that her husband’s name appear on the bill-boards in connection with
her own. For some reason, however, the requested mention of Tellegen
did not appear. When Farrar became aware of this omission, what did she
do but take an automobile all through Los Angeles and tear down with
her own hands every offending poster. I admit that I was infuriated.
She, when I called her up over the phone, was scarcely more serene, and
for some time it was a case of Farrar _versus_ Goldwyn.
At this moment she was in the midst of a second picture, and she made
prompt use of that advantage. “Very well,” she threatened, “if you will
not feature Mr. Tellegen’s name I am going to stop work right in the
middle of this new picture!”
“All right,” retorted I, “you do that and I am going to show the first
part of the picture and then announce on the screen that at this point
Madame Farrar would not proceed because the producer did not feature
Lou Tellegen’s name.”
Lost to all consideration of business values as she then seemed, this
threat succeeded. She went on with her story.
Strange is the parallel experience of those two rivals of the Goldwyn
studio, Geraldine Farrar and Pauline Frederick. For each is now
separated from the man for whom she once so turbulently set aside her
own interests. Nor does the parallel stop there. Lou Tellegen was at
the very most only a moderate film success. The good looks which first
caused such a flurry among the feminine portions of his stage audiences
never carried well on the screen. Likewise, in a different sphere,
Willard Mack failed to live up to his stage tradition. His stories
were never really good picture material, and to Pauline Frederick’s
insistence upon appearing in them I ascribe the fact that her Goldwyn
dramas were not so successful as those made by Mr. Zukor.
She herself slowly awoke to such realisation. In those California days
when her New York romance with Mack was beginning to ebb--and it did
ebb rapidly--she saw her mistake. But it was then a little too late.
My memories of the great Metropolitan opera-singer close with the year
1919 in a way that reveals the bigness, the sweep of mind and spirit
that distinguish Geraldine Farrar. At this time I had a contract with
her providing a salary of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars
for twelve weeks of annual service. The contract had still two more
years to run when, very regretfully, I went to Miss Farrar and asked
if she did not think it might be better to stay off the screen for
a year. Gently as I could do so I added that very often a star’s
popularity went under a temporary eclipse and that a limited absence
from films did much to restore the public demand.
The reason back of this difficult approach was, of course, that lately
her pictures had not been drawing. She was prompt to perceive my
meaning, and with head up she took it.
“Very well!” said she promptly in her familiar tones that are both
flowering and incisive. “Only don’t you think that perhaps it would
be better to quit entirely? If you think so, say so, Mr. Goldwyn, and
we’ll tear up the contract now and here.”
It was hard to tell her, but I did, that I thought this course might be
wiser for us both. Thereupon, without another word and with the most
gallant look in the world, she destroyed the contract which meant two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Of course she saw that it was infinitely better to be remembered by the
pictures of her prime than to go on to a lustreless close. Here was
another evidence of that reliable business judgment which nothing but
her infatuation for Tellegen ever dimmed. But even though self-interest
might have pointed to this conclusion, her utter lack of resentment,
her failure to voice a single reproach of me, made this an experience
absolutely unique in my career.
My valedictory regarding Madame Farrar is that her word is as good as
her bond. This characteristic fits in with that business morality which
makes her hate to lose a single hour of her time. I never knew anybody
with a keener sense of responsibility to the clock. When she first came
to make pictures with the Lasky Company we provided her with a room in
the studio where she could practice her music. The Goldwyn Company made
the same provision for her. In this way she utilized the long waits
between sets.
More than this. Every day of her time was so arranged months beforehand
that not a break occurred in the links of industry. On the day that she
stopped grand opera she started to make records for mechanical players;
from her records she went straight to California, and the day that she
returned from California she went on a concert tour. This programme
went on for years.
I have already indicated that the prima donna’s last pictures were not
a financial success. Fully conscious of the surprise that this later
information may create in the minds of many people, I am going to add
that even her first films, executed when she was in the prime of her
beauty and at the height of her operatic fame, were not dazzlingly
remunerative. Her “Joan the Woman,” a great artistic achievement,
brought no commensurate financial returns. The fact of it is that
Geraldine Farrar’s chief value to the picture-producer lay in the
publicity she brought rather than in the films she sold.
Not for a moment does this fact reflect upon the great Farrar. If
reflection there be at all, it is upon the small town where, as I
have asserted, some obscure little motion-picture actress may have a
following which the world’s greatest singer can never hope to enroll. I
can not emphasise this point too strongly.
_Chapter Thirteen_
THE REAL CHAPLIN
Although I had heard much of Charlie Chaplin from various friends we
shared in common I did not meet him until after I had been in the
industry for two years. That first sight of him surprised me as much as
it always does those who know only the familiar comedian of the black
moustache and baggy trousers. A slender fellow; smooth-shaven; waves of
crisp black hair; dark blue eyes that have that peculiar smoky quality
of the Autumn hills--here is the catalogue of his outward self. But of
course you can not compress into a catalogue the charm of his face.
There is a charm there--even beauty. In this connection, indeed, I
remember Chaplin’s telling me laughingly that his mother once protested
indignantly at his make-up.
“Why do you want to make yourself look hideous,” said she, “you who are
so beautiful?”
But although his contours are satisfactory and his eyes exceedingly
handsome, the real interest of Chaplin’s face lies in its perpetual
and sensitive absorptions. He seems always listening. Even when he is
talking most animatedly he is watching you, wondering about you, quite
evidently trying to fit you and your words into some pattern. When you
yourself are talking, you get the full force of this vivid listening.
Mack Sennett has often spoken about this characteristic message of his
face as it was revealed to him during Chaplin’s first studio days.
“He’d sit there for hours,” records Mack, “just staring at people. I
couldn’t make out what he was thinking about.”
Since that first meeting of ours acquaintance has developed into a
friendship which I certainly count one of the privileges of my life.
From that friendship it is hard to detach myself for an objective
survey of the gifted pantomimist. Even had I not been so close to him I
should find formidable the task of analysis. For Chaplin is a maze of
contradictions, and no sooner have you affixed to him any one attribute
than lo, the next moment has swept it away!
Chaplin loves power--as no one else whom I have ever met he loves
it. Money contributes to this sense. Therefore he sticks out for his
large contract and therefore he saves a great deal of his earnings.
But it affords him just as much consciousness of power to think that
he, Chaplin, can afford to walk away from those assembled actors and
stage-hands. Ergo, he does that.
I have often been asked if Chaplin is amusing when away from the
screen. He is--thoroughly so. His mimicry is delightful. His dancing
is perhaps even more so. To see Chaplin improvising a London street
scene with William de Mille; to hear him deliver the speech of a
Jewish manufacturer at a banquet where he had been presented with
a loving-cup; to watch his imitations of some fashionable rhythmic
dancer--at one of these last performances he carried a cuspidor as a
Greek vase and concluded by deftly catching it in the crook of his
knee--such are the memories of Charlie treasured by those who know him.
I always like to think of the day when he got back from Europe. He
came straightway to my office to see me, and I never heard anything so
infectious as those descriptions of his triumphal tour. When he came to
the story of his decoration with the Legion of Honour he reached a high
peak in that imitative narrative of which he is such a perfect master.
Yet here again you are faced by another of those contrasts which
bewilder the biographer. There are certain days when, instead of
drollery and pungent narrative, he presents a well of unfathomable
silence. On such days he runs away from his studio and from
everybody. For hours he will sit motionless in his room. Or perhaps,
starting off alone, he will wander into an orange-grove or tramp
through the hills around Hollywood.
[Illustration: CHARLIE CHAPLIN
The foremost figure of the entertainment world. The best known of all
artists.]
[Illustration: RUPERT HUGHES
Now as ardent a screen director as he is an author.]
He suffers at such times--undoubtedly. But make no mistake. The
blackness of the universe, the torturing puzzle of existence, which
sometimes engulf so many of us, are never repudiated by Chaplin. He
does not desire madly to lose himself in somebody or something apart
from his own life. He would not in his most tortured moment shift
places with the merriest. No, for the blackness is his blackness.
And what he wants is experience, no matter whether that be happiness
or pain. This hunger for a high measure of sensation is found in his
horror of old age. With a kind of fierce rebellion he looks into a
neighbouring glass at the streaks of grey in his hair. “Ugh!” he will
shiver. “To think the time is coming when I shan’t be young any more!”
His reaction to life is, you see, intensely personal, intensely
emotional. Nothing is more persuasive of this than is his interest in
certain impersonal topics. Chaplin loves to talk about government and
economics and religion. Mention of a new “ism” or “ology” brings him
loping from the farthest corner of a room. When Rupert Hughes came out
to Hollywood he and Charlie were much given to what somebody calls
“topics--just topics.” Nothing could have been more illuminating.
While Hughes conducted his side of the discussion in a spirit of
dispassionate inquiry, the less scientifically trained mind of the
comedian struck out with a poet’s frenzy at everything which he did not
like. One could see it was not really abstract truth which he desired.
It was the theory which most successfully represented his own prejudice.
His prejudice is against anything which interferes with his
own personal freedom. The censor, the income tax, any supposed
obstruction--these are hateful to him in the degree to which they
infringe upon that coveted sense of power.
One day when I first came to know Chaplin well, he was with me in my
apartment at a Hollywood hotel. While we were talking the telephone
rang. Charlie looked terrified.
“What do they want you for?” I asked exceedingly amused.
“A guest,” he answered with a grin. “Mrs. X---- asked me for dinner
to-night. I promised I’d be there and then found out she had asked a
whole lot of people. So you won’t catch me going.”
This was my introduction to Charlie’s most notorious social failing.
Often thereafter I witnessed his struggles against being taken into
custody. Less frequently I was one of a group of indignant people
waiting for a Chaplin who had promised to come and never did show up at
all.
Not long ago a friend of mine asked him why he so hated to make or keep
an engagement.
“I don’t know,” answered Charlie. “I suppose, though, it’s because I
hate to feel that I have to do anything at a certain time. It just
destroys my pleasure in doing it.”
At this my friend suggested, “Ah, Mr. Chaplin, but don’t you think that
is because ’way down deep you don’t feel quite free? The person who is
conscious of real freedom doesn’t fret at any such superficial bondage.”
He looked at her eagerly, delightedly--just as he always does when
confronted by a new theory. “Why, I never thought of that, but I
believe it’s true,” he assented. “You see,” he added, “when I was a
young boy I never was free. I was always the one who had to stay at
home. My brother Sydney didn’t hang around as I did. He went off to
Australia.”
Then for the first time I suspected what was responsible for Charlie’s
love of power. Those early years of his in London when, the son of poor
vaudeville artists, he experienced hunger and tragedy and the constant
terror of the next day, have driven far into his brain. No prosperity
can quite rid him of fear. That is why he wants to assure himself in
every way of his present strength. For what is it but fear which makes
a man conscious always of the thickness of his armour, the sharpness of
his weapons?
There was one engagement of his which Charlie did keep. When Claire
Sheridan, the English sculptress, came to California she expressed
immediately a desire to meet Chaplin. My friend Abram Lehr thereupon
invited the comedian to a dinner given for the handsome author of “From
Mayfair to Moscow.”
“And don’t you dare fail me this time!” admonished Mr. Lehr as he
proffered the invitation.
Charlie not only obeyed; he obeyed in a dinner-coat. From the first, so
Lehr reports, the two seemed entirely satisfied with each other, and
that occasion led to the friendship upon which Mrs. Sheridan dwells so
glowingly in her “American Diary.”
Charlie is well liked by the average woman. Indeed, most people are
attracted to him. Why should they not be? His drollery, his quick and
vivid response to the moment, his friendly, boyish smile, the manner
which makes you feel at first meeting as if you had known him all your
life--these would lead the usual person to pick him out in a roomful of
distinguished people. And all this quite apart from the glamour of his
reputation.
He makes another appeal. The first time I ever met him I felt sorry
for him. The humour of it, that I should want to help him--this young
charming Fortunatus--struck me almost at once. But I could not help it.
Afterwards I found that nearly every one else shares this feeling.
Of course exactly the same thing is operative on the screen. For
Chaplin owes his supremacy as much to the tears as to the laughter of
the multitude.
This pathos of his comes from an enduring isolation. He is, and I think
always will be, a lonely figure. Beloved by many, applauded by all,
he is merely with--never of--the crowd--not though he gives it back
gesture for gesture and laugh for laugh. Not misleading, the look of
listening which so much impressed me the first time I met him! For
early in life Chaplin took his seat in the parquet of life and ever
since he has been watching the rest of us actors unfolding our drama.
Do not be deceived because sometimes he vaults over the footlights
and behaves just like the performers. Even when he is at his merriest
pranks, even when he is talking most confidentially and affectionately
to his friends, he is still the onlooker, detached from the rest of us
by I know not what fastnesses of spirit.
The most intimate of Charlie’s friends in Hollywood are Douglas
Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. He goes over to their house frequently,
and the three talk pictures hard and fast. Chaplin, of course,
frequently sees in the creations of the other two an opportunity for
characteristic suggestions.
When, for instance, he saw the moated castle in “Robin Hood” he said
to Fairbanks: “Wonderful, Doug! Just think what I would do with that
drawbridge on Sunday morning! I’d let it down so I could take in the
Sunday papers and the milk-bottles and then draw it up tight so that
nobody could get at me all the rest of the day.”
One time I asked Charlie who was his favourite screen actress. “I
think Mary Pickford,” he answered unhesitatingly. “You see there’s a
wonderful quality about her--it’s that more than her acting.”
Unlike almost every other screen actor, Charlie does not work from a
script. When he starts a new story he is apt to come into his studio
and say, “Build me a kitchen and a dining-room.” He has at this moment
perhaps only the germ of an idea. But day by day he develops it, and as
he does so his scenario-writer puts down each scene. This method has
often been described, and I touch upon it here only for its value in
revealing his psychology. A scenario would undoubtedly irk him as much
as would a social engagement. Always, always, Chaplin must be assured
that he is free, that his individuality has scope for its spontaneous
play.
His emotionality is never more apparent than when he is at work. Often
he becomes exhausted in his efforts to inspire one of his company with
the desired emotion. “Heavens!” he will cry, “It’s enough to break your
heart--such stupidity!” When he sees the rushes, anger and despair are
apt to break from their leashes and run away with the projection-room.
Often, however, these emotions are directed quite as much toward his
own part in the performance as toward that of others. Charlie has, in
fact, that capacity for being dissatisfied with his own work which is a
part of every great artist.
The world at large does not seem to know much about Charlie’s brother
Sydney. Yet he is a very real brother and Charlie has a very real
affection for him. He himself is an excellent comedian with only
one disadvantage--he is the near relative of a great comedian. This
relationship, I may add, could never be detected from a casual glance
at the two, for Syd Chaplin is rather tall and rather blond and his
features are much more sharply cut than are those of his brother.
Syd, by the way, possesses a very ready wit. Once when dining with Mary
and Doug he listened to the latter’s statement that the costumes for
“Robin Hood” had cost a hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars.
“Hmph!” commented Syd, “I should call that ‘Robbin’ Doug.’”
It was after completing his $670,000 contract with the Mutual
Film Company that Charlie made with the First National Company a
million-dollar deal calling for eight two-reel pictures. This did not
sound difficult. The comedian expected to complete the order in a year.
Instead, he has only just recently finished the last of the National
Film pictures.
_Chapter Fourteen_
JACKIE COOGAN AND “THE KID”
The few superfluities which appeal to Charlie Chaplin must have some
association of romance. For example, he is very fond of mangoes, and
every evening that a certain Los Angeles café has this delicacy the
manager calls up Chaplin’s house. When Charlie sits down in front of a
glass of this exotic fruit he is positively radiant.
“Lovely musty odor!” he will comment. To him the delicacy calls up
visions of long-robed, wide-sleeved Eastern men, of caravans winding
threadlike across the desert, and of incense rising in fretted temples
from the feet of golden gods. Every bit of him goes out to meet this
glamourous suggestion just exactly as every bit of him goes out to meet
the broad, rollicking humor of the derby pulled off by the string.
Domesticity does not fit into my conception of his character. He is
too individual, too much oppressed by threat of routine, to sustain
any such close relationship. One can as easily imagine De Musset
or Verlaine mowing the front lawn of his suburban home as Chaplin
responding contentedly to like conditions.
My association of his name with these two great French poets is not
accidental. For Chaplin is not a mere comedian. He is a poet--the
great poet of the screen. His fierce rebellions against man-made
fetters which would trammel the individual soul in its progress toward
complete expression, his sensitiveness to impression, his strange
combination of emotionality and complete detachment--these ally him
in spirit with the youngest and fieriest of bards. Surely, too, his
professional achievement is consistent with this spirit. For Chaplin
has brought from the borderland of the subconscious mind those emotions
which he sets before you. In that single small figure with the baggy
trousers and the flopping shoes he reveals the loneliness and frailty,
the lurking irresponsibility, the fears and aspirations--all the
intermingled pathos and humour of the universal soul.
“Shoulder Arms,” for example. Here Chaplin bears for you the real
Everyman at war. Stripped of his bombast and fine speeches, of the
brave front which he presents to his fellows, the soldier stands stark
before you. It is a poet’s realisation of those things buried beneath
the surface of garb and manner and every-day speech, and it is all of
a poet’s concrete expression of them.
One evening while I was dining with Chaplin in Los Angeles a very
smartly dressed woman leading a small boy by the hand entered the
restaurant. The moment that the latter caught sight of the comedian he
rushed over to him and threw his arms about Chaplin’s neck. There was a
look of rapture in the big brown eyes which I have never forgotten.
After the enthusiasm of this greeting had ebbed away Charlie introduced
the pair. It was Jackie Coogan and his mother. When they had moved on
from our table Chaplin turned to me.
“There’s a boy you ought to have,” he commented. “He’s a great actor.”
Possibly Chaplin never shone more brightly in any human relationship
than he has in his association with Jackie Coogan. The tremendous love
and tenderness which he expressed for “The Kid” on the screen had, in
fact, a source of actual feeling. He really loved and does love this
small boy. As to the latter, I have already indicated in my account of
his greeting how touchingly Jackie returns this affection.
If you ask the tiny star to-day who is his best friend his answer is
prompt: “Charlie Chaplin.” Equally loyal is the professional sting he
gives to his friend. One day somebody asked him who was the greatest
living actor.
“Charlie Chaplin, of course,” he retorted.
“And who is the second greatest?” persisted his interviewer.
“Jackie Coogan,” he answered with all the serenity of the critical mind
that is unshaken by any personal consideration.
“And the third?”
“Oh,” said he, obviously somewhat impatient with the doggedness of this
research, “I have told you the two greatest. What does it matter about
the third?”
Even in that first casual greeting with this gifted boy I was struck by
the perfect unconsciousness which sets Jackie apart from the ordinary
stage child. He didn’t seem to realise in the least that he was a
famous personage, and I hear that it has been kept from him always--the
enormity of his earnings, the fact that he, a lad not quite eight
years old, has already earned almost a million dollars. Certainly that
evening he was just a kid radiant at seeing the grown-up who had played
games with him much more absorbedly than any other small boy could have
done. Indeed, I have always been told in Hollywood by people who knew
the Coogans well that he is first of all a real boy possessing perhaps
even more than the average boy’s affinity with dirt.
Not long ago a friend of mine dropped in to see the small star. It was
during the production of “Oliver Twist,” and the set was pre-empted
by some older members of the company. For a time Jackie, attired in
blue overalls, listened to the director’s voice and watched the rival
talent. Then, going over to his father, he caught the other’s hands and
looked up appealingly into his face.
“Oh, Daddy,” he pleaded, “I’m not getting any kick out of this. Mayn’t
I go outside and play?”
When this permission was granted Jackie availed himself of an
opportunity to assemble his favourite playthings. These consist of a
hammer, some old nails, and a plot of ground outside the studio. Here
for half an hour the juvenile actor, who might recruit the most costly
electrical toys--these have been showered upon him by people all over
the world--squatted on the ground and hammered his beloved nails into
stray pieces of wood.