January 31, 2014

Footage of Jack Pickford's wedding to Marilyn Miller at Pickfair, 1922




Charlie can be seen around the :35 mark clowning with Mary Pickford and pretending to put a ring on her finger. He can also be seen briefly at the beginning (I think he is the one who closes the door after everyone files out) and end (around :50 mark). Douglas Fairbanks makes an appearance as well.

Charlie & Paulette at the premiere of GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939



Paulette was a top candidate for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind (gossip columnist Louella Parsons had even started referring to her as "Scarlett O'Goddard.") In the early 1950s, Paulette told a friend that she was offered the role of Scarlett at one point but it was taken away from her because she couldn't provide proof that she was married to Chaplin.1 David O. Selznick, the film's producer, seemingly wanted his leading lady to be a "good girl" without scandals to jeopardize the success of his film, but this seems a bit contradictory considering the woman who eventually got the part, Vivien Leigh, was shacking up with Laurence Olivier while they were still married to other people. The more realistic reason Paulette didn't play Scarlett had to do with her contractual obligations to Chaplin. In 1938, Selznick wrote to George Cukor: "Incidentally, the point in her contract, concerning Chaplin's rights, should be straightened out immediately. It might be wise for you to make clear to Goddard that unless this point is straightened out...and unless we get a further extension of the contract to a full seven years, she is not going to play Scarlett."2 In a taped interview late in life, Paulette admitted that the reason she didn't play Scarlett was because "Charlie wouldn't release me from his contract." Goddard biographers Joe Morella and Edward Epstein contend that Paulette's contract contained what was known as the "Chaplin clause," which stated that Paulette could work on any other film as long as it didn't interfere with the production of a Chaplin film.3 Regardless of Chaplin's involvement, they say that the moment Selznick laid eyes on Vivien Leigh it was all over for Paulette anyway--and she knew it: "Selznick took one look and that was that." 4

Paulette's 1937 screen test for Scarlett O'Hara can be seen here. To his credit, Chaplin did make efforts to support Paulette's blossoming career. His friend, actress Constance Collier, was enlisted to work with Paulette, at his request, prior to the screen test.

_________________________________________________________________________________

1 Julie Gilbert, Opposite Attraction. Paulette confided this information to Michael Hall, a former actor, who was a longtime friend and confidante. Another interesting tidbit is that Hall once met William Menzies, the costume designer for Gone With The Wind, who told him that two weeks before production began he pleaded with Selznick to tell him who was going to play Scarlett so he could start making the gowns. Selznick decided then and there that it would be Paulette, so Menzies told his staff to begin making the dresses with Goddard's measurements. A week later he discovered that Vivien Leigh would be playing Scarlett.
2 ibid
3 Morella & Epstein, Paulette: The Adventurous Life Of Paulette Goddard
4 "A Soaking For Success," Charlie Chaplin: The Centenary Celebration, ed. by Peter Haining

Chaplin’s Very First Scene – Now a Jack-in-the-Box

"Assuming they shot Making a Living in sequential order, this marks the very first scene of Chaplin’s entire career. It also means that when the film opened on February 2, 1914, 100 years ago, it was through this scene that movie audiences were first introduced to young Mr. Chaplin. The site is now a driveway to a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant, while the main filming stage remains in use today as a Public Storage warehouse."
Read more: http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/chaplins-very-first-scene-now-a-jack-in-the-box/ 

January 29, 2014

Charlie entertains his friend, writer and critic Maurice Bessy, at his home in Beverly Hills, 1947



Chaplin included a couple of “in jokes” regarding Bessy in Monsieur Verdoux (1947):

A real estate sign in front of Mr. Varnay’s house says “M. BESSY”.


 His name also appears in one of the newspapers Charlie’s reading in the film (see the arrow).




Bessy was also one of the founders of Cinémonde magazine which also appears in the film (in the postman's bag).*
Click here to see a picture of Charlie reading a copy of the magazine during production of the film.


*Thanks to Dominique Dugros for pointing this one out to me. 

THE CENTENARY OF THE LITTLE TRAMP - Tuesday, February 4th, 6:20 pm, BFI Southbank, London

via the Charlie Chaplin Official Facebook page:
This is the launch of David Robinson's fabulous new book on Charlie Chaplin, THE WORLD OF LIMELIGHT, published by the Cineteca di Bologna. David Robinson will make a presentation about the Little Tramp and his new finds, and there will be a few other goodies organised by Bryony Dixon of the BFI and Cecilia Cenciarelli of Cineteca di Bologna.
Click here for more info.

January 28, 2014

Chaplin with novelist Peter B. Kyne and his son, 1919


Kyne's son, Marcel Dupuis-Kyne, was a French orphan whom he brought back to the States after the war and adopted. Marcel said to his father after his visit to the Chaplin Studios: "Father, you have been so nice to me all the time but when you bring me to play with Charlie Chaplin...Oh!...I think you are wonderful." (Photo-Play Journal, July 1919)

January 27, 2014

January 26, 2014

Filmed January 15th-26th, 1914, Chaplin's long-lost short, A THIEF CATCHER

This ten-minute short was only the third film Chaplin made for Keystone, but he had already adopted his Tramp mustache & makeup. Released February 19th, 1914, A Thief Catcher was considered lost for almost 96 years until it was discovered by chance at an antique sale in Michigan in 2010 by film historian Paul Gierucki. Chaplin makes a short 3-minute appearance as a cop in the film which also stars Keystone regulars Ford Sterling & Mack Swain. I had the privilege to be among the first to see this film in nearly a century when A Thief Catcher had a rare screening at the Charlie Chaplin International Conference in Zanesville, OH in October 2010. The plot was typical Keystone, but Charlie was unmistakable. A six-minute excerpt from the film can be seen on the Flicker Alley Chaplin At Keystone set.


Mack Swain, Chaplin, and an unidentified actor.
Edgar Kennedy & Mack Swain are on the left.


January 25, 2014

January 24, 2014

January 23, 2014

January 21, 2014

Random Excerpt

Composite photograph of Chaplin, Upton Sinclair (left) & Egon Erwin Kisch, 1929

From "Working With Charlie Chaplin" by Egon Erwin Kisch:1

"Chaplin? We can stop in on him on the way, if you'd like."
 Of course I'd like; he's one of the righteous  for whose sake America must be spared the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Another of the righteous is the one who's asking me if we want to stop by Chaplin's place. His name is Upton Sinclair.... 
Sinclair stops his car at the corner of Longpré Avenue and La Brea Avenue in front of a small group of red-roofed houses. The last thing you'd take from them was a film studio, since film studios in Hollywood are gigantic walled complexes with iron-barred gates and gatekeepers, and with every gable wall plastered with film posters. Here, however, "Chaplin's Studio" is engraved  on a tiny metal plaque. We go into an office, that is, to a young woman who alternated between answering the phone and taking care of correspondence. We walk past her into a courtyard that really is a courtyard and where film sets are located. Elsewhere it wouldn't be a courtyard, and if it were it would be called "Stage No. 35," entry would be prohibited, and a watchman would be majestically posted in front of it. 
Plaque on Chaplin Studio door.

Two men greet Sinclair. There really was a film being shot, they tell him, and one of them says, "The boss is coming!"
The boss! The old man! The chief! We turn around to the boss. To Charlie Chaplin. Were he at least dressed in the appropriate attire of a boss, a chief, the "old man," he could at any other time--when he is not the boss, chief, or "old man"--be that sad vagabond with the comic routines whom we love so much. But now he approaches in the loose-fitting, mended trousers, the patched up oversized shoes, the disarranged necktie, and the worn-out jacket. He is in fact coming from work; he is a boss who works.
"Hello, Upton," he calls from afar. "Good to see you again!" Sinclair says something about the guest he's brought along. "That's fine," replies Charlie Chaplin in the flesh, and we shake hands. He curses; his work isn't moving ahead. He's shooting a new film, City Lights. But "damn it, we've hit another dead end, and can't go on. You want to help me, boys?"
Yes, we boys want to help Charlie Chaplin. 
He's not entirely the Charlie Chaplin of the movies. It's true he's coming straight from work, or better said, he's no longer playing a role. His hat, that crushed, melon-shaped little hat, is missing, and so too are the bamboo cane and the small black toothbrush under the nose. Besides, his boots are not so overwhelmingly large and not so overwhelmingly funny as they seem on film; they are misshapen, patched-up, torn, somewhat too big, but still ordinary shoes, and only the art of their boss invested them with their cosmic proportions. Now, rushing to the projection room with us, who are supposed to "help" him, his boots are unobtrusive and the boss is anything but flat-footed. He is wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Without them, he can't even sign his own name, he's so farsighted. 
Chaplin & Kisch
From his hair two streams of a fountain of silver cascade over the middle of his brow. Even the hair growing on his neck is gray, where it's growing out.  ("You ought to have it cut, Charlie," I said to him cautiously a few days later. But he makes no secret of his dyed hair. "You see, I'm not bothering with it anymore. What gets white isn't going to be colored anymore. That's the end of it. At forty, I'll be entirely white again, the way I was at thirty-five." "And what is your wife doing now?" "I don't know," he remarks with a gesture of indifference," but I've got two children, and they're both with her.")
Now we're in the projection room. While the reel is being loaded, Charlie Chaplin plays the song "Violetara" on the harmonium and sings Spanish words to it that he makes up. Then he invites me to come to his house, where he'll play the organ for me till my eyes and ears give way. "Eh, Jungens?"2
The Jungens confirm, as the boss wishes, that he indeed has a powerful organ at home that he knows how to play in an ear-shattering way, whether his visitor likes it or not. 
"I play fantastically well," laughs Chaplin. "But you don't know crap about my music."
The Jungens, who by the way, address the boss as "Charlie," are in fact two men named Harry Crocker and Henry Clive.3 Harry Crocker is a young American with a sweater and a sense of humor. In Circus he played the tightrope dancer in evening dress and Charlie's lucky rival; also the clown that Charlie lathers up and other roles as well. Henry Clive is older, forty-eight, and has a serious career as a magician in American provincial variety shows behind him. The third of the Jungens is calls Heinrich, much like the other two (Harry, Henry), but isn't here today, but that's an exception. We're not going to have any further visit to Chaplin's studio without Mister Henry Bergman sitting, pot-bellied and broad-gauged, in an appropriate chair. At night Bergman-ur4 (as we prefer to call him, since he's a real Magyar) is himself a boss, the owner of a Hollywood Boulevard restaurant for the prominent and those who want to see them. Chaplin made the restauranteur Henry and also endows him with a regular evening visit, for which Bergman-ur returns the favor by visiting Chaplin every day. 
Besides the harmonium, a black leather armchair and four wooden easy chairs make up the furnishings of the projection room. Chaplin insists on my taking the armchair, but seems very pleased when I decline. He squats on it with legs folded; it must be his usual place. 
And now we're going to let the film roll. For the moment, only a quarter of it is ready, four hundred feet, some of which will be reshot and some cut. The film starts. 
I burst out laughing at the place with the watch chain. But someone puts his hand on my knee and tells me to be quiet. Who is it who disputes my natural right to laugh madly at one of Charlie Chaplin's mad moments? It's none other than Charlie Chaplin, and he's sitting right next to me. The film isn't ready yet, and since we're supposed to "help," my laughter is out of place, just as when poor Charlie laughs in Circus when he's supposed to be learning the clown's jokes. 
"Terrific," we whisper, after this section of film has been run through and the lights in the projection room come on. 
The boss parries: "Can you tell me what you just saw?" 
Of course. With pleasure. A girl is selling flowers on a street corner. Then Chaplin comes along....
"Oh, not yet."
First a man comes accompanied by his wife and buys a flower. 
"A man? What man?"
A man who looks a little like Adolphe Menjou. 
"Yes, an elegant gentleman with a lady. That's important. What else?"
Then Chaplin rounds the corner. He sees a fountain on the wall and takes off his gloves in order to have a drink. That is, not the gloves all at once, but one finger at a time. One finger is missing, and Charlie looks for it without success. 
"See, Charlie!" shouts Harry Crocker triumphantly. 
"No, it's not clear. "We'll shoot it all over again..."
Now Charlie takes the drinking glass in front of the wall...
"Did you recognize what I represent?"
???
"Am I not this time something different from before?"
Yes, you have a small bow tie and the gloves. This time you want to be a rather foppish tramp, isn't that so? The business with the cup indicates the same thing. 
"Would you please explain that too?"
Chaplin takes the cup that's hanging on the chain. As the chain comes to rest on his stomach, Chaplin notices that it would make a splendid watch chain  and tries to free it from the wall while he drinks. But he fails and, in resignation, waddles over to the flower girl. She offers...
"Stop, stop. There's something else going on."
Chaplin looks at me piercingly, anxiously, almost imploringly. "There's something else going on."
No, I absolutely can't recall anything else in that scene.
"A car comes, don't you see?"
Yes, a car comes. A man emerges from it and goes over to Chaplin. Chaplin greets him as usual.
"And what is the car doing?"
"I don't know," I confess. 
And Upton Sinclair ventures: "I think it's going away." 
"Damn, damn," Chaplin mutters, "the whole thing is ruined." His colleagues are also depressed. 
I relate what else happens. The girl hands Chaplin a flower, it falls to the ground, both bend over to retrieve it, Chaplin picks the flower up, but the girls continues to look for it despite that fact that he holds it out to her. Then he realizes the girl is blind. He buys the flower and goes on his way. 
In order to convince himself that he wasn't wrong, he sneaks back again...
"No, no, he doesn't sneak."
He returns the second time very quickly, as if hurrying by, but draws to a halt while gradually muffling the sound of his steps. Then he turns around, slowly, on tiptoe and sits down next to the girl. But she had just sprinkled the flowers and empties the bucket--right in Chaplin's face. He creeps away and then comes back a third time. And again buys a flower. The blind girl wants to pin it on him and in doing so feels the flower he bought before in his buttonhole. She understands that the man has come back because of her. Chaplin explains to her that his other buttonhole is free, but she insists that a person can't wear flowers in both buttonholes. Then he asks her to keep the flower. She fastens it to her bosom....
"...and..."
...she's in love!
"With whom?"
With Chaplin!
"Damn, damn!"
??
"Doesn't anyone pass by?"
Not that I know. 
"Damn, damn! You mean to say you still don't notice a car and a man?"
No
"And you, Upton?"
Didn't notice a thing. 
Despairing, Chaplin buries his head in his hands, a picture of abject misery against a black leather background. His colleagues are also sad. But what happened? What are they all so upset over if I, a stranger who just dropped by, doesn't get the gag?
Oh, but it's more than a gag; it's the basic idea of the film that's fallen flat because it's absolutely  unclear--my summary means nothing less. 
_________________________________________________________________________________

1 This version of the article is from Egon Erwin Kisch: The Raging Reporter: A Bio-Anthology (ed. by Harold B. Segel, Purdue Univ. Press, 1997). A slightly edited version of the article originally appeared in the October 15th, 1929 issue of The Living Age.
2 "Jungens" is German for "boys."
3 Henry Clive was originally cast as the millionaire but was fired when he balked at doing the suicide scene complaining that the water was too cold. He was replaced by Harry Myers.
4 Ur in Hungarian, placed after the name, means "mister."

January 20, 2014

Rare audio of Charlie delivering the final speech from The Great Dictator at the third inaugural ball of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, January 19th, 1941



Halfway through the speech Charlie’s throat gets dry & begins to crack (probably from nerves) and he pauses and asks for water. In his autobiography, Charlie recalled that a glass could not be found, so water was brought to him in an envelope.1

Charlie & Mickey Rooney, who also performed, talk to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
 at the inaugural gala which was held the evening before  the swearing-in ceremony
 (which Charlie also attended). 

1 Contemporary newspaper articles (as well as the announcer in the clip) say that master of ceremonies, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., brought Charlie a "glass" of water.

January 19, 2014

January 18, 2014

Cary Grant greeting Chaplin in 1972


Grant first encountered Chaplin when he saw the Fred Karno troupe perform in England as a young boy. He was also briefly married to the blind girl from City Lights, Virginia Cherrill. In 1953, a few months after Chaplin's reentry permit was revoked by the U.S. government, Grant held a press conference to announce his retirement. He used this opportunity to speak out publicly in defense of Chaplin, his idol: "He has given great pleasure to millions of people, and I hope he returns to Hollywood. Personally, I don’t think he is a Communist, but whatever his political affiliations, they are secondary to the fact that he is a great entertainer. We should not go off the deep end."

January 17, 2014

Thanks to "JustMe" for my little packet of goodies from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival last weekend. Sounds like a great time was had by all. I wish I could have been there. 

The program was written by Jeffrey Vance, who also introduced the films, which included The Kid & The Gold Rush with live accompaniment by the SF Chamber Orchestra conducted by Timothy Brock. There was also a showing of Kid Auto Races At Venice as well as some Mutuals. It's hard to see the button on the left because of the flash, but it has Charlie and Edna on it. I love the mask!

Thanks again, JM!




January 16, 2014

January 15, 2014

Charlie, Edna Purviance, & Emery Rogers, 1919

Rogers was vice president of the Syd Chaplin Aircraft Corporation which provided the first airline service between Los Angeles and Catalina Island. Edna was the honored guest at the inaugural flight in July 1919 and christened one of the seaplanes by breaking a bottle of grape juice on it. She then accompanied Rogers and another pilot on the flight to Catalina.

January 14, 2014

"The Chaplin Coat Of Arms"

This sketch was drawn by Chaplin in 1935 when working on the score for Modern Times and presented to his musical assistant David Raksin.


From "Life With Charlie Chaplin" by David Raksin,
 Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Summer 1983

January 13, 2014

January 12, 2014

Chicago, January 12th, 1927

Charlie was en route to New York to meet with his lawyer about his former press agent Jim Tully's Pictorial Review articles which he had tried (unsuccessfully) to keep from getting published. The day after he left California by train, Lita Grey filed her famous, 42-page divorce complaint. At a stop in Chicago, Chaplin was met by a throng of reporters at the train station.  When asked about the case, Chaplin said: "It's terrible, too terrible for words." He went on to say that Lita had "defiled" his reputation and that he planned to contest the divorce and file a cross bill. One reporter asked him about his children. "I have two wonderful children," he said. "They are very different temperaments, one being very musical, the other more serious." "Which is your favorite?" he was asked. "Well, the baby is the baby," he replied, "and all babies are marvelous."* 



*Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1927

January 11, 2014

World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Out and About in St. Moritz, Switzerland, c. January 1932

Charlie:

Charlie dancing with toilet paper.

May Reeves*:




With friends:

Charlie and May with airplane manufacturer, Anthony Fokker.
Reeves later recalled that the two men performed "a comic sketch:
two monkeys scratching themselves constantly, looking for fleas and eating them."  
Chaplin with car manufacturer, Andre Citroen.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*According to Reeves'  memoir, she became pregnant in St. Moritz. Not surprisingly, Chaplin was less than thrilled with the news. Shortly after their separation in March, May had a miscarriage which she claims was induced by Chaplin when he forced her to go on a long skiing expedition. I have always found this story a bit hard to believe. Even if Chaplin was displeased about May's pregnancy (if she was pregnant at all), a skiing expedition was hardly a plausible strategy for inducing a miscarriage, especially at this very early stage in her pregnancy.
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