World Tour Revisited: Charlie meets Napoleon biographer Emil Ludwig, late May 1931

Chaplin, May Reeves, & Emil Ludwig

During the early part of his holiday in the French Riviera, Charlie received a telegram from German writer Emil Ludwig. He would be in the south of France for only one day and would like to meet him. Charlie made plans for his visit.

We are to lunch at the Palm Beach Casino, a beautiful location opposite the island of Sainte Marguerite upon which stands the historical prison reputed to be the place where The Man in the Iron Mask was incarcerated.

Ludwig has a likeness to Byron--the same high lofty, brow and well-formed chin, with a full sensitive mouth almost feminine--a man in his early forties. Upon meeting him I was impressed by his eager youthful spirit.

Ludwig was equally impressed by Chaplin:

He came toward me with a frank open look--a small, closely knit man who, obviously, had won through to serenity--or at least an appearance of serenity--which, earlier, had not been his. There was in him a fresh vigor and in his eyes a lively sparkle which I had not expected.

May Reeves recalled that Charlie was ill at ease during the meeting and kept nervously repeating, "Well, well, well." She thought Ludwig seemed relieved that she could speak German with him.

During lunch, Ludwig produced a bay leaf saying: "It was a custom of the ancient Greeks to bestow a laurel leaf upon those whom they admired, and so I want you to keep this as a token of my esteem." (Afterward, when they were alone, Charlie told May: "He must have a complete herb garden in his baggage.")

Later in the conversation, Ludwig noticed that Charlie's mouth suddenly drooped,

...and when the same expression repeated itself later, I saw it was his mouth that truly revealed him, which united the two Chaplins--Chaplin the actor and Chaplin the man.

In his drooping, sensitive mouth, when he leaves it for a moment undisciplined, is expressed all the resignation, all the renunciation which cannot be acted unless it has been experienced.

It is not the mouth of a lover of humanity. Chaplin is a fighter, for his passion against the smug and sated rich is deeper, it seemed to me, than his compassion for the suffering poor.

Chaplin's mouth is a tragic mouth; but it is a mouth that can bite. 

Charlie recalled that they also discussed what they considered to be the most beautiful things they had seen in life:

I related the action of Helen Wills playing tennis, also a moving picture from a news weekly of a man plowing the fields of Flanders after the war. The tragic stoop of his back, the determination and courage as he furrowed into the soil, the indomitable spirit and will to build up over the wreckage.

Ludwig gave a beautiful description of the glow of a red sun setting on the beach in Florida, an automobile rolling along at twelve miles an hour, and a girl in a bathing suit reclining on the running board, her toe lightly trailing over the smooth surface of the sand, leaving a thin line as she rode along.

_________________________________________________________________

Sources:
"A Comedian Sees The World Part 3," A Woman's Home Companion, November 1933
"Emil Ludwig X-Rays Charlie Chaplin," Liberty, August 22, 1931
May Reeves, The Intimate Charlie Chaplin, trans. & ed. by Constance Brown Kuriyama, McFarland, 2001
Gerith Von Ulm, Charlie Chaplin: King Of Tragedy, Caxton, 1940

Charlie & Paulette at a tennis match, 1934

Putting on his mustache

With his friend & political mentor, writer Rob Wagner

Wagner was the editor of Script Magazine, a New Yorker-style publication out of Los Angeles, which Charlie contributed to on a number of occasions.  He served as ghostwriter for Chaplin as well as press representative. He also made a brief appearance in the dance hall sequence of A Dog's Life (1918). It was most likely through Wagner that Charlie met two other intellectuals who helped shape his political viewpoint: Upton Sinclair and Max Eastman.

Random Excerpt

While I was slithering around Sunset Boulevard, Charlie was a more and more frequent guest at our house. He had just recently been starred for the first time at Essanay, and was now making a fortune with a series of one-reelers at Mutual. He and three other friends of mine--Mary Pickford, Doug Fairbanks, and David Griffith--were about to join forces as the United Artists.

Though Popsy was wary of my Hollywood companions, he trusted Chaplin because he knew him. It has always amused me to see cautious parents accept as suitable suitors old friends who are often as eligible as Don Juan. It is probably the quality of the unknown that terrifies them so.

To me, there remained very little unknown about Charlie. He unburdened his heart to me. He loved talking about himself; but I adored his sense of humor and appreciated his sense of values. He was marvelous fun to be with, Charlie!

He wasn't very prompt, and one night he arrived for dinner an hour and a half late. Mutz, who had kept her patience for weeks, now was furious. Such a tirade! She told him how selfish and thoughtless he was; and we were all sure that we would never see him again. What did he do when mother finished? He kissed her and said, "How wonderful you are. You've scolded me just as you would your own son. Now I know I'm one of the family. Thank you, thank you."

What could one do with such a reaction? We all adored him. How stimulating Charlie was! Those intense gray eyes! Even in repose, there was always a faint smile hovering around his lips. There was always an imp in Charlie, no matter how serious he was being, an element of the unpredictable. He was an elf with a memory of sadness.

He loved playing with abstract ideas. His brain never stopped buzzing. When he was working he would ask me to the studio so I could watch him work. Though he used a script, ideas, fresh and sparkling, would spill from him while the camera was going. Some of his most famous scenes were spontaneous. His slim, nervous body would respond instantly to any improvisation that struck him. He was nimble in everything. He moved like a dancer.

Charlie was still to become the intellectual's darling, the controversial exile, the legend. Life was simple then--like the people. Chaplin was funny and the public laughed. The scholars and students hadn't recognized him as a genius. He was loved as a clown.

Charlie, however, was always impressed with himself--like a small child who has suddenly found a doting audience for his antics. He was quicker than his audience and always ahead of them. I loved going to the movies with him. He would laugh until he cried. Then he would nudge me.

"Wait, Daggie. Wait till you see what's going to happen now!"

When it happened, he would become convulsed. I think I enjoyed watching Charlie watching Charlie more than the movie.

— Dagmar Godowsky, First Person Plural: The Lives Of Dagmar Godowsky, 1958.

Dagmar appeared in 24 films between 1919 & 1926, including The Sainted Devil in which she co-starred with Rudolph Valentino.  She is also among the many celebrities, including Chaplin, to appear in the 1923 film, Souls For Sale.

Charlie with Dagmar's father, pianist/composer Leopold Godowsky, c. 1917.

Photos by Chaplin studio cameraman, Jack Wilson, c. 1920

Annette with her father and Uncle Syd

With boxer Ted Lewis, 1918

These photos were taken in front of the 10-room house that sat on the north-end of the Chaplin studio lot. When Chaplin purchased the property in 1917, this house was included and he had originally thought about living there, instead his half-brothers Sydney Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden each lived in the house for a time, as well as Chaplin’s valet Toraichi Kono. The house was demolished in the 1950s and a Safeway supermarket was built in its place.

"Prominent Among Themselves"

From German film magazine, Revue des Monats, Sept. 1929

THE FLOORWALKER, released May 15th, 1916

Happy Birthday, Oona Chaplin (May 14th, 1925 - September 27th, 1991)

The following is from a 1960 interview with Oona by Frederick Sands:

We met when I was 16, a mere child at the time, and I have been in love with him ever since. He is my world. I've never seen or lived with anything else...It started when I was recommended to him for the part of Bridget in a film Charlie planned to make, based on the play Shadow & Substance. I clutched to the substance and ran away with Charlie to get married instead. He never made the film after that. That was the beginning and the end of my film career...without a second's regret.

Laughter is one of Charlie's great gifts to me. I hadn't known it before. My childhood was not very happy. Today I am perhaps the only member of the family who thinks him really funny. The children are too intent on being funny themselves.

There is certainly no father fixation about my feeling for him. He has made me mature and I keep him young. When you are happy, you don't go in for self-analysis. He has given me a great sense of security and stability, which has nothing to do with his wealth. I could be happy in any other environment.

My security and stability with Charlie stem much for from the difference in years between us. Other young women who have married mature men will understand what I mean. Provided that the partners are suited, such a marriage is founded on a rock. Solid, and with no unpleasant surprises ahead. The man's character is formed, his life shaped. He has learned a sense of responsibility and tolerance.

I never consciously think of Charlie’s age for 364 days of the year. Only his birthday is the annual shock for me.

I consider Charlie young. I also find it most vexing to be called a schoolgirl wife. Maybe I'll be spared that remark now that I am getting some gray streaks in my hair. 

Chaplin, whose rages are notorious, has never lost his temper with his wife. 

Not once in all our years of marriage. I have learned to keep silent and let him charge ahead. Unless he asks me for a criticism I never venture an opinion. He respects my judgement, and jokes about my always being right in the long run when I disagree with him on some point. In all this I try not to get on his nerves. 

Like every couple, the Chaplins take a special delight in occasionally spending a day alone. Then Oona cooks the meal while he prepares drinks for them both and offers "awkward assistance, and flirts with me as though we had just met. 

Then with their heads bent close to each other, they toast their life together. And he makes the woman who never laughed as a child laugh again. 

That is when I know there is no difference in our ages. 

— "Charlie Chaplin's Wife (35) Describes Her Life With A Legend (71)" by Frederick Sands, Washington Post, June 19th, 1960

Charlie at the makeup mirror during the filming of LIMELIGHT

Photos by W. Eugene Smith

   

Charlie & his mother, Hannah

“In spite of the squalor in which we were forced to live, she had kept Sydney and me off the streets and made us feel we were not the ordinary product of poverty, but unique and distinguished.”
—My Autobiography (1964)

A Tony nod for "Chaplin: The Musical"

Rob McClure was nominated for a Tony for his performance as Charlie in Chaplin: The Musical. It was the show's only nomination. I had a chance to watch the musical not too long ago (I won't say how, but it wasn't in person.) I thought the show as a whole was disappointing but I was very impressed with McClure's performance. I'm usually very critical of any Chaplin impersonation but he was able to replicate Charlie's walk and certain mannerisms really well. You can tell he did his homework. Best of luck to him. The awards ceremony is June 9th.

Charlie during the filming of SUNNYSIDE (1918)

Charles/Charlie

Source: Variety magazine supplement, April 2003

Cigarette smoke gag, 1926

This footage can be found on the documentary, Unknown Chaplin. I believe it is an outtake from Ralph Barton's home movie, Camille, from 1926. You can watch the film in its entirety here. If you haven't seen it before, you should check it out--lots of rare footage of Charlie (aka "Mike")-- including the Dance of The Rolls (out of costume).

World Tour Revisited: Juan-les-Pins

Charlie & May sunbathing in Juan-les-Pins. The spot on May's arm looks like armpit hair, although it's a little high up.

Sometime in early May, Charlie & his traveling companion, May Reeves, arrived in Juan-les-Pins, France, where they would remain for most of the summer. At one point, Charlie even considered building a home & a movie studio there.

Not long after he arrived, it was reported in the press that Charlie refused to participate in a command vaudeville performance for the King of England. He immediately denied the allegations saying he had not received a command from the King but a request from a music hall manager asking him to appear in a charity show. He refused, stating it would be in "bad taste" for him to appear on stage & that he had made it a principle not to do so since he became associated with films. Instead he sent a donation of $1,000 ("about as much as I earned in my last two years on the English stage.")

Charlie was irritated by the incident and poured out his feelings to a young man he met on the tennis court in Juan, unaware that he was a reporter:

Europe has misunderstood me, bullied me & misrepresented me to such an extent that, being a moderately rich man, I don't care a hang whether I ever make another film.

They say I have a duty to England. But I wonder what duty? I sometimes think my countrymen are the world's greatest hypocrites. Nobody wanted or cared for me in England 17 years ago. I was just as good an artist then and I slaved and starved for a few shillings weekly.  I had to go to America for my chance and I got it.  Only then did England take the slightest interest in me.

Why are people bothering their heads about me? I am only a movie comedian. They made a politician out of me, a material sort of fellow which I am not.

Charlie went on to vent his feelings on patriotism:

I have been all over Europe in the past few months & patriotism is rampant everywhere. The result is going to be another war. I hope they send the old men to the front the next time because the old men are the real criminals of Europe today.*

Thirty-three years later in his autobiography, Charlie's views on patriotism remained unchanged:

How can one tolerate patriotism when six million Jews were murdered in its name?

Sources:
*Chicago Tribune & The Washington Post, May 11th, 1931

Random Excerpt

He was always fond of people who were not carried away by his name. During my stay with him he had a young lady friend whom he called Hotsy Totsy. It was the only name I had ever heard him give her.

One night he called at her humble home to take her to dinner. As he rang the bell a voice came from upstairs.

"Let him in, Mother."

"Be down in a minute, Charlie," called the girl.

The mother returned to the kitchen, where Chaplin overheard her talking to a man. He remained alone in the "front parlor."

Presently Hotsy Totsy came downstairs.

"Well, I'm all ready for the eats, Kiddo," she said.

After riding for several blocks Chaplin asked, "Did your mother know who I was?"

"Sure, Kiddo," I told her your'd be calling and to let you in. She hardly ever comes in the front room--sits back there and talks to dad. They should worry a lot and build a house about who calls on me! I got 'em trained different."

Hotsy Totsy was long a favorite with the comedian.

— Jim Tully, "The Real Life-Story Of Charlie Chaplin, Part Four," Pictorial Review, April 1927

Tully, right, worked for Chaplin as his publicist in the mid-1920s.

Paulette Goddard greets Charlie at his Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in New York City, April 4th, 1972

The story goes that Paulette approached Charlie & said, “Hello, baby." Whereupon he turned, eyes filled with tears, and said, “Oh, oh! My little baby." And she said, "Yes, your only little baby." (Gilbert, Opposite Attraction)

With Marion Davies, June 4th, 1930

I am officially a 40-something today. Charlie would have been my age in this photo with Marion Davies at the premiere of her film Florodora Girl. Unlike me, Charlie doesn't look a day over 30! (maybe it's the dyed hair).

Charlie at Santa Anita Racetrack, 1935

The footage of Charlie begins around the :36 mark & lasts about 22 seconds. A large group of Canadian Rotarians were also at the track that day and Charlie is seen in the clip wearing one of their hats.

A caption in the video says Charlie is "Age 44." The date of this video is given as "Spring 1935," so Charlie would have been 46, or close to it. His hair also appears to be dyed for the filming of Modern Times.

Charlie Chaplin, Jr. in FANGS OF THE WILD (1954)

Here is a link to watch this film online:

http://viooz.co/movies/17173-fangs-of-the-wild-1954.html

I had never heard Charlie, Jr.'s voice before. He sounds a little like his brother, Sydney. This was his second film (the first was his father's film, Limelight). Charlie plays a man named Roger Wharton, who is accused of killing his best friend.

Happy birthday, Charles Chaplin, Jr. (May 5, 1925 - March 20, 1968)

Charlie, Jr. with his father...

...and with his mother, Lita Grey Chaplin.

Outtake from THE COUNT (1916)

In the final film, Eric Campbell is seated in John Rand’s place, so Charlie doesn’t have to lean across Edna Purviance:

With Margaret Rutherford on the set of A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG

Margaret had a cameo role as the seasick elderly woman, Miss Gaulswallow. It was producer Jerry Epstein who recommended Rutherford for the role but Charlie was hesitant and accused Epstein of only wanting "stars." But Epstein thought Rutherford would be perfect. Charlie finally gave in and agreed to meet with her: 

Charlie, at his most charming, greeted her with open arms. "How nice of you to come. Would you consider playing such a small part for me? It would be such a privilege to have you." Rutherford was completely bowled over: 'It would be a privilege for me to work with you," she said.

.... 

It was now time to shoot Margaret Rutherford's scene. Charlie was embarrassed that her part as a seasick passenger was so small, so he improvised more business. He placed a multitude of colored ribbons on her bed, and every time she looked at the yellow or green ribbons, she'd feel faint and want to retch. She was so funny, she had the whole crew laughing. Poor thing, she was ill at the time, and was delighted that the scene required her to be in bed. 

Oona was always present when we ran Margaret Rutherford's rushes. No matter how often she saw them, she always laughed hysterically. The scene brought the house down in the movie theaters too. And Charlie was most pleased. 

(Photo and excerpt from Remembering Charlie by Jerry Epstein)


You can watch Margaret's scene here:

http://youtu.be/SiD_12kkn4s?t=13m51s

...and here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhjn50CxzEs

You can also watch the entire film on youtube. It's not Charlie's best by any stretch but it's worth viewing, if anything, for the music (composed by Charlie), Patrick Cargill (who is great as Hudson), and to see Charlie's brief cameo as a seasick steward.

Extra note: At the beginning of Miss Gaulswallow's scene, she tells the nurse to take the flowers out of the room because they "take up all the oxygen." Evidently Charlie himself felt the same way about flowers, according to his son, Charlie, Jr. Although he loved them, Charlie never wanted them in his bedroom because he felt they absorbed oxygen.

Close Up

Photo from Chicago Daily News, 1921

Random quote

“When I was young, the idea of an orgy was tremendously exciting. Charlie Chaplin once organized one in Hollywood for me and two Spanish friends, but when the three ravishing young women arrived from Pasadena, they immediately got into a tremendous argument over which one was going to get Chaplin, and in the end all three left in a huff.”

— Luis Buñuel, My Last Breath, 1983. The bungled orgy took place during the summer of 1930 while Buñuel was visiting Chaplin.

L-R: Eduardo Ugarte, Luis Buñuel, Jose Lopez Rubio, Eleanor & Antonio de Lara by the pool at Chaplin's Hollywood home, 1930. source

On the set of SHOULDER ARMS, 1918

Sydney Chaplin is dressed as the Kaiser at far left. He also played the Kaiser in The Bond, a film Chaplin made the same year for the Liberty Bond effort.

Update

My cross-country trip has been postponed until later this month. I am having some problems with one of my eyes and am not seeing very well out of it right now. I am hoping it will be better in a few weeks and we can finally take off. Long story short, I guess I will be hanging around a little while longer.

Jess