Chaplin -- "a singer of the first order"

British journalist Kathlyn Hayden describes watching Chaplin burst into song during a break on the set of City Lights:

❝In the flesh there is little of the pathos about Charlie. He is essentially the comedian. For instance, during one of the usual interminable waits while the electricians were charging the lights Charlie ordered the radio turned on. (It seems he always has a loud speaker on the set--to amuse him during the waits.) The stage was suddenly flooded with the glorious voice of Lawrence Tibbett--a gramophone recording of one of his numbers from 'The Rogue Song.'

Chaplin puts a record on the gramophone.
Behind him are (L-R): Ralph Barton, Virginia Cherrill, Allan Garcia, & Carlyle Robinson.
 At far left in the white coat (partially cut off) might be Granville Redmond.

❝Instantly Charlie sprang to his feet, struck a theatrical posture, and began to sing the song himself. As he imitated Tibbett he was pricelessly funny, capturing all of the grand opera star's mannerisms.¹ But that wasn't all. The Chaplin singing voice is wonderful. The little fellow amazed me with his robustness of his middle register. And when Tibbett took the high notes Charlie was with him! Perhaps I am prejudiced, and I don't profess to be a music critic, but so far as I am concerned there is nothing to between Tibbett and Chaplin--as singers. 

But of course it would never do for the pathetic little tramp of the funny shoes and bowler to burst into song--in character.² The Chaplin of the films couldn't do such a thing. Yet if only once he might consent to play a different role, I am sure he could win new laurels--as a singer of the first order.❞  

("A Day With Charlie," Picture Show, April 4th, 1931)

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Note: I'm not sure if the above photos are from the same performance Ms. Hayden witnessed. 

¹ One of Chaplin's favorite "turns" at private gatherings was to imitate opera singers. A couple of his favorites were Feodor Chaliapin and John McCormack. At one such party, Screenland's "Liza" noted that Chaplin sang Mother Machree & When Irish Eyes Are Smiling "in as good an Irish tenor as you can find in Hollywood." (Screenland, January 1941)

² Little did they realize in 1931 that Chaplin would "burst into song" in his next film, Modern Times,--and it would be the first time audiences would hear the Tramp's voice.

Jean Harlow in CITY LIGHTS

Although Jean is not in the final film, you can see her in this posed still from the nightclub scene (far left in the top photo). She and her mother were hired to be extras in this scene. According to his press agent, Carlyle Robinson, Chaplin was evidently quite taken with the blonde bombshell:

While City Lights was in the making, Charlie became interested in a young woman, an extra. The peculiar color of her hair attracted him. She was provocatively alluring. 

At the same table at which this extra girl was seated was an older woman. I learned they were mother and daughter. He instructed me to have the older woman promoted! She should play the bit of the indignant matron who sits upon the burning cigar in that sequence. It was only when he discovered that the woman had her hair cut in a boyish bob that he changed his mind. 

At the time I made a note that the name of the mother and daughter was Pope*--a Mrs. Pope and Jean Pope. Later I discovered that the girl had blossomed forth--in Hell's Angels - as Jean Harlow! The mother was now Mrs. Marino Bello. (Carlyle Robinson, "The Private Life Of Charlie Chaplin," Liberty, Winter 1972)

*Instead of Pope, Robinson may have meant Poe, Jean's mother's middle name. 

Chaplin with Spanish screenwriter/director Edgar Neville on the set of City Lights, 1929

When Neville came to Hollywood from Madrid in 1929, he quickly became part of Chaplin's inner circle and spent a great deal of time on the set of City Lights. He even had a small part in the film as a policeman which was later cut.

Photos © Roy Export SAS.

Cover of TIME magazine, Feb. 9th, 1931

The following is from the magazine's cover story about Charlie's latest film, City Lights (note the cover photo is from The Circus):

"Hollywood is volatile, jealous and perhaps sinful. But it is intensely loyal to the little man whom it used to call Charlie before the wide world called him Charlot, Carlos, Cha-pu-rin and as many more variations as there are languages. Had City Lights been a failure, Hollywood would have been personally and bitterly depressed. But Hollywood was not depressed. Neither was it frightened. For though City Lights is a successful silent challenge to the talkies, its success derives solely from the little man with the battered hat, bamboo cane and black mustache. Critics agree that he, whose posterior would probably be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other man's face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television."

Los Angeles premiere of CITY LIGHTS, January 30th, 1931

City Lights premiered at the newly constructed Los Angeles Theater. Charlie's guests that evening were Albert Einstein and his wife, Elsa. He recalled that the professor "laughed like a boy" and would nudge him and exclaim, "Ach, das ist wunderbar! Das ist schön!" ¹ During the emotional last scene he  caught a glimpse of the great Einstein wiping his eyes and later noted that it was "further evidence that scientists are incurable sentimentalists." ²

With Einstein at the premiere.

The new Los Angeles Theater boasted a restaurant, art gallery, "crying room" for mothers,
shoeshine parlor, ballroom, etc. Halfway through the premiere, the management thought it was a
good idea to stop the film, flip on the lights, and have a voice over the loudspeaker describe the theater's
fabulous features. Chaplin was furious and went looking for the "son of a bitch manager."
The crowd was with him and began stamping their feet, applauding, and eventually booing
until the lights went off and the film restarted. (MA, pg. 330)

 Chaplin was understandably nervous about the opening. He was releasing a silent film three years after talking pictures had taken over Hollywood. He worried that the film was a mistake and the audience would be disappointed. "However, I must walk the plank," he wrote in 1933, "and accept what the gods have in store for me. When the first laugh comes what music it will be to my anxious ears." ³ Georgia Hale,⁴ Chaplin's date that evening, witnessed this anxiety firsthand on the way to the theater: "The closer it came to the time of the showing, the more apprehensive Mr. Chaplin became. He whispered something he'd never admit only under duress. 'I'm worried. I have an awful feeling the film isn't going to be received well...I don't care about being popular, wanting acclaim...but I do. I do care...I must have it...the applause of people. I love it...I live on it. But I'm afraid tonight.'" When the picture was only a quarter over, Georgia could tell that Charlie's fears were diminished and he was relaxed. "The audience was once again in the palm of his hand and he knew it." ⁵

City Lights is not only a favorite film among fans, but it was also a favorite of Chaplin himself. In 1966, he told Richard Meryman: "I think I like City Lights the best of all my films." ⁶

Einstein and his wife are on either side of Chaplin. Georgia Hale is at far right.
Among the famous names who attended the premiere were King Vidor, Gloria Swanson,
Constance Bennett, Marion Davies, Thelma Todd, Claire Windsor, John Barrymore,
 Merna Kennedy, Dolores Del Rio, and Gary Cooper.

*As a side note, I'd like to clear up some confusion surrounding a quote that is often associated with the premiere of this film. Chaplin is generally misquoted as saying to the professor as the onlookers cheered them: "They applaud me because everyone understands me, they applaud you because nobody understands you." Not only is the wording of this quote wrong but it did not take place at the City Lights premiere & can be attributed to neither Chaplin nor Einstein. The real quote and the story behind it can be traced to Chaplin's 1933 travelogue "A Comedian Sees The World." In it,  he describes a visit with Einstein at his apartment in Berlin in March 1931. During tea, Einstein's son made an observation on the psychology of the popularity of both Einstein and Chaplin: "You are popular because you are understood by the masses. On the other hand, the professor's popularity with the masses is because he is not understood." There you have it.

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¹Translation: "Oh, that's wonderful! It's beautiful!"; Charles Chaplin, A Comedian Sees The World, Part 1, Sept. 1933
²Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, 1964
³Chaplin, A Comedian Sees The World, Part 1, Sept. 1933
⁴Hale was Chaplin's leading lady in The Gold Rush (1925) & his constant companion between 1929 and the time of the City Lights premiere. When Chaplin fired Virginia Cherrill from City Lights in November 1929, he briefly thought of replacing her with Georgia (her screen test still exists). However Chaplin soon realized it would be too costly to reshoot everything with Hale so he rehired Cherrill.
⁵Georgia Hale, Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-ups, 1995
⁶"Chaplin: An Interview by Richard Meryman," Life, March 10, 1967.

Footage of Winston Churchill's visit to the set of CITY LIGHTS, September 24th, 1929

A few days after his visit with Chaplin, Mr. Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine: 

"We made gt friends with Charlie Chaplin. You cd not help liking him. The boys were fascinated by him. He is a marvellous comedian - bolshy in politics - delightful in conversation. He acted his new film for us in a wonderful way. It is to be his gt attempt to prove that the silent drama or pantomime is superior to the new talkies. Certainly if pathos & wit still count for anything it is out to win an easy victory." (www.loc.gov)

Besides CC and Churchill, others in the footage include (L-R):
Chaplin's studio manager Alf Reeves, Churchill's son, Randolph, Churchill's brother, John,
his son, John, Jr., and Chaplin's friend, Ambassador Moore (note his photobomb at :54).

Chaplin with former Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Mihály Károlyi, on the set of CITY LIGHTS, c. 1929

CITY LIGHTS set visit

Charlie is at far right. Other familiar faces include: Henry Bergman (far left, in the back), Virginia Cherrill, Douglas Fairbanks, & Toraichi Kono (behind Doug). That might be Alf Reeves behind Charlie (in the hat) but it's hard to tell.

Photo credit: Charles Chaplin In Japan by Ono Hiroyuki

Still shots of Chaplin in costume as the wealthy prince the blind girl imagines as her benefactor--a rejected idea for CITY LIGHTS

Click here to see footage of Chaplin in a costume test as the dream prince.

Photos ©Roy Export SAS

Charlie with sister-in-law, Minnie, on the set of CITY LIGHTS, c. 1930

Minnie Gilbert Chaplin, a former Fred Karno Company performer, was the first wife of Charlie's half-brother, Sydney (although there is no legal record of their marriage). She appeared in five of Sydney's Keystone films and makes a brief appearance in one of the dancehall scenes in A Dog's Life. She died of cancer in 1936.

Publicity photo for CITY LIGHTS

...with a photo from The Circus.

Note Charlie's unevenly dyed hair.

Chaplin with his friend, cartoonist Ralph Barton, on the set of CITY LIGHTS

 

In the early 1910s, Barton was roommates in New York City with (another favorite of mine) actor William Powell. 

Chaplin with Albert Einstein at the Hollywood premiere of City Lights, 1931

Chaplin & his crew on the set of CITY LIGHTS, c. 1930

Charlie is in costume except that he has replaced his bowler hat with a straw hat.

Other familiar faces include: cameraman Rollie Totheroh (far left), press agent
Carlyle Robinson (in the middle wearing glasses) and I believe that's
Allan Garcia (who plays the millionaire's butler) behind Charlie (4th from left).

Costume test showing Charlie as the wealthy duke that the blind girl in City Lights envisions as her benefactor

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. 

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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."

Chaplin with his friend, Ambassador Alexander Moore, on the set of City Lights, c.1929

Behind-the-scenes footage of Chaplin directing City Lights

Filmed c.1929 by Chaplin's friend, Ralph Barton, this footage not only shows Chaplin directing one of his most famous and beloved films, but it also shows us a side of his personality that we don't normally see. For instance, in one scene we see him vent his frustrations on his Asst. Director Harry Crocker (who was later fired from the production), in others we see him spitting, chewing gum, and looking annoyed and preoccupied. All the while, he is dressed in his Tramp outfit, although he's not acting very Tramp-like. Additionally, there is some great footage of the Chaplin studio grounds, fellow cast and crew members, and a cute clip of Charlie clowning in front of the camera.

Czech writer & journalist Egon Erwin Kisch visits the set of CITY LIGHTS, 1929

Following his visit, Kisch wrote an article entitled “I Work With Charlie Chaplin." In it, he describes Chaplin agonizing over a way to show how the flower girl comes to believe Charlie is a millionaire. Chaplin acted out some of his ideas for Kisch, but the journalist did not understand the gag. Kisch wrote: “Why is it so terrible if a foreigner, passing through town, does not understand one of his gags? But it is much more than a gag. It is the fundamental idea of the film."