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| Chaplin & Raquel Meller on the set of The Circus, 1926 |
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| France, 1931. Charlie & Raquel are on the left. May Reeves is on the right. |
Butte boasted of having the prettiest women of any red-light district in the West, and it was true. If one saw a pretty girl smartly dressed, one could rest assured she was from the red-light quarter, doing her shopping. Off duty, they looked neither right nor left and were most respectable.
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| Source: Linda Wada @ Edna Purviance--Chaplin's Leading Lady |
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| Saturday Evening Post, November 6th, 1948 |
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| Washington Post, May 11th, 1927 |
Thinking of the cane was perhaps the best piece of luck I ever had. One reason is that the cane places me, in the minds of the audience, more quickly than anything else could. The other is that I have developed the cane until it has almost a comedy sense of its own. Often, I find it curling itself around someone’s leg, or rapping someone on the shoulder and getting a laugh from the audience almost without my knowing that I was directing its action….--Charlie Chaplin, "What People Laugh At," American Magazine, November 1918
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| Drawing of Charlie by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld for his New York Times article "A Man With Both Feet In The Clouds" published July 26, 1942 |
On discovering his anonymity he decided to carry out an experiment. It was then I realized that the mustache, baggy pants and oversized shoes were of no more importance to Chaplin than the type of quill used by Shakespeare or the frame on any great painting. The pith helmet he carried with him would and did serve just as well for this research in laughter.
His audience was composed of seven house boys who worked for me...These were the unwitting spectators of Chaplin's magical performance. He proceeded to put the pith helmet on his head and it sprang crazily into the air with a will of its own. Undaunted and with a wonderful look of nonchalance he tried it again...The natives howled with laughter, thinking his hat to be possessed of demoniacal powers. When the simplicity of the trick was exposed to them they tried desperately amid great hilarity to snap their turbans in the same way. That was the experiment. He had wanted to see if the natives would laugh at his pantomime...That was his first day in Bali and he had earned himself the descriptive title of "funny man."Ten years later, Hirschfeld visited Hollywood and tried, unsuccessfully at first, to contact Charlie. In the 1942 article he described what happened next:
I had just about given up the idea of seeing him when Tim Durant, Chaplin's closest friend and companion, informed a friend of Durant's and mine that Charlie was "dying to see me." I had previously phoned his house twice a day since my arrival only to be told by his secretary that "Mr. Chaplin has just this minute stepped out." So with some suspicion I drove to his Summit Drive home and rang the bell in great trepidation. A man servant appeared and I asked to see Mr. Chaplin. He did not ask my name or business but merely said, "I have no idea where he is at the moment but you may find him asleep somewhere on the grounds."
Being unfamiliar with the terrain I set out on this peculiar adventure. I had not far to go. In a hammock alongside the swimming pool was the great man curled up asleep. Near by were some orange peels and on his chin were further evidences of a recent snack. He awoke on my approach and bounded up to greet me. We talked of many things. He was in great form.
I don't remember what he said. He was dancing, laughing and being the greatest pantomimist I had ever seen. White hair, honest blue eyes, a laugh more eloquent than any prose. Young in a way that few youths have ever been. Old with a rare dignity. I watched this man who dares to be simple, as fascinated and amused as the first time I saw him in the movies. He talks and thinks pictorially, knowing every second how he looks and not caring what he says. To listen is to lose everything. He uses words for the same purpose as a magician. He plays tennis with his left hand and writes with his right....
Chaplin has exploited to the full his endowed talents. He trusts and never underrates his genius. He will sometimes do nothing for months, waiting for the custard pie of creation to smack him. He is a man with both feet firmly planted in the clouds.
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| Photoplay, August 1916 |
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| Charlie, Jr. remembered his father once saying: "I love this house. I'd never live anywhere else but right here." |
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| The article says: "Here dinner is served at 8 p.m., the fashionable hour." |
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| Photos of Charlie, from a 1952 issue of Illustrated magazine, sitting on the steps and standing behind the gong can be seen here and here. |
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| According to the article, on the mantle, facing Charlie's bed, are "four smiling photographs" of Georgia Hale, his constant companion at the time. "One of those new electric belt exercisers" stands near one of the windows. I see a phone on the table next to his bed. He also kept a dictaphone nearby to record ideas that came to him during the night. Ms. Whitaker observes only one bed, but Charlie, Jr. noted that there were two three-quarter beds in his father's bedroom. |
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| Charlie's son said that his father not only liked to look at the stars with the telescope, but also his neighbors. A few more interesting notes from the article about Charlie: he wore pale green silk pajamas, as well as B.V.D.s (a brand of men's underwear). He also hates to rise before noon. "People are so uninteresting before lunch," says Charlie. |
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| Lita Grey Chaplin remembered that Charlie's jade collection, "most of them nude figurines," were scattered throughout the living room. His son recalled that the living room also contained an indiscriminate assortment of furniture, including pieces his father bought for his apartments when he first moved to Los Angeles. "After he built his own place he just moved everything he possessed into it. He could never bring himself to part with anything he owned". Charlie's press agent, Jim Tully, once observed that the colors in Charlie's living room represent his "Gipsy taste." The color scheme boasts "a mixture of reds, green, blues, and yellows, regardless of all conventional opinions on color-harmony." |
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| Charlie playing the organ, unknown date, probably late 1920s. Charlie once played the organ for David Raksin, musical arranger for Modern Times. "Had I not been a musician, he might have been less intimidated, but he did play a little just to let me know that he had a real no-kidding organ in his house and it was sort of fun." |
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| Lita Grey Chaplin at the organ, c. 1927 |
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| Mabel Normand, Chester & Phyllis Allen in Gentlemen Of Nerve (1914). I love to watch Phyllis & Chester flirting in this scene. |
