Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles today at noon, on his return
from Europe. I met him at dinner. We were just a party of four at the
Lehrs. It has been a wonderful evening--I seem to have been talking
heart to heart with one who understands, who is full of deep thought
and deep feeling. He is full of ideals and has a passion for all that
is beautiful. A real artist. He talked a great deal about his trip to
England. It had been, I gathered, one of the big emotions of his life.
He left, as he said, “poor and unknown” to return 10 years later
famous....
What made a great impression on him was the psychology of the English
crowd, which seemed to him to contain such a spirit of real affection.
Of course Charlie is English--and England was welcoming her own.
Besides, who has more right to public adulation than this man who has
brought laughter and happiness to millions? But it was sad, he said,
in England--something had happened, or was happening. He was not sure
if it was a decay that had set in, or whether it was a reconstruction.
But everyone looked as if they had suffered, and it saddened him to be
there. A good country to belong to, we agreed, but not a country “for
a creative artist,” he advised me to remain where I am. And then, in
spite of his emotional, enthusiastic temperament, with a soundness of
judgment that surprised me, he said: “Don’t get lost on the path of
propaganda. Live your life of an artist ... the other goes on--always.”
One can see, in the sadness of the eyes--which the humor of his smile
cannot dispel--that the man has suffered--has known things we do not
dream. Has striven, hoped and aimed. Has reached his goal, yet he is
not content. He feels there is more to do, and see, and know, more to
attain. He believes in work and in producing always the best of one’s
effort. He is not Bolshevik nor Communist, nor Revolutionary, as I had
heard rumoured. He is an individualist with the artist’s intolerance
of stupidity, insincerity, and narrow prejudice. He is sincere and
absolutely without affectation. He has no illusions as to what the
bourgeois world thinks of “movie actors--” and he has no intention
of being patronized by the condescending. He has an almost feminine
intuition about people, he knows at once if they are sincere or not.
Before the evening was over we had discussed Lenin, Lloyd George,
Carpentier, J. M. Barrie, and H. G. Wells. I found that he had each
person pretty well summed up, and his opinions of them were not biased
by the world’s opinion of them, nor clouded by their fame; and just
what he thought (of those I knew) was right. In fact Charlie was a
great deal more interesting to talk to than most of the people who are
expected to be.
When he asked me about my work in this country, I explained that the
United States had made of me a writer instead of a sculptor, and I told
him my view of the American man who is so modest that he thinks it is a
vanity to have his bust done.
“He does not mind having his portrait _painted_” I said, “he has
grown accustomed to the idea. But he exaggerates the importance of a
portrait bust. In fact he is quite un-simple, in his point of view,
almost self-conscious--” and Charlie, looking at me half shyly, half
humorously, as he sat tucked away in the sofa corner, under the light
of the lamp: “I’m vain!” he said--“Thank goodness!” I said. And so we
fixed it right away--that I will linger here until his bust is done.
On the way back to Hollywood Hotel where he dropped me in his car, we
had a discussion on marriage. He has the chivalry, and the instinct to
protect, I maintained my fanaticism of freedom.
He is a strange little man with a great big soul. He made me think of
Francis Thompson’s essay on Shelley, in which he said that Shelley
tired not so much of a woman’s arms, as of her soul. It seemed to me
it was more a spiritual than a physical companionship that Charlie is
subconsciously searching for, in his heart.