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.

"A genius if ever there was one."

With Baroness Ravensdale at the Chaplin Studios, Oct. 1926

One of my favorite things to read, and what I spend a great deal of time searching for, are impressions of Chaplin by people who met him or knew him. I recently came upon one such impression, an obscure one, written by Baroness Ravensdale (aka Mary Irene Curzon), who visited Hollywood in the Fall of 1926, and met Chaplin via their mutual friend, Elinor Glyn. The Baroness wrote about her Hollywood experience, including her visits with Chaplin, years later in her 1953 memoir, In Many Rhythms. Here is an excerpt:

❝The Hollywood rhythm, which I came to next, held a series of motions by which certain of the stars would be known a mile off. My dear friend, Elinor Glyn, opened every door for me in that fantastic, faked world, where everyone on or off the 'set' seemed to have to play a part from dawn to dusk. Charlie Chaplin, with his wife, Lita Grey, gave me a fabulous dinner party, where to my immense bewilderment all the great cinema stars, husbands and wives, sat side by side. Perhaps this was desirable, as some of the unions lasted such a short time that one forgot which was the last wife or husband seen in public. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were so regal I felt I should curtsy to them. They spoke only of royalty, of their five days in Russia and of Mussolini, and how he, Douglas Fairbanks, enthused thousands of Italians for Mussolini in a speech he made in public. All this went on whilst he and Mary held hands at the dinner-table.

 Afterwards Charlie showed us his great film, A Woman of Paris, with Edna Purviance as the star. In that film he shot one scene a hundred and one times, and went back finally to the original. When I watched him rehearsing The Circus with Harry Crocker and Merna Kennedy, I saw him shoot one small scene forty-seven times in the afternoon. He interpreted both roles again and again for those two, portraying every emotion and reaction of their pathetic little love scene that only lasted a few moments. I said to him at the end of hours that I could not see that the two actors were much improved by the forty-seventh shot, and that anyhow the audience would be no wiser about this terrific amount of work he put into producing his films. He replied that until his conscience told him a scene was as near perfection as possible, he had to go on, even to seventy times seven. That no doubt accounts for the exquisite artistry in every picture he has ever produced. ...

Wondrous parties were given for me at which Charlie Chaplin did charades, or led a follow-my-leader round the room, pursued by the dance band and a motley of film stars doing every known antic and stunt. Bebe Daniels's beach house was full of gay, carefree stars, the flowerlike Virginia Vallee, Dick Barthelmess, William Powell, Beatrice Lillie, Harry Crocker, the Harold Lloyds, the Gish sisters and many more.

Chaplin, the Baroness, and Harry Crocker

❝At Charlie Chaplin's house one day he had just returned from the set with all his makeup on – a mass of us played baseball. Never have I seen such lovely bodies in such scanty bathing dresses, rushing round the lawn. Charlie Chaplin was always a mixture of utter enchantment, brilliancy, wit and humour, suddenly becoming very argumentative and serious over the control of mind over matter, or some such profundity — a genius if ever there was one. In discussing once with Fritz Kreisler, the great violinist, Charlie Chaplin's rudeness in keeping the Duke of Connaught waiting, he said to me, 'Yes, I know, but first in life is love, then after its tragedies, laughter, and we must bow to him whatever his faults, forgiving him that.' He then added a most significant remark on Russia, There you have a wild beast over the walls, and we only fight amongst ourselves, instead of producing a united front.' His words are as true today.

Marion Davies gave me a big dinner, when all the stars afterwards had to take a name out of a hat and act the part. Lita Grey had to play Mary Pickford, Sam Goldwyn Mr. Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies Mae Murray, and Lilian Gish with Jack Gilbert, Rudolph and Mimi out of La Bohéme. Jack Gilbert had also to act Ethel Barrymore.

I was intensely amused also at Elinor Glyn's party for me; a certain word crept in in the replies, 'So-and-so is going with So-and-so.' That meant on pain of death you asked So-and-so together, and sat them together; otherwise the evening was a shambles of jealousy.

Many of these people were simple and unostentatious, in spite of their vast fortunes. Tom Mix amongst his horses, showing me his ranch, was the simple cowboy again, though he had a super green car a mile long. He and I and Charlie Chaplin had a fierce argument on Patriotism, one night. Charlie had none, Mix had it strongly. Charlie contended England had done nothing for him. America had made him. Why should he have gone back and fought for England in the First World War? He added that he would certainly have been shot in the back, running away from a trench! It was better to make people laugh and forget their tears with his films. I murmured that Fritz Kreisler had fought in Austria and been wounded in the arm — it had no effect.❞

--Baroness Mary Irene Curzon Ravensdale, In Many Rhythms, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953

Chaplin As Christ

In 1924, Chaplin invited four owners of his former distributor, First National, which had recently become a producing company, to his studio for lunch. Colleen Moore, one of the company's rising stars, came along:

When we arrived, Charlie ushered us into his studio living room. On one wall was a large bay window, the bright California sunshine streaming through. It was a beautiful day.

We were all sitting there chatting, waiting for lunch to be served, when Charlie stood up and, turning to Robert Leiber, the president of First National, said, 'I hear you've bought Papini's Life Of Christ.'

Mr. Leiber nodded.

Charlie nodded, too. 'I want to play the role of Jesus.'

If Charlie had bopped Mr. Leiber over the head with a baseball bat, he couldn't have received a more stunned reaction. Not just from Mr. Leiber. From all four of them. They sat there like figures in waxworks. Even their faces had turned sort of waxy yellow.

'I'm a logical choice,' Charlie went on. 'I look the part. I'm a Jew. And I'm a comedian.'

The bosses looked more stunned, if possible, than before.

Colleen Moore & Chaplin in 1922 (Both photos by James Abbe)

Charlie explained to them that good comedy was only a hairline away from good tragedy, which we all knew to be true. 'And I'm an atheist,' he added, 'so I'd be able to look at the character objectively. Who else could do that?' ¹

They had no answer for him.

He stretched his arms high over his head, his fists clenched, and in a blood-curdling tone of voice screamed, "There is no God! If there is one, I dare Him to strike me dead!' ²

The five of us sat there chilled and tense, holding our breath, but nothing happened, not even one small clap of thunder. The California sun shone outside, the chirp of birds came through the window, and I suppose God was in his Heaven, and all was right with the world--all but for five very shaken people in the Chaplin studio.

There was silence in the car going back until Richard Rowland said, 'He's the greatest actor alive, and he'd give an historical performance, but who of you would have the nerve to put in lights on a theater marquee: Charlie Chaplin in The Life Of Christ?'

Mr. Leiber said wistfully, 'It would be the greatest religious picture ever made, but I'd be run out of Indianapolis.'

Mary Pickford later told me that one time she and Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie were sitting around the swimming pool at Pickfair when Charlie, who couldn't swim, got up and jumped into the pool with all his clothes on, screaming, 'I am an atheist! If there is a God, let him save me!'

He was gurgling and going down for the third time when Douglas, also fully dressed, jumped in and pulled him out. Mary, meanwhile, was running around the pool shouting, 'Let the heathen drown!' ³  (Colleen Moore, Silent Star, 1968)

*******

¹Chaplin told Harry Carr in 1925 that "no adequate performance--no representation either in literature or on the stage has ever been given to Christ. Chaplin said that his conception of Christ is different from the usual pious, solemn, sad-eyed figure on the stage." Chaplin told him: "Christ was evidently a man of the utmost charm, with humor. You read of him in the Bible as a dinner guest at the houses of the rich and poor--and an honored guest. He was what we call a mixer--yet He was always alone. He tried to give His message to the world, and nobody understood Him. That is the supreme tragedy." (Carr, "Chaplin Explains Chaplin," Motion Picture, Nov. 1925)

²In London in 1921, Chaplin put on a similar stunt at a party with Edward Knoblock and others during a thunderstorm. He stood at an open window and dared God to strike him dead. At the next flash of lightning he fell to the floor and appeared lifeless, and was carried into the next room. Some minutes later, he came out draped in a sheet with pillowcases on each arm for wings, to end his little stunt. (Theodore Huff, Charlie Chaplin, 1952)

³This must have been a practical joke since Chaplin was a good swimmer his entire life.

"I always knew I was a poet"

When Garson Kanin was a young production assistant at Samuel Goldwyn's studio in 1937 he would spend his off hours screening films from the Goldwyn library. After several months he felt he had become "an expert on the oeuvre of Samuel Goldwyn" and decided to move on to films from other studios, many of which he hadn't seen. "In time I felt I was ready to begin my study of Charles Chaplin." But when he tried to acquire the films for viewing, he quickly discovered that Chaplin's films were not loaned out, nor could he go to the studio to screen them.

Extremely frustrated and determined to have his way, "I picked up the phone and said to my secretary, 'Get me Charles Chaplin!'"

"Who?" she enquired. 

"Mr. Chaplin," I said. 

"Do we have his number?"

"Get it from somewhere. Goldwyn's office. Somebody must have it."

"Chaplin, did you say?"

"Chollychaplum!" I heard myself say [recalling the way he said Chaplin's name as a child.]

"Oh," she said. "Charlie Chaplin, of course."

In less than a minute, the buzzer sounded. I picked up the phone. 

"Hello, Mr. Chaplin?"

"Who is this?" asked a high, fractious voice. 

I identified myself as one of Mr. Goldwyn's assistants, which seemed to melt but not break the ice. I described my long efforts to get to see his films, explained why I wanted to do so, and did not forget to include about a minute and a half of shamelessly fulsome flattery.

When I finished there was a long pause, then he asked. "Do you play tennis?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid I don't."

Well, come over here anyway some day and we'll talk about it." 

Could I believe my ears? Was I being invited over by Charlie Chaplin?

"When?" I asked. 

"Any time," he said. "Any afternoon."

"How about right now," I asked. 

He laughed and said, "All right. I'll tell you where I am."

"No, no. Don't bother. I'll find you!"

L-R: Chaplin, Laura Harding, Garson Kanin, & Tim Durant at the Fairway Yacht Club in New York, 1940
Another view here.

Kanin then had to ask his boss if he could skip the afternoon staff meeting to go to Charlie Chaplin's house. Goldwyn was suspicious about why Chaplin would invite one of his young assistants to his house. "What's it about? What does he want you for?" he wanted to know. Kanin explained the situation and Goldwyn finally agreed. "Go on. Go to Chaplin," he said. "[But] come back after and tell me what he said about me."

On his way out, Kanin stopped in Goldwyn's outer office and got Chaplin's address & instructions on how to get there.

As I approached the high wall surrounding Chaplin's house on Summit Drive, I could scarcely believe what was happening to me. I drove through the gate, parked my car, and was about the ring the front doorbell when I heard a tennis game in progress. 

I made my way around to the tennis court. A tall, handsome man, who I would later know as Tim Durant, was playing against Bill Tilden. Actually, he was taking a lesson from Bill Tilden. Bill Tilden! The greatest tennis player in the world and Charlie Chaplin in the same day. It was too much. Chaplin rose and came to greet me at once. 

"Why, you're just a kid," he said. 

"Call me Jackie Coogan," I said. 

Chaplin smiled and led me to a table. He was even smaller than I had imagined but vital and bursting with energy. 

"Iced tea?" he asked. 

"Fine," I said. 

He picked up a pitcher full of iced tea with one hand, and a glass with the other, and did something extraordinary. He put the spout of the pitcher onto the rim of the glass, then spread his arms, one high and one low, creating a long stream of tea from pitcher to glass. He brought his hands together again, put the pitcher down, and handed me the glass. 

It is not possible, I reflected, for this great, great clown to do anything in the ordinary way. I wondered if he took his comic sense along when he went to bed with a girl. He told me later, much later, that he often did. In fact, he considered it larkish to fix his sights on the least likely, least attractive female he could find and play Don Juan to the end. Often, he told me, with astonishing results. 

It turned out to be the most pleasant of afternoons. Following a short discussion of my situation, he agreed to let me screen any of his films I wanted to see. He preferred that I run them at his studio and made it clear he would expect Goldwyn to assume the expense. Before I left, he invited me to dinner the following week. He became a warm and generous friend. 

I spent the next three months running Chaplin pictures. The scripts were hard to come by, but now and then I was able to find a treatment or a sketch. Discussing the work with some of the players, I learned that there was a great deal of improvisation during each shooting day. Whenever possible, I met with Chaplin himself to ask questions about his pictures. 

"What did you think--what went through your mind when people like George Jean Nathan and Gilbert Seldes and T.S. Eliot began to discuss your work in terms of great art? After all, you were a music-hall comic, the son of a music-hall comic, doing the job you'd done for years on end, and all of a sudden, sort of--just because you were now doing it in front of the camera, you were being hailed as a great figure in the arts."

"What's your question?" asked Chaplin. 

"Well, I mean--what did you think of all this? How did it affect you? You must have been pleased, but were you surprised?"

"Not at all," said Chaplin. "I always knew I was a poet." 

--Garson Kanin, Hollywood, 1967

Moments With Chaplin

Lillian Ross, a longtime writer for the New Yorker magazine, met Charlie and Oona at a Hollywood party in 1948.* She remained a close family friend until Charlie's death in 1977. The following is an excerpt from her book Moments With Chaplin (1978):

Some of the moments I remember from Vevey had the atmosphere of something staged, real though they were. 

Charlie Chaplin heading for the tennis court, wearing white flannel trousers and a tennis shirt with a collar--a white cable knit sweater dashingly slung over his back, the sleeves tied in front. 

Charlie Chaplin playing tennis, racquet in his left hand, running for every ball, not liking to lose, and showing his dissatisfaction every time he lost a point, giving his all to the game, in total concentration, and never, never losing track of the score....

Charlie Chaplin sharing a bowl of peanuts  with three-year-old Annette. Chaplin's face would be down over the bowl, and he would be glaring in top performance, leaving no doubt as to who would get the last peanut. 

Charlie Chaplin in a long terry-cloth robe, his pure-white hair disheveled, leading a visitor at eight o'clock on a late-summer morning down his lawn to his swimming pool, all the white looking whiter in contrast to the shadows cast by the trees on the smooth green lawn.

Charlie Chaplin at the pool, saying, "I go up and down the pool once then out. I keep the water warm. It's not easy to go from a warm bed into a cold pool. I like it as long as it's warm."

Poolside at the Manoir.
L-R: Rex Harrison, CC (in white robe), Jerry Epstein, and Kay Kendall.

 Charlie Chaplin sitting in front of a big fire in the fireplace of his living room for a quick drink before dinner.  Gin-and-tonic usually. "I look forward to that one drink at night," he would say....

Charlie Chaplin comforting Victoria, at the age of eleven, after she had seen "Limelight" for the first time. ("I couldn't help crying at the end, when you died," Victoria said to her father. "Oh, my dear," Chaplin said, on the verge of tears himself. "Oh, my dear. That's sweet. So sweet.")

With the author.

 Charlie Chaplin at the piano in his living room, playing music he had composed for his pictures, humming along with his own playing, while his face expressed every emotion experienced by everybody in each picture, and simultaneously talking: "I can't play anybody's music but my own. I never took a lesson. I never even saw a piano up close until I was twenty-one. As soon as I touched the piano, I could play. The same with the violin."

Charlie Chaplin, at five o'clock in the morning, heading quietly for his study, to work alone on his autobiography, as he did every morning (In 1962, on an afternoon in early September, I sat with him on his terrace as he read parts of his book manuscript to me, the tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses a bit down on his nose, his reading dramatic to the point of melodrama, his devotion to his subject unself-conscious and complete. "I use Fowler's 'The King's English' as my guide," he told me during a breather. "I do all my own editing. I'm very particular. I like to see a clean page, with no erasures. I'm entirely self-taught.")

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*Ross is still alive and in 2008 interviewed Charlie's grandson, James Thiérrée. 

Charlie and Gloria "give them something to talk about."

The photos in this post were taken by Katherine Hungerford, a photographer who spent 1922-23 in Hollywood taking pictures of movie stars for a lecture. In 1949, she wrote a book about her experience called Early Hollywood Crazy Quilt. The following is an excerpt from her book in which she describes taking these photos of Charlie & Gloria:

I stopped for lunch at Armstrong & Carleton, a popular movie star restaurant rendezvous. I had just started to order when Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson came in and sat down at a table near my own. I could hardly taste my own food as I waited for them to finish their lunch. Then I boldly went over, introduced myself and showed them some of the pictures I had taken, especially of Mary and Doug. They seemed interested and enjoyed looking at the pictures.

Then I followed through with the punch line, ‘‘May I please have a picture of you two? ” And just to complicate things I had to ask them to go with me across the street where the sun was good, as I could only take snapshots. They were very obliging and followed me.

On the way over Gloria whispered to Charlie, “I don’t know whether it is wise for us to pose together.”

Charlie replied, “Oh, let’s give them something new to talk about.”   

Gloria had just returned from Paris with a new wardrobe costing $10,000. On the day I photographed her, she wore one of her new dresses, a lovely navy blue crepe and with this a small flower hat made of a lighter shade of blue flowers, which was most becoming. She had dainty feet and small hands. I had my black and white silk parasol with me for the California sun could be very hot at times, so I asked Gloria if she would like to hold the parasol. After taking her alone, I snapped a few of her with Charlie, but he was cutting up so, she could not keep a straight face. Nearby I saw a young boy leaning against his bicycle gaping at the performance, and I asked him to lend me the bike. Charlie took my parasol and got on the bicycle and I took some snaps like that. He acted like a youngster. By that time a large crowd had gathered and we all had lots of fun. I could hardly hold the camera still I was laughing so hard at Charlie’s antics. 

I finally said trying to sound most business-like, “Mr. Chaplin, you must remember I’m not taking moving pictures.”

Later on, I astonished Charlie’s publicity director by showing him these pictures. “How in the world did you manage to get them? ” he asked. “Charlie hardly ever poses for anyone.”

But I knew the secret lay in treating him like a person and not an actor. 

Interview with Charlie and Doug, 1919

By Ray W. Frohman, Los Angeles Herald, December 2nd, 1919

This is a bit long but worth it, if you have time. The ALL CAPS are original.

RIP, Doug (December 12th, 1939)

(When Charlie Chaplin, creator of ludicrous film divertissements that assuage the cares of a troubled world, was treated to a "pre-view" of Ray W. Frohman's interview with him for The Evening Herald--the first authentic interview Chaplin has granted for over two years, and the first dialogue between Chaplin and Doug Fairbanks ever recorded--Chaplin, the laughmaker, LAUGHED and said: "This is the first artistic interview I've ever had. It is one of the very few articles ever written about me that really reveal me to the public."
Blushing over the praise of himself he had read, the comedian added that "perhaps the writer was a little too sympathetic!"
And then Charlie, who, as his "big brother" Doug says, "can't concentrate," pleaded to keep the "copy" "to read it again more leisurely so that I can enjoy it more.")

If the KIDS could vote, CHARLIE CHAPLIN would be our next PRESIDENT!

And if it's true, as Doug Fairbanks told Charlie in my presence, that in Sweden and Denmark, too, they consider Charlie in a class by himself, he may yet be King of Scandinavia!

In fact, when the League of Nations gets to working and the Brotherhood of Man is a reality, my guess is that it's the internationally popular Charles Spencer Chaplin who'll be the first President of the World--in spite of his feet.

Even at RIVAL studios, publicity men paid to lie for Charlie's competitors--if he can be said to have any--say freely, "Nobody's ever had the vogue that Chaplin has."
The peerless Douglas Fairbanks himself says: "There is only ONE king in pictures--Chaplin; and only ONE queen--Mary Pickford. The rest of us must be content to be pretty good and compete with EACH OTHER!"

No wonder my kneecaps vibrated as I chatted over an hour with Charlie Chaplin--and Doug Fairbanks, too, at the same time--out in darkest Hollywood.
There we were, all in the same small room for one admission: Charlie and Doug and I--the king of comedy, the nonpareil light comedian, and a dictographic nonentity--talking our heads off, or, rather, talking Charlie's head off!

Everybody knows Charlie joined Essanay in 1915, knows about his million-dollar contract with First National, and that he's now "on his own" and one of "The Big Four." Everybody's seen every Chaplin comedy from "The Bank," "A Night Out," "A Woman," "His New Job" and "Police" up through "A Dog's Life," "Shoulder Arms" and "Sunnyside."

In fact, since they say "Chaplin doesn't work" and call his producing concern out on La Brea "the century plant," we've all been content to go to see him, and him alone, over and over again in the same films!

So I didn't hash over with Charlie the well known facts of his pictorial biography.

Doug and Charlie, with an occasional interpolation from me, talked and talked of Charlie's views on art and books and plays, on beautiful women and sunsets, on the Grand Canyon and whether or not a desert is beautiful, and everything else from cabbages to kings, from "Hamlet" to Doug's new funny overcoat; and on Charlie's professional methods and unprofessional soul--for he has one--and what he says he's trying to do to pictures and is doing and is going to do.

And Eureka! Now I can tell the world for the first time WHY Doug smiles and smiles and smiles that famous smile of his!

It's BECAUSE HE HAS PRIVATE "PREVIEWS" OF UNRELEASED IMPROMPTU CHAPLIN COMEDIES, every time he and his friend get together.

For Charlie, I think most of us agree, on the screen is "the funniest man in the world."

And at times during our chat he was twice as funny as that!

And Doug--when he's "kidding" and playfully baiting Charlie and leading him on conversationally, or waxing Rabelaisian, or mimicking a noted English author for Charlie and then registering a lobe-to-lobe grin--is funnier than Charlie!

And I might have been funny myself, for I was weak and helpless from laughter!

Through the flimsy cheesecloth curtain of a window I saw for the first time--and recognized--the little smooth-shaven face of the off-screen Chaplin. It was thrust forward in a sort of cataleptic grin toward Doug, who was uttering one of his introductory "Do you know, Charlie's" in the deadly-serious resonant tones that he affects toward his little friend.

"Hah!" quoth I to myself, waxing Shakespearian, "I have thee on the hip"--and I was upon them.

It was the REAL Charlie Chaplin.

I do not mean the Chaplin you see on the screen, the last of the royal jesters, with all of us as his patrons, the beloved vagabond, who has been paid the sincerest flattery, that of imitation, by more people than any other man who ever lived--by little kids all over the globe, by folks at masquerades, by "would-bes" on "amateur nights," by "rival" screen "comedians," both Caucasian and Oriental.

That Charlie, with his most active flexible cane and his dogs, his oddest derby constantly being tipped to cops--until the psychological moment arrives--and to fair women, his trick moustache and his loose-fitting shapeless trousers, and the biggest feet in Filmland as well--that Charlie every man, woman and child under the stars knows.

He has probably been kicked and shot in the pants--on the screen--more than any other living man. The camaraderie this humblest screen character displays toward policemen and burglars, until the moment arrives for him to destroy them--for he can pick up his feet quicker than any man in Shadowland--is world famous. A captivating smile, an artless blush--and then an agile hoof--is the way Chaplin on the silver sheet, broke in a saloon or restaurant, handles striking policemen before they strike.

And you are aware how chivalrous he is toward the fair sex; how his matchlike--not matchless--figure, and his inimitable--not immaculate--garb have captivated many a beautiful heroine.

He can get more fun out of stepping in a waste basket--but what's the use? You know him.

Let it suffice to say that Chaplin's smirks, shrugs and sucking together of his cheeks, his characteristic Chaplinesque gestures, his personal accoutrements and mannerisms are the most individual, distinctive on the shadow screen.

But those, as Doug opined to Charlie and me, are merely "the externals, the trappings" of his screen art.

"Our most subtle comedian," he has been called by the critic of an eastern magazine, the veteran of a million reviews.

"Vulgar," say some folks who have seen Charlie spout food on the screen amidst the medley of mock romance, mock tragedy, mock adoration, mock courtesy that he "spills" in the comedies he ORIGINATES.

But no "highbrow" has ever been able to sit through a Chaplin comedy without bursting involuntarily into spontaneous "Hah hahs!" right out loud; and cultured, intellectual college professors--wasn't Professor Stockton Axson, brother-in-law of President Wilson, one of them!--have publicly proclaimed him an ARTIST.

However, the Chaplin I talked with, as I said, was not the screen Chaplin. 

 Neither was he the make-believe-real Chaplin who USED to talk to interviewers before he made all the money he wants and decided that he didn't need any publicity. That Chaplin, I have one of his intimates' word for it, used to turn on the phonograph in his room and chat engagingly, ALWAYS CAMOUFLAGING HIS REAL SELF.

The Charlie Chaplin who talked to me is the real, honest-to-goodness, personal, unprofessional, actual Charlie Chaplin, I give you my word for it. He was as artless, as "off his guard" as a three years' child who doesn't know the camera's there when you snapshot him.

Charlie, you know, when it comes to being interviewed--which he hasn't permitted for YEARS--is what Fielding's eighteenth century bailiffs would have called "a shy cock."

When famous newspapermen representing papers from all over the country with President Wilson's party called on him. Charlie stuck his head in the door, took one look, said he "had to have some air," and "ditched" them all--went out for an auto ride!

When his own casting director, Edward Biby pleaded with him for an HOUR A MONTH for nation-wide magazine interviews, saying it would be worth a million dollars to Chaplin, Charlie merely waved a hand airily and said: "Oh, no, that's all right, that's all right!"

But I found him a delightfully interesting conversationalist, a sensitive little aesthete who's well-read and well versed in art, a cultured little chap with artistic sensibilities, a rather deep thinker--though I won't vouch for the soundness of his theories--and withal a somewhat shifty or shifting one.

Where the "shifts" came in, the mental sidestepping from one "highbrow" subject to another or from high to low, the "sacheting" to use a dancing term, of the gray matter in instinctive--and courteous--reaction to the conversation of others, were with Doug Fairbanks.

For when talking with Charlie, the jovial "Smiling Doug" Fairbanks is not merely magnetic--he is HYPNOTIC! He holds his friend Charlie in the hollow of his hand.

"I've been dreaming of London," mused Charlie, who was born near there only 31 short years ago and was in vaudeville there--for he became identified with the theater when he was seven years old. "I tried to show it to someone, but there was always fog or night or something--I couldn't show its beauties. But I would say 'WAIT--you'll see it.'"

Charlie said he hasn't been back in dear old Lunnon since he attracted favorable notice in "A Night in an English Music Hall," as the lead in which he came to the United States before he made his picture debut, some years ago.

But, pause! I didn't tell you how the real Charlie looks!

He's a slender sapling, this artist in the neat gray-checkered suit and black knitted tie and yellow-tinted pleated shirt who lolled in a Morris chair chatting so naturally and vivaciously. He has curly black hair with touches of gray--a young man's gray--at the temples, and vivid blue eyes, and sensitive features like the person of high-strung temperament that he is.

When he shows his perfect teeth in a grin--a charmed, fascinated, hypnotized grin--at his master, Doug, he has Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat "backed off the boards."

At times when his eyes shine and his face glows as he gets talking of his professional or aesthetic enthusiasms, Charlie becomes almost beautiful.

And when he gets really "worked up," his disreputable LITTLE black shoes with they grayish tops twist, and his supple figure writhes, as his right hand helps him to express himself by graceful, powerful gestures.

"I became a star when I'd been at Keystone SIX MONTHS," said Charlie in response to my question. "I was there about a year. No, that's not the world's record--with some people it takes only one picture. Look at the way Betty Compson's salary jumped after her work in 'The Miracle Man.'

"Did I have 'awful struggles,' or fights with bosses to MAKE them star me? My struggles were over before I went into pictures."

"After one picture the public fell on its face and worshipped him," said Doug. "I'm an admirer of yours, Charlie, even if you are a friend. And when I see you on the screen there's something goes from you to me, I feel an interchange.

"It isn't what he DOES, or even how he does it, that makes you laugh," "enthused" Doug to me. "When you watch his pictures it's the human dynamo WITHIN that you see. And evidently what he's giving us is what the public wants."

"What I put into my pictures is what I WANT to do," supplemented Charlie.

"Before I went into pictures, I felt repressed, I wasn't in my proper sphere. Now for the first time I'm doing what I want to do.

"I get a feeling, from a play or somewhere, and then THINK OUT WHAT I WANT TO DO."

Sometimes, say folks at his studio, where his own people never dare disturb him when he's "on the set" or on the job mentally, Charlie sits for as long as eight hours in solitude thinking up something the world--for his audiences are numbered by the hundred million--hasn't laughed at!

"I got a feeling from reading Thomas Burke's 'Limehouse Nights,'" continued Charlie, "and the result was 'A Dog's Life'--working it right out, going through natural experiences and having the consequent reactions. It is a translation, though not in Burke's language or style, of course.

"There is beauty in the slums!--for those who can see it despite the dirt and sordidness. There are people reacting toward one another there--there is LIFE, and that's the whole thing!

"Look at Rabelais. Vileness? That's only his SUBJECTS, BUT--!

"Writers have no STANDARDS of beauty. What IS beauty? It is indefinable!

"Beauty is all WITHIN," continued Charlie after Doug quoted "Hamlet" by the yard. "I DON'T THINK ANYONE HAS EVER PAINTED A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN!"

"Artists today put on the canvas a 'Follies' type--which people call beautiful. That sort of beauty is merely external. Look at the old masters, such as Van Dyke, and you see old women with their faces screwed up with wrinkles. It's the beauty that's WITHIN that counts."

When Doug called him an admirer of Basil King's novels, Charlie did not dissent; and when Mark Twain was mentioned Charlie said: "Ah, now you're getting me back on my favorite topic.

"I've been reading Waldo Frank's book of essays, 'Our America,'" continued Charlie. "He is DEEP! You think when you start out it's the ordinary fervor, but when you get into it-! And I caught something of myself in what he wrote about me."

"Me, too," said Charlie, showing his dimples in a smile of assent, when Doug remarked that he thinks the mouth is the most expressive feature--though Charlie said he's seen some women with small mouths who were uglier than other women with large mouths.

When Doug said to him: "You are not responsible for what you are able to do," meaning that Charlie's ability to produce mirth-provoking comedy is God-given, Charlie modestly remained silent, making a gesture of instant, impersonal agreement.

Dimpling, he admitted that he "hates it more than anything else when they call me sentimental." 

Whether he meant in real life or reel life will ever remain an unsolved mystery.

We talked of sciences. "A scientist must be a lover of life," said Charlie.
Do you know that Chaplin has none of his excruciatingly funny stunts worked out on paper in advance, nor even the plot of his comedies prepared in "script"? He admitted it.

"He takes an idea, a theme, and works it out by himself as he goes along," said his admirer, Doug, to his face, uncontradicted. "He's a remnant of an aristocrat going through all those adventures. Reel after reel WITHOUT SUBTITLES--ACTION!"

"You are more HEART," returned Charlie, regarding Doug's screen work.

And then Charlie sprung NEWS of a new departure in Chaplin comedies!

Said he:
"In the one I'm making now there's a whole reel of drama before I appear. I've got pathos, human interest, tragedy, humor--we've had that before--EVERYTHING in it! Yet it is all pertinent, constructive of the plot. It's a comedy DRAMA. That's what I'm going to do from now on.
"Edna (Edna Purviance, his leading lady) is an OPERA SINGER in this one! I didn't have her commit suicide."

It was a soul-wrenching effort NOT to call him "Charlie" but--"Mister Chaplin," I asked, "isn't it a terrific constraint for a sensitive man of artistic sensibilities and tastes like you to play a vagabond, a TRAMP?"

At that, Doug Fairbanks exploded: "Why, he's naturally a BUM!" said Doug, uncontradicted by the smiling Charlie. "When he has a clean collar on it's Tom Harrington (Charlie's secretary) who's responsible!"

Entirely aside from his alleged bumminess, "Spencer," as Doug called him once, fervently declared that he LIKES the smell of idoform--"the hospital smell," as it is popularly known.

He averred that the reason why people aren't particularly fond of the fragrance of the skunk is simply because their ancestors for generations haven't liked skunks, and they think of the odor that's going to get on them.

"You," he added, turning to Doug, "are particularly sensitive of odors."

But we were getting quite Rabelaisian, weren't we! Perhaps I'd better tell you at once that Charlie also talked familiarly of Bill Sikes and Nancy, and thinks that "Los Angeles will eventually be a great artistic center."

And ONCE Charlie's eyes blurred.

There were tears in them.

The face of the man who, say some who know him, works not for money but as a creative artist, and plans to retire from money-making screen work in about five years, trembled with silent emotion--whether modest shame or gratefulness, I know not.

It was when Doug quoted someone as saying that people regard Charlie as the one and ONLY, "than whom" there is no one like.

Something about that tribute touched the droll comedian's heart.

PRAISE OF CHAPLIN MADE CHARLIE WEEP!

CHARLIE CHAPLIN became, for that moment, a TRAGEDIAN!

Chaplin in Carmel

In early 1938, Chaplin decided he needed a change of scenery. His marriage to his third wife, Paulette Goddard, was coming apart and he was at a loss for an idea for a new film. So along with his new friend, Tim Durant,¹ he left Los Angeles for Pebble Beach--and stayed there for five months. It was through Durant that Chaplin was introduced to the Pebble Beach/Carmel social set. Although initially reluctant to do so, he jumped right in.

One of the people he met during this time was Berkeley professor, Benjamin Lehman, who was a close friend of Noel Sullivan, a local musician and patron of the arts, and whose home, Hollow Hills, was a gathering place for like-minded artists, writers, and poets. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Lehman in which he discusses seeing Chaplin in Carmel:

I saw him once for a long afternoon after lunch down in one of those houses on the cliffs south of Carmel where he was a lunch guest and I was, too. My son, who was then sixteen and six feet three, and the very image of young boy growing into young man, was with me. Chaplin came over and said, "Come, and sit with me." It was a buffet. Then there was a fourth place right out over the ocean on this beautiful terrace. "Who will we get for there?"

"You get him."

So, he went and got Molly O'Shea, if I remember rightly, the painter's wife.

Chaplin always was a good talker. He had an enthusiastic and eager mind; it wasn't as disciplined as his sense of visual art or sense of movement was disciplined. In short, to the academic mind it seemed a little reckless, but it was devoted to the common good. In all his thinking, whether he was talking economics, or architecture for private housing, or the invasion of the wilderness by roads, it was always, "What would be good in the long range..." for what he knew as a boy, the East End of London, the people there who didn't get out, what would be good for such. He was enormously social-minded, and of course because of this perhaps dreamy recklessness he didn't have to make this thing work, a little like Goldwater [laughter] many people said, "He's a radical," "he's a crypto-Communist," all that thing. But he was of great charm, and of course when he was out on his own conditioned activity he was marvelous.

Hollow Hills, Carmel, 1938. L-R: Chaplin, author C.E.S. Wood,² his wife, Sara Bard Field, and Noel Sullivan.

I remember sitting one night until three or four in the morning, Judith Anderson, I, Noel Sullivan, and he, after a big party at Hollow Hills. We were staying there, Miss Anderson and I in the house, and he didn't know it and he was waiting for her to go, then he would go. And we were getting tired, but he wasn't, and he was filling in the time with one incredible mimicry after another, talking personalities and then projecting them, being reminded by something in the projection of someone else, and projecting it. An imitation of John Barrymore waking up from a drunken stupor; another imitation of John Barrymore giving an imitation of a nervous, amateur actor speaking the "to be or not to be" soliloquy and getting caught on a little dry mucosa from the nostril, and rolling it in on his thumb and trying to get rid of it while he said the lines [laughing], so vulgar, and yet so brilliantly pure, you can't imagine. Well, this was the sort of thing that was going on all the time.

He was good in talk, eager, inquiring. Colleagues of mine at the University have told me of being on a train before we all went by plane from New York or Chicago and Chaplin was on it. If he was in a stateroom, with a secretary, he would send the secretary through the train: "If you see any body who is reading an interesting book, bring him in." The secretary would bring Professor X or Professor Y in, and he would sit and talk with them for an hour. Sometimes he'd talk to people, but mostly he'd talk with them; nothing like, "I'm one of the great geniuses of the world," except to illustrate it when he got going as a mimic.

You could get him anytime, that way. You couldn't get him by telephone, but you could get him by a note or a letter and say, "On Friday, so-and-so is coming to lunch, or dinner. I think you'd like him." And he'd turn up, not to be impressive, but to take in, or to exchange, in part at least. ³

_________________________________________________________________________________

¹Chaplin was introduced to Tim Durant via his friend, King Vidor, sometime in 1937. Like Charlie, Tim liked tennis and they played a lot together. "He was sympathetic, and we became very good friends." (My Autobiography, 1964).

²Wood was a prominent author, poet, attorney, painter, and champion of liberal causes. He was a regular contributor to the socialist magazine The Masses. His left-leaning politics no doubt interested Chaplin.

³Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area from 1920 Onward: An Interview Conducted by Suzanne B. Reiss, Berkeley, 1969

"When will girls like that learn to know when I'm through?"

The following is an excerpt from Hedda Hopper's autobiography From Under My Hat published in 1952.  It is common knowledge that Hopper disliked Chaplin for political and moral reasons and said some rotten things about him, but I believe there is some truth to the following anecdote. This was not the first time Chaplin met some obscure, lower class (or working class) girl and took her to dinner.¹ He was also apt to become bored with a woman once the initial infatuation wore off. The following most likely took place sometime in the mid-1920s:

On one of Laurette's ² first trips West, she, Hartley,³ and I went to a party given by Norma Talmadge and Joe Schenck at their home on West Adams Street.  Hartley wanted to leave before Laurette was ready. She was talking to Charlie Chaplin, who said, "I'll drive you home."

I went along, and the three of us sat in the back seat of Chaplin's Rolls-Royce. He and Laurette started talking about sex attraction: what a powerful thing it was, how hard to foresee or stem. Laurette remarked that a young waiter who carried in her breakfast tray was, though of course he didn't suspect it, attractive to her.

Chaplin chimed in, "Not long ago I walked down Hollywood Boulevard one evening. My car was following me as usual. A few steps ahead of me I saw a forlorn little girl, frail, poorly dressed. She looked so tired, I walked on ahead of her, looked back. Something in her face appealed to me. I turned round, walked back, and said, 'You're hungry, aren't you?'

'I haven't eaten for two days,' she said simply, like a child. I said, 'Would you allow me to buy your dinner?' She was so grateful she nearly fainted in my arms.

"I signaled my chauffeur, handed her into the car, drove her to my home, and fed her." Chaplin gave a bored sigh and a shrug. "She stayed with me for three days.

"She was delightful," Chaplin continued, speaking softly, rolling a remembered sweet on his tongue like the taste of good wine. "I experienced a new kind of thrill. I'd never met anyone quite like her. So giving, so grateful.

"Then I had the chauffeur drive her back to Hollywood Boulevard and let her out where I picked her up." Chaplin turned then to Laurette. "And would you believe it, the following night she found her way back to my home and begged to be let in? Of course I had the servants turn her out." He gave another sad sigh. "When will girls like that learn to know when I'm through?" he said peevishly.   

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

¹Jim Tully describes two such women in "The Real Life Story of Charlie Chaplin": A girl who worked at a soda fountain and another known only as "Hotsy-Totsy".
²Laurette Taylor (1884–1946) was an American stage and film actress.
³J. Hartley Manners (1970-1928) was a playwright & husband of Laurette Taylor.

Recording session for MODERN TIMES, November 1935

 At right, Chaplin shakes hands with conductor Alfred Newman. 

Eighty-years ago this month, Chaplin recorded the music for Modern Times, his final silent film. The sessions were held on a soundstage at the United Artists Studios, with a 65-piece orchestra conducted by Alfred Newman.¹ Chaplin had composed the music himself, with the help of arrangers David Raksin and Edward Powell, including the "love theme" which would become one of his most famous melodies, better known as the pop standard "Smile."²

Below is Hollywood reporter Sidney Skolsky's eyewitness account of one of the recording sessions:

Chaplin sits in a camp chair on a large recording set at the United Artists studio, supervising the scoring. His hair is gray. He has a stubble gray beard. He wears black patent leather shoes with white suede tops, and his right arm is carried in a sling.³ A blue silk muffler serves as a sling. Chaplin broke his thumb in the door of his auto. 

Al Newman stands on a small platform, waving a baton at 65 musicians. David Raksin, who made the music arrangements for Chaplin, is also present to supervise. 

There is a screen hanging in midair in back of the orchestra. The part of Modern Times being scored will be shown on the screen. Chaplin is chewing gum in time with the orchestra. Only a few of Chaplin's personal friends among the magazine writers and several visitors from the Soviet cinema have seen sections of the picture. No newspaperman has seen a flash of it. I walk on the set, stand and watch. Soon Chaplin sees me. He grins a broad "Hello" and then says it. I approach him. "I'd like to watch you work. May I?" Chaplin has always been congenial to me. "Stay around," he answers, "but don't tell too much." 

The orchestra starts rehearsing the music for the factory sequence in which Chaplin revolts against being a slave of the machinery. He throws the place into confusion and does a wild dance. The music is as difficult as the scene. Every note must be timed exactly with the film, and the music is not loud and brazen as expected of factory sounds. The orchestra rehearses these few bars again...again...again. An hour later, they're still doing these few bars. The orchestra stops playing. The men leave their chairs. There's time out for five minutes, like a football team. It is strenuous work. The musicians work only three, four hours at the most, at a stretch. Then they have an hour for relaxation. Yesterday, they worked from 9 in the morning until 4 o'clock the next morning, and about half a reel was completely scored. It costs Chaplin on the average of $1,000 an hour to score this flicker. 

L-R: Charles Dunworth (asst. to Alfred Newman), Alfred Newman (conductor), CC, David Raksin (arranger),
 Paul Neal (recording engineer), and Edward Powell (arranger). 

Now, after several hours of rehearsing, Al Newman and Chaplin agree they will try to record this scene. The signal is given. The picture is ready to be flashed on the screen. The man in the sound booth is ready to pick up the music and capture  it. I am invited to sit in the sound booth with Paul Neal, for here I can see the picture and hear the music as it is recorded. He is the only man on the set who sees and hears the flicker as if it were being shown in a theater. Chaplin, with the baggy trousers, the big shoes and black hair, is on the screen. The Chaplin with neat clothes and gray hair sits looking at him. 

The flicker is on. Chaplin is performing. The first impression is very strange. I see Chaplin moving, his mouth opens--but no sounds, no words are heard. For a moment I believe something is wrong. Then I remember it is a silent flicker. The orchestra plays the same few bars again and again, and the picture is started over and over. By now I am becoming accustomed to silent pictures.⁴ Chaplin watches the picture and listens to the music. He jumps up to stop the music. He okays a take. He asks Newman or Raksin or Neal how it sounded. 

It is really interesting to watch Chaplin watch Chaplin. He never laughs at him, but is always intent. Chaplin when talking about the Chaplin on the screen says, "The little feller does that..." or "He doesn't do that..." But he never calls the Chaplin on the screen "I." To him the Chaplin on the screen is a character. 

--Sidney Skolsky, "Chaplin's Modern Times," Washington Post, November 27, 1935

Chaplin is seated at right near the conductor's podium.

Photos by Max Munn Autrey

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¹Alfred Newman would eventually walk out on the film after a blow up with Chaplin. According to David Raksin: "They were operating on ragged nerves, and after one bad take Charlie had accused the players of "dogging it"--lying down on the job. At this, Newman, who at the best of times had a hair-trigger temper, had broken his baton and stalked off the stage, and was now refusing to work with Chaplin." ("Life with Charlie," 1983) Newman never returned. Arranger Edward Powell took over as conductor for the remainder of the sessions.
²Lyrics were added to the melody in 1954 by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons.
³You can see the sling on Chaplin in the last photo if you look closely. He is also wearing it in this photo taken at a party for H.G. Wells around the same time.
⁴By 1935, talkies had been around for nearly a decade and silent films were a thing of the past.

"Speed, dust, location"

Chaplin gave careful thought to the filming of the final scene in The Circus, as indicated by the following contemporary description, by an unidentified reporter, of Chaplin at work, on location in Glendale, CA, on October 10-11, 1927:

Perspiring men rush about the Chaplin studio. Carpenters, painters, electricians, technical minds, laborers. Charlie must not be held up. A caravan of circus wagons are hitched on behind four huge motor trucks. They start for Cahuenga Pass. A long and hard pull to Glendale. The location is flooded with light. It comes from all directions. The dynamo wagon hums. So the men work through the night.

Daylight breaks. The morning is cold. Cracklings echo from a dozen fires. It is an unusual California crispness. Cars begin to arrive. The roar of exhausts signals their coming. There is an extra loud rumbling. The big blue limousine comes to a stop. The Circus must be finished. Everyone is on time. Now the sun is holding things up. Why doesn’t it hurry and come up over the mountains? It is long shadows the Tramp wants.

Six o’clock and half the morning is wasted. The edge of the circus ring is too dark. It doesn’t look natural. The Tramp refuses to work artificially. Men start to perspire again. Thirty minutes later the soft voice speaks. “Fine! That’s Fine! Let’s shoot!”

Cameras grind. Circus wagons move across the vast stretch of open space. There is a beautiful haze in the background. The horses and the wagon wheels cause clouds of dust. The picture is gorgeous. No artist would be believed should he paint it. Twenty times the scene is taken.

The cameras move in close to the ring. Carefully the operators measure the distance. From the lens to the Tramp. He is alone in the center of the ring.

He rehearses. Then action for camera. Eighty feet. The business is done again. And again! And again! Fifty persons are looking on. All members of the company. There are few eyes that are not moist. Most of them know the story. They knew the meaning of this final “shot."

“How was that?” came inquiring from the Tramp. Fifty heads nodded in affirmation. “Then we’ll take it again; just once more” spoke the man in the baggy pants and derby hat and misfit coat and dreadnought shoes. The sun was getting high. The long shadows became shorter and shorter. “Call it a day,” said the Tramp, “we’ll be here again tomorrow at four.”

Chaplin is then described watching the rushes at three o’clock the following morning:

The little fellow in the big black leather chair was no longer the Tramp. But he was watching him on the screen. Charlie Chaplin was passing judgment. “He should do that much better.” “He doesn’t ring true.” “He has his derby down too far over his eyes.” “They have burned his face up with those reflectors.” A severe critic, this Chaplin. The Tramp doesn’t please him. The stuff must be retaken. A leap from the leather chair. Speed, dust, location.”

(Unknown source, reprinted in Chaplin: His Life & Art by David Robinson)

Chaplin as seen by Australian stage comedian (and friend) Bert Levy

Levy first met the "sad-faced" and seemingly "undernourished" Charlie in 1909 when he saw him perform with the Fred Karno troupe in London. They became friends and off and on for the next twenty years, during which time Chaplin rose from obscurity to international fame, they often met. "I am privileged to call him friend," Levy wrote, "I have kept aloof from him for I did not want him to number me among those pests who are ever ready to claim acquaintance with and remind a celebrity that they 'knew him when, etc. etc.'"

In 1929, Levy visited Chaplin at his studio during the production of City Lights. Shortly afterward he described the experience in an article for Hollywood Filmograph. Below is an excerpt:

Charlie's face shows very little trace of the early hardships--not to speak of the sorrow and strife of the later years of his chequered career. His boyish smile dissipates all that. When he exploited the baggy pants, antique derby and the nimble cane of his lean London days, nobody bothered him; but, in the days of his affluence unsuccessful imitators hung on to him like barnacles and complained that he (Chaplin) sought to restrict to his own use the rags that made him famous. The fools. It was not the colors he used that brought Rembrandt immortality, but how he used them.

There was a time when scandal sought to waylay and drag him down. Mudslingers were yapping at his heels like a lot of curs. Chaplin asked for no quarter and gave none. Subsequent events proved that he still holds his place in the affections of the people. The writer was present when Charlie, with the world seemingly against him, stepped upon the platform before a gathering of distinguished newspapermen at the New York Press Club. What a frantic demonstration in his favor there was on that day. It is the first time I have seen Chaplin holding back tears.

His philosophical outlook on life inspired, not by any particular "ism" or cult, but by his intimate knowledge of human nature, is the thing that makes Chaplin's companionship worth while. He steadfastly maintains that it is necessary for the artist to have known the pangs of hunger and to have experienced bitterness and hatred as well as love in order to bring out whatever of soul there is in him. Chaplin's way of jumping from one interesting subject to another is responsible for my doing the same thing in this article.

Limited space at my disposal prompts me to briefly chronicle the highlights in our studio chat. Chaplin has an incurable fear of crowds and a dislike of unnecessary publicity. "Charlie Chaplin belongs on the screen," he will say. "Any undue publicity regarding my petty aches and pains is distasteful to me and of no interest to the public...."

I asked Charlie his opinion of the talkies. "Entertainment without charm," he replied quickly, and then added, "while watching a silent picture each individual supplies the unspoken words according to his own understanding of the action. The dullard sees the story in his own way as does the intelligent, the wise, and so on--each one, as I said before, supplying his own understanding and everyone is pleased. But when the actor gives through the spoken word his own interpretation--then--well, there is bound to be disappointment. Yes, the talkie is undoubtedly entertainment, but in my opinion lacks charm."

I left Charlie grateful that I am privileged to call him friend--that is the sort of influence he has over those who know him best. Today the world is at his feet, but to me his is just the same lovable, lonely little clown I first met over twenty years ago.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Martha Raye on making a film with "Chuck"

©Roy Export S.A.S.

Excerpt from "Monsieur Chaplin" by Martha Raye
Movieland, February 1948

All right, I was scared. 

That sounds silly, I guess, coming from me, a toughened-up trouper who's afraid of neither men, mice, nor the special brand of rodent known as the night-club heckler. 

But the first day I walked onto the set to play a scene opposite Charles Chaplin I thought I'd never be able to open my big mouth. Me, Martha Raye! Funny, isn't it?

My agent had called me a couple of weeks before. "Martha," says he, "Charles Chaplin wants you to play opposite him in Monsieur Verdoux!"

"You must have got yourself a new writer," I came back, quick and cute as anything. "You were never this funny before."

It took the fellow ten minutes--and a few light taps with a ball peen hammer--to get it through my head that he was serious and that Charles Chaplin did want me to play the roll of indestructible Annabella in his French bluebeard comedy. 

I jumped at the chance. There isn't a comedian anywhere who wouldn't have. For to all of us, Chaplin is the tops--and corny as it may sound--to work with an artist like that is an honor and a privilege. 

But after I'd jumped at the chance, I wanted to jump right back again. In the interval before I went to work on "Verdoux," I envied those funny man high-divers in the newsreels--the ones who can un-plunge. ...

Wanta know how long that scared lasted? For about ten minutes after I started working with Mr. Chaplin. 

Somehow he put me at my ease immediately. He made me feel as though my contribution to the picture was a good one and important. And the Charles Chaplin whom I'd respected as an artist became "Chuck"--a person whom I liked besides. 

I've been tossing around words like honor and privilege. Words like that are usually associated with the kind of wonderful but darned uncomfortable feeling a man  must feel when he wears a boiled shirt. Working with Chaplin was not only an honor and a privilege, but more fun that I've had since funny business became funny business. And that, for me, was when I was three-and-a-half years old. 

That first day we worked through lunch hour and well into the afternoon. Chuck was intent upon some intricate effect, and the cast and crew, whose day had begun almost before daylight, began to get the haggard, hungry look of a high fashion dress model. 

At twelve o'clock on the second day, I yelled, "Lunch!"

Now when I yell, I yell! I heard later that workmen over in Honolulu knocked off early--there's a difference in time, you know. 

The silence was terrific. You could hear the jaws drop. Nobody yells on a Chaplin set, not even Mr. Chaplin. 

Chuck came over, in that exquisite ballet-dancer gait of his. Pleasantly he asked me, "What was that, m'love?" (Chuck called me "m'love" during all the twelve weeks we worked. It's his term for Annabella--in the picture.) ¹

So I explained. People who aren't geniuses get hungry at noon. Every other place I'd worked somebody like an assistant director yelled lunch, and there was lunch. 

Chuck thought it was a wonderful idea. He couldn't imagine why somebody hadn't told him about it before. So for the duration of the picture, I called lunch. And now that I think of it, maybe that's the reason the crew and other members of the cast used to insist that I come around to the set even on the days that I didn't appear in the script!

One of the first scenes I played with Chaplin called for a bit of tricky dialogue. As my hsuband he plays the role of a sea captain and greets me with a staccato sentence, involving sou-wester and every polysyllabic nautical term there is. He did the take perfectly--but I realized something that hadn't occurred to me before. 

Sublime master of pantomime that he is, Chaplin still finds the spoken word a new medium. He could have spared himself that tongue-twister--after all he wrote the thing, didn't he--but because it was right he kept the lines, lines for which he had to gather up a bit every time he saw them coming. Chaplin doesn't spare anyone, even himself. 

After a few days, Chuck asked me if I didn't want to stay and see the day's rushes.
We'd talk about the scenes and he honestly seemed interested in my reactions. And while we were talking, he taught me things about show business I'd never thought of before. He knows every trick of the trade.

One day I brought my three-year-old daughter, Melodye, down to see me work. I think Melodye's pretty special, but then, of course, I'm her mother. 

I'd known that Chuck liked and understood children because I'd seen him work with little Allison Roddan, who plays his son in Monsieur Verdoux. But after all, movie time is money and Melodye was told that she could look--but she must not be heard. 

Martha's daughter Melodye visits the set.

Melodye is smart but she can't read. So she didn't know that the quick-moving little man with the thatch of silver hair and kind, freckled hands was a great artist, alone in his field. She wasn't awed; nobody remembered to tell her. 

So we all knocked off for the afternoon, while Chuck and Melodye got acquainted. IT was the day when a nightclub scene was scheduled, and the dress extras and the Can-Can chorus and the waiters and orchestra stood around--at union wages--and watched the pair of them have a delightful time., playing pixy. Mr. Chaplin, who's quite an intellectual, believe me, was simple and unaffected as Melodye. It takes a little kid to be that way--or a big man. 

Chuck taught me a lot. He's a genius. But the nicest thing he taught me was that a genius can be a good guy.

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¹According to Charles, Jr. he also called her "Maggie" (her real name was Margaret).