. Somehow at the time he reminded me of Victor Hugo's line on Napoleon after the battle of Waterloo. That Man of Destiny was found wandering aimlessly in a field, in Hugo's words, "the mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream." ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at any of the following: http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/ http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/Taylorology/ http://www.silent-movies.com/Taylorology/ Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/ For more information about Taylor, see WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991) *****************************************************************************