Doug and Mary and Charley almost made Broadway forget to curse the
landlords.
The wildest crowd I have seen in New York since Armistice Day was the
gang that jammed into Forty-second Street the day that Fairbanks’ movie,
“The Musketeers,” opened. Taxi cabs had to stop a block away and let the
passengers fight their way into the theatre if they could.
I saw two girls shove Jack Dempsey out of the way to get a look at Doug
and his wife. They just dug their little elbows into the illustrious
ribs of the Champ, and rough housed him to one side out of their line of
vision. I guess the Fairbanks family can consider this to be about the
summit of human fame. I once saw a big crowd run away from a reception to
the President of the United States, leaving that august personage talking
to the empty air in order to see a heavy weight champion; but I never
imagined that anything could take a crowd away from a champ. Compared to
Doug and Mary as rival attractions, Dempsey was nothing but a broad back
that was difficult to see around.
I’m telling you the truth, children. The day that Doug and Mary went to
Boston, the crowds lined the railroad track at every station as though it
were the Royal Mogul passing by.
Charley Chaplin didn’t register very heavily—except in the newspapers.
The truth is painful, but must be told. Charles was lost in the shuffle.
It wasn’t “his stuff” as the newspaper men say.
The night the show opened, Douglas, finding it hard to make a way through
the crowd, picked Mary Pickford up on his shoulder and bucked his way
through like a football half back. Charley couldn’t very well pick up
Jack Dempsey on his shoulder so he played second fiddle.
I don’t know what’s the matter with Charley. His divorce suit must have
been a shattering experience. His hair is growing gray around the edges,
and his nerves seem on the raw edge. One day he was being interviewed by
a gang of reporters in his suite at his New York hotel, and nearly chewed
off the head of one of the newspaper men who asked him with what American
he compared Lenin, the Bolshevist.
Without warning, Charles tore into the reporter and handed him a
cutting rebuke for his stupidity. He talked scornfully about “you
Americans”—which is poor stuff for Charley.
To tell the truth, I thought he was going to cry. And I guess he wasn’t
far from it. Charley told me afterward that his nerves are in such a
condition that he weeps at the slightest excuse.
He should have taken a lesson from his former bride, Mildred Harris.
One of the actors told me about the weeps of the former Mrs. Chaplin.
Not long ago she was working in a picture under one of the De Milles.
Finding her exasperating, the director lost his temper and fairly lashed
her with his tongue. Through the tirade, Miss Harris calmly kept on
“making up.” While he was generally going over her sins of omission and
commission, she was carefully penciling her eyebrows, looking sidewise
into the mirror, the way they do. When he got down to purple-faced
bellows of rage, she was going over her lips with the lip stick. When he
was generally giving an explosive review of the ground he had already
covered, the lady was giving a final dab just over her eye lids. Having
given herself a final and critical survey in her pocket mirror and
finding the job was worthy of her O.K., she proceeded softly to cry
at the director’s remarks. She believes in taking up things in their
systematic and proper rotation.
Chaplin speaks bitterly of his married life and at the same time glares
with melancholy rage and dismay at his first gray hairs. The first time
the newspaper photographers took his picture on his arrival in New York,
he asked them with alarmed solicitude to retouch the plates so his gray
hairs would not show.
The movie people in New York feel somewhat dismayed because of Charley’s
interview with a British newspaper man regarding Fatty Arbuckle and the
killing of Virginia Rappe in San Francisco.
The disposition of the movie actors on Broadway is to pile the guilt of
every movie scandal that has occurred since the beginning of time upon
Fatty’s robust shoulders and let him sink.
I was amused, however, when “Pathe” Lehrmann rushed into the New York
papers after the killing and raved for a couple of columns upon the
deplorable condition of Fatty’s morals in relation to women. It seems
that “Pathe” was engaged to the deceased young lady. He is now Owen
Moore’s director at a studio in this city.
Among the several things, that “Pathe” says about Fatty Arbuckle is
that Fatty used to clean spittoons in Arizona. “This,” remarks “Pathe”
witheringly, “Is what happens when we take people out of the gutter and
make them millionaires.”
Well, maybe so; maybe so. But I have a distinct recollection of “Pathe”
Lehrmann before he got into the Rolls-Royce class.
In an east side lodging house, Lehrmann is not so very convincing as the
one to stare coldly at Fatty across the cold chasm of class inferiority.
As far as Fatty Arbuckle goes—Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well! He is
neither the frightful monster painted by the agitated Herr Lehrmann, nor
yet the “clear white inside” person described by the emotional ex-husband
of Miss Harris.
Fatty is an ignorant fat boy with a natural impulse to be funny. As a
clown, he is there a million. As a millionaire, he is about as convincing
as a louse on the shoulders of a decollette heiress. He just doesn’t
belong there.
As to the spittoons of the Arizona saloon, well, somebody had to clean
’em. I hope he cleaned them well.
It was Fatty’s misfortune that he was not able to hush up his scandal as
the scandal of Zelda Crosby was hushed up recently in New York.
Zelda Crosby was a young scenario writer. When she was about fifteen
years old she happened to be invited to a jazz party given by a well
known movie star in New York. One of the guests at the party was a
“fillum” magnate known over the world for his campaign for purity, etc.,
in the films.
He took the little girl under the protection of his influence. She
developed a flare for writing and he gave her an important job as a
scenario writer.
* * * * *
This row of stars means the usual thing that they mean in romances.
Well, after a while, the girl, who was now in her twenties, realized that
he was slipping away from her. She accused him of having met another girl
for whom he cared more than for her. Incidentally, he was a married man,
but that didn’t count.
The film magnate renewed his protestations to her; but began to find
fault with the quality of her scenario work. Then one day the little girl
went into the bath room and tipped up a bottle of poison and that was the
end.
Well, not quite the end. A girl friend of hers began to talk at a party.
She began to tell some very dangerous things she knew of. It happened
that this girl’s name is the same as that of a great screen star.
In a panic the film magnate heard what was said at the party. He hurried
off to the astonished star a telegram threatening openly to ruin her
entire screen career if she ever opened her mouth again about this
scandal. Her indignant reply disclosed to the magnate that he had sent a
telegram to the wrong girl by mistake.
Then, brethren, there was truly a fine howdydo, and it all came out in
the papers—at least some of it did.
One young man—a journalist hanging on the ragged edge of decency, stated
that he had some inside facts and intended to bring the whole thing out
in a grand jury investigation. But he never got to the grand jury and
the whole thing was suddenly hushed up. I leave it to you to imagine
what happened.
It looks like a rotten year for the theatre business—and perhaps for
other business.
At this writing there is not one legitimate show in New York doing any
business. “Six Cylinder Love,” a comedy about a family which buys an
automobile before they can really afford to do so, is supposed to be the
one big hit of New York and it has already been forced to take blocks
of its tickets over to the reduced rate ticket office to be sold at a
discount.
Already, with the season hardly started, the beach is strewn with wrecks.
One month, after the opening of the season, some nineteen shows had gone
broke and had been taken off.
To be honest about it, I think most of the nineteen richly deserved it.
For some unaccountable reason, nearly all the shows are infernally talky
this year. The curtain goes up on a pair of people who gabble at you over
the footlights until you have the blind staggers. When they—and you—are
groggy, another pair take up the talk fest. Nothing ever happens but
chatter. This is supposed to be the new “literal” and “realistic” school.
The high brow authors contend that their characters gabble over nothing
for hours in real life; therefore, they should gabble by the hour about
nothing in mimic life. By the same token I dare say they will show them
putting hair lotion on their bald spots and trimming their corns and
performing the other manifest, but not thrilling or interesting, duties
of life.
If we are going to be realistic, b’gosh let’s be really so.
One of the few real successes of the theatre season is a coy and refined
young comedy for the pure and young; it is called “Finding Gertie’s
Garter.”
Al Woods, the promoter thereof, cheerfully admits all the rough things
the papers and the preachers say about it. Al says that last year he
listened to the critics who spurred him on to do his duty toward art and
refinement. Result, he lost $75,000 on two high-brow plays. Hereafter, he
is for bedroom farces “first, last and alla time” as politicians say.
Which brings us to Irving Berlin, the song writer who is just about to
blossom out as a producer with a beautiful theatre of his own.
Irving began where Fatty Arbuckle did—or nearly there. He was a waiter
and song shouter in a tough cafe on the East Side.
In Berlin’s case, however, he went steadfastly to work and began writing
songs. At first he sang his own songs in the cafe; then he got them
published. Now he is a millionaire and has the additional distinction of
being one of the men who were engaged to Constance Talmadge before she
was carried off by a fascinating Greek millionaire.
In fact, Irving was the last of the jilted ones. He got his dismissal
from Connie down in Florida. When he came back nursing bruised and
broken love hopes some one asked him about the climate in Florida.
“Fine air I hear, Irving?” said the friend.
“Yes” said Irving, “And I got the air.”
* * * * *
Oh, Cholly!
Gwendolyn—“This is my beau’s birthday, but I don’t know what present to
give him.”
Susie—“Give him a book.”
“But he already has a book.”
“Give him a box of cigars.”
“But he doesn’t smoke.”
“Give him a case of Near Beer.”
“But he doesn’t drink.”
“Well, if that’s the sort of guy he is, you’d better send him a kimona.”
* * * * *