SOMEWHAT DIGRESSIVE
From the old Biograph Stock Company they graduated, scenario writers as
well as actors; and here and there they went, filling bigger jobs in
other companies, as actors, directors, and scenario editors.
And as manager and head director of the Kinemacolor Company went David
Miles. Directly upon leaving Biograph, Mr. Miles had spent a short time
at the “Imp” with Mary Pickford and her family, King Baggott, George
Loane Tucker, Gaston Bell, Isabel Rea, and Tom Ince. Leaving “Imp,” he
had gone over to Reliance. While at Reliance, and in need of a handsome
young juvenile, there came to mind his friend Gaston Bell.
Mr. Bell already was signed up for a ten weeks’ stock season in
Washington, D. C.; with “Caught in the Rain” by William Collier and
Grant Stewart, as the opening bill; Julia Dean, the leading lady; Mr.
Bell’s part that of the dapper Englishman, the Grant Stewart part. Mr.
Miles suggested that Gaston play the needed juvenile in the Reliance
Company’s movie while rehearsing the opening bill of his Washington
stock season in New York, and promised a good movie job when the
Washington season ended. Said he’d rush him through at odd hours, so as
not to interfere with rehearsals, and finish with him in time for the
opening.
Well, everything went along fine, and for the last scene Gaston
reported beautifully arrayed in a new spring suit purchased especially
for his stock opening.
Suavely spoke the director, “Now, Gaston, we have saved this scene for
the finish--we must take you out somewhere and run you over.”
“Take-me-out-and-run-me-over?--in my beautiful new suit? Oh, no, you
can’t.”
But no one heeded Gaston’s distress.
Everybody piled in the automobile--after a couple of turns it landed on
a quiet street. “All out.” The car emptied--camera was soon set up and
Mr. Bell shown the place where he was to be run over.
These were amateur days in fake auto killings and injuries, but they
did the “running over” to the director’s satisfaction and Gaston’s, as
he escaped with no damage to his clothes or himself.
But Gaston had reckoned without a thought of static. How many hours
of anguish “static” caused us--static, those jiggly white lines that
sometimes danced and sometimes rained all over the film. Early next
morning his ’phone rang--Mr. Miles on the wire. “Awfully sorry, Gaston,
but we’ll have to take you out and run you over again because there
was static.” So they did it again, and again was Gaston dismissed as
finished. It came close on to train time: another ’phone--ye gods,
static again! He’d be bumped from juvenility to old age in this one
running-over scene, first thing he knew, and hobble onto the stage
with cane and crutch, which would never do for his precious little
Englishman in “Caught in the Rain.”
Well, they ran him over again. This was Saturday. The following Sunday
the company was to leave for Washington. Thinking to cinch things, Mr.
Miles offered, should anything be wrong with the scene this last time,
to pay Mr. Bell’s fare to Washington and his expenses if he would stay
in New York over Sunday. “Wildly extravagant, these picture people,”
thought Mr. Bell, as he departed for Washington with the company.
But no sooner was he nicely settled in his hotel, “static” and “being
run over” quite forgotten, and all set for his opening--when a long
distance came. Mr. Miles on the wire: “Awfully sorry, Gaston, but there
was more static and we will have to take you out and run you over
again.” And before Gaston had time to recover from the shock, the movie
director and his camera man were right there in Washington!
“Good night,” said Gaston, despairingly, to himself. But to Mr. Miles
he said, “Now I’ll tell you what you have to do, you must have another
actor handy to go on for me to-night, for I cannot take any more
chances.”
Well, they took the scene another time, ruining neither Mr. Bell nor
his grand new suit, and as this time the scene was static-less, the day
was saved for Gaston. But “never again” vowed he. And “never again”
vowed the director.
David Miles kept good his promise and when Gaston’s season in
Washington closed, he joined Reliance. There he and George Loane Tucker
soon became known as the “Hall Room Boys.” For in an old brownstone
they shared a third floor back--also a dress suit. And if both boys
happened to be going out into society the same night, whoever arrived
home first and got himself washed up and brushed up first, had the
option on that one tuxedo.
The hall-room days of George Loane Tucker were brief. “Traffic in
Souls,” the white-slave picture that he produced for Universal, put him
over. An unhappy loss to the motion picture world was Mr. Tucker’s
early death; for that truly great picture, “The Miracle Man,” his
tribute to the world’s motion picture library _de luxe_, promised a
career of great brilliance.
Mr. Tucker had come rightfully by his great talent, for his mother,
Ethel Tucker, was an actress of note and a clever stage director also.
As leading woman in stock repertoire at Lathrop’s Grand Dime Theatre
of Boston, she had a tremendous popularity in her time. And long years
afterward, she too went into “the pictures” in Hollywood, for a very
brief period.
Mr. Tucker’s “Miracle Man” brought stardom to its three leading
players, Lon Chaney, Betty Compson, and Tommy Meighan.
Tommy Meighan’s leap to fame was surprising to both friends and family.
For Tommy had been considered, not exactly the black sheep of the
family, but rather the ne’er-do-well. During the run of “Get-Rich-Quick
Wallingford,” both being members of the cast, Frances Ring, sister to
the lustrous Blanche of “Rings on My Fingers” and “In the Good Old
Summertime” fame, had married Mr. Meighan, Tommy becoming through this
matrimonial alliance the least important member of the Ring family of
three clever sisters, Blanche, Frances, and Julie. An obscure little
Irishman, Tommy trailed along, with a voice that might not have taken
him so very far on the dramatic stage.
Like weaving in and out the paper strips of our kindergarten mats is
the story of the Ring sisters and Tommy. For Los Angeles beckoned, with
Blanche headlined at the Orpheum, Frances in stock, and Tommy playing
somewhere or other.
Blanche and her husband, Charles Winninger, a member of her company,
were invited by Louise Orth for a week-end out Las Palmas way. The
week-end proved very significant in results; for through their hostess,
who was leading woman at the Elko Studios, a meeting between Mr.
Winninger and Mr. Lehrman was arranged the next week which led directly
to Charlie’s signing on the dotted line at the fabulous salary of two
hundred and fifty dollars a week--to do comedies. But Charlie’s pale
blue eyes did not register well enough on the screen, and the comedy
note in his characterizations thus being lost, the good job just
naturally petered out.
Then Miss Ring, who had now taken over one of Los Angeles’s show
places, on the Fourth of July gave a party--a red, white, and blue
party at which were gathered more notables than had as yet ever been
brought together at a social function in Los Angeles. It was Broadway
transplanted. There were David Belasco, Laura Hope Crews, Charlie
Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Julian Eltinge, Geraldine Farrar, Jesse
Lasky, Mr. Goldwyn, Wallace and Mrs. Reid, Mr. Morris Gest, then
representative for Geraldine Farrar and Raymond Hitchcock, who viewing
from the back piazza the distant lights of Los Angeles was supposed to
have said something when he remarked, “This reminds one of a diamond
bar pin.”
It was an illustrious and patriotic party. Before the festivities were
over, Mr. Gest unwound the maline scarf from Miss Orth’s neck while
Charlie Chaplin sang the Spring Song, and Mr. Gest danced on the lawn
waving the scarf and crushing the slimy snails that in droves were
slowly creeping up to the house.
The party was illustrious in that it was here voted that Tommy Meighan
would photograph well in pictures, and Mr. Lasky invited him to the
studio and offered him, perhaps, fifty dollars a week, and he made a
hit in his first picture with Geraldine Farrar and was then given a
substantial raise. At which Blanche, the astounded sister-in-law said,
“And to think that at times I’ve had to support that Irishman.” There
had been enough job uncertainty to discourage her, so that she had
wondered sometimes whether she would have him on her hands for the
rest of her life. Even after Mr. Tommy Meighan’s advent into pictures,
sister Blanche rather expected, every now and then, that he would be
“canned.”
And so Tommy evolved from a liability into an asset, and became the
idol of innumerable feminine hearts. It was a colorful paper mat the
Ring family wove.
* * * * *
While out at the Elko studio Charlie Winninger, with all his brilliant
and sustaining background, had so disastrously flopped, at Mack
Sennett’s studio another Charlie was very busy thinking out stunts that
would make people laugh. For the more people laughed, the more dollars
could Charlie Chaplin add to the savings for the rainy day, against
which, if he ever got the chance, he would make himself fool-proof.
For, so I have been told, Charlie Chaplin had known rainy days even
when a youngster. He was only seven when, in a music-hall sketch, he
made his first theatrical appearance. Later, he toured for some time
through the United Kingdom as one of the “Eight Lancashire Lads.” There
was an engagement with “Sherlock Holmes,” and then the association
with Fred Karno in “The Mumming Birds.” To America with Mr. Karno he
came, appearing as _Charlot_ in the now famous “A Night in an English
Music-hall.” When he debarked he was far from being the richest man on
the boat.
The movies claimed him. He was discovered by Mack Sennett in this
way. Mr. Sennett at this time was busy on the lot out in Los Angeles.
He heard of a funny man in an act called “A Night in an English
Music-hall” playing at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre, which used to
stand at Broadway and Forty-second Street, now replaced by the Rialto
Motion Picture House. Mr. Adam Kessel and Mr. Bauman, the firm for whom
Mack Sennett had nightly warmed the Alexandria’s leather benches in
the hope of landing a job, and for whom he was now producing comedies,
were both in California, and so in September, 1913, a wire was sent to
Charles Kessel, brother of Adam, to go over to Hammerstein’s and get a
report on the comedian about whom Mr. Sennett was so anxious.
Mr. Charles Kessel, the secretary of the company, heartily approved of
the comedian, who was none other than Charlie Chaplin. He thought so
well of him that he sent a letter asking Chaplin to come in and see
him. This Mr. Chaplin did. Mr. Kessel asked him how’d he like to go
into moving pictures. Mr. Chaplin answered that he had never given them
any thought.
Said Mr. Kessel: “I’ve seen you act and like you, but you needn’t make
any assertions now, nor any answers, but go out and make inquiries as
to Kessel and Bauman and if you think well enough of them, well then
we’ll talk.”
Mr. Chaplin found out that the firm was O. K. So Mr. Kessel said: “I’ll
give you a contract for a year and gamble with you--I’ll give you the
same salary that you’re getting on the stage.”
“One hundred and fifty dollars,” said Mr. Chaplin quickly. He really
was getting sixty dollars. “All right,” said Mr. Kessel so quickly that
Charles as quickly swallowed his Adam’s apple, and regretted he hadn’t
said more.
“But I don’t think I care to change from the stage to the pictures.”
“Well, our contracts are for fifty-two weeks, no Sunday work, no
intermissions between pictures; in vaudeville you get thirty-two weeks
and you pay your own traveling expenses.”
Mr. Chaplin said he’d make up his mind and let Mr. Kessel know.
So in about six weeks a letter came from Mr. Chaplin from Omaha saying
he was ready to start. The contract was mailed December 19, 1913, and
signed January 2, 1914.
“Mabel’s Predicament,” a one-reeler, was Charlie Chaplin’s first
picture. “Dough and Dynamite” the first two-reeler. Mr. Chaplin’s
success was instantaneous. It also must have been tremendous, for the
Keystone Company (Kessel and Bauman) within five months dared to do a
comedy five reels in length. When the five-reel comedy was announced,
there were many who thought that now surely the picture people were
going cuckoo. No one believed an audience would stand for a _five-reel
comedy_.
They did. The picture was “Tillie’s Punctured Romance,” adapted
from the Marie Dressier play, “Tillie’s Nightmare.” Marie Dressier
was engaged for the picture and for fourteen weeks she received the
unbelievable salary of one thousand dollars weekly and fifty per
cent of the picture, which, released in June, 1914, was one of the
sensations of the picture world.
All sorts of offers now began coming to Mr. Chaplin. Carl Laemmle
was one who was keen to get Charlie under contract; he kept himself
informed of Mr. Chaplin’s activities even to the social side of his
life so that he would know when and where best to set the bait.
Out at Sunset Inn, a place by the ocean where movie people then
made merry, Charlie Chaplin was to be one of a party. Mr. Laemmle
being wised up to it, gave a party of his own the same night, a most
expensive and grand party. Well, he would have Charlie’s ear for a
moment anyhow, and one never could tell.
The party in full swing, Mr. Laemmle invited Mr. Chaplin over to his
table, and after a few social preliminaries said, “Let’s talk business;
I want you to come and work for me.” But Mr. Chaplin, always a clever
business man, answered, “I’m enjoying myself--I don’t want to talk
business to-night, I’m on a party.”
Mr. Laemmle was all set to secure the services of the rising young
comedian, so he would not be daunted. Charles could talk “party,” but
_he_ would talk “business”; Mr. Laemmle offered a little better salary;
promised to advertise Chaplin big, and make him a tremendous star.
But Mr. Chaplin was too clever for Mr. Laemmle. With a most sweet smile
he turned to one of Mr. Laemmle’s guests, Louise Orth of the corn
yellow hair, and said, “Gee, that’s great music; I like blonds, and I
am going to dance with a blond, may I?”
It _was_ great music, about the first syncopated music with a saxophone
heard in that neck of the woods. There was a great horn into which
the dancers, if they desired an encore, threw a silver dollar. There
needed to be five particularly anxious dancers to get the expensive
orchestra to repeat an orchestration. The dollars clicked down the horn
into a sort of tin bucket on the floor below, and the loud jangle of
the silver money could be easily heard by the dancers who would listen
attentively for jangle number five, and then “On with the dance.”
As the music finished for the first dance this night, the dancers
stopped and with much excitement waited for the click of the silver
dollars. Charlie Chaplin was out for a big time; also he wanted to
worry Mr. Laemmle, and, one thing sure, he was not going to talk
business this night. So he was the first to say, “This dance is worth
an encore,” and he threw a silver dollar into the horn.
It was perhaps the first time Mr. Chaplin had been known to spend money
in public either for food or music, for every one was so tickled and
flattered to have him as a guest that he never was given a chance to
spend money. So Charlie’s Chaplin’s silver dollar nearly caused a riot
on that dance floor. The guests hooted and screamed and those who knew
him well enough and had been given stray bits of confidence, called
out, “You cannot plant your first dollar now because you’ve spent it.”
And Mr. Chaplin answered, “Oh, don’t you worry, I planted my first
dollar some time ago.”
Mr. Chaplin could never squander money; memories of lean days inhibited
him from doing that. But he must hold off Mr. Laemmle; and he was
enjoying the dance.
Two other dollars had joined Charlie Chaplin’s first one, and clicked
their way down the yawning chasm of the brass horn, and then a pause,
but just for a second. Grabbing his blond partner, Mr. Chaplin threw
the two needed dollars into the horn’s hungry maw, and the moaning
saxaphone started off again while Mr. Laemmle looked sadly on. He never
did secure the screen’s greatest funny man.
In six months Charlie Chaplin’s rise to fame and fortune was
phenomenal. Not only had a kind Providence richly endowed him, but he
worked very hard, as genius usually does. Even back in those days, Mr.
Chaplin often began his day making excursions with the milkman. From
the cold gray morning hours of three and four until seven, the two
would ramble through the poor districts, and while the milkman would
be depositing his bottle of milk, Mr. Chaplin would hobnob with drunks
and derelicts, and in the later hours, talk with the little children of
the slums, drawing out a story here, getting a new character there, and
making the tragic humorous when finally the story was given life on the
screen. The story of “The Kid” as Mr. Chaplin and Jackie Coogan told
it, was nearer the truth than any audience ever guessed.
* * * * *
The ups and downs of the movie world!
Mack Sennett all dressed up and grouching on a leather settee in the
hotel lobby, waiting for his prey! He would not be handed dry, old
sandwiches all his days. He was out for steak, red and juicy. He got
there and has stayed put.
Henry Lehrman patting his inflated chest! He got there, but stayed put
the littlest while.
Charlie Chaplin, who topped them all, working while others slept, out
on excursions with the milkman!
Tommy Meighan of the genial smile and Irish red-bloodedness. He got a
chance, and the ladies liked him. Nice personality, and good actor,
even so.
Not alone in the movies is it easier to get there than to stay there.
Chance sometimes enters into the first, but to stay there means ears
attuned, feet on the ground, and heaps and heaps of hard work.