refer to the gold chain she was wearing as looking like a royal
decoration. “The Order of the Golden Fleece,” she added laughingly to
the group of older people watching with her over Jackie’s recreation.
He stopped his hammering for an instant and quickly, with a look of
most eager intelligence, he lifted his eyes to her face.
“The Golden Fleece,” he repeated. “Oh, I know all about that. It’s what
Jason sailed after.”
I quote this to show the information already at the command of this
astounding lad. All I have heard from Chaplin and from others convinces
me, in fact, that his histrionic ability is accompanied by one of those
childish minds which work in all directions, which positively have to
be held back from learning too much.
One incident in connection with the production of “The Kid” throws
into relief Chaplin’s feeling for his small co-star. He was directing
the child in a particularly affecting scene when suddenly he turned to
Jackie’s father.
“You direct him--I can’t stand it!” he said, turning away quickly. The
child’s tears, even though histrionic ones, had been too much for the
high-strung, emotional Chaplin.
Charlie’s devotion to Jackie Coogan is explicable to me after one
glimpse of the child. So, too, are the words of a certain woman I know.
“There is something about that boy,” says the latter, “that always
makes me feel like crying. I don’t know why, for he seems so gay and
happy.” I myself caught in an instant that same touching, even solemn,
quality. What is it? Perhaps because in those wide childish eyes one
feels a wisdom brought from some other world and not yet dimmed by that
of this.
I feel that I can not bring my recollections of Chaplin to a close at a
point more deeply significant of his artist’s nature than the account
of my own preview of “The Kid.” When he finished with this picture,
attended as it was by his conflict with Mildred Harris, he was in an
abysmal state.
“Sam,” said he one day, “I wish when you have nothing else to do you’d
come over to my studio and look at my new picture. I’d like to get your
opinion of it--advice, too, if you have any to offer.”
“What do you think of it?” I asked him.
“Rotten!” he answered. “I’m awfully discouraged over it.”
I had heard such comments from him before on similar occasions, for by
the time that he has finished a story he has so completely lost all
sense of perspective that nobody can convince him that the production
has one glimmering ray of merit. Consequently I attached no importance
to this mood of his. Putting down his words to the divine discontent of
genius, I went over that very day with Gouverneur Morris to see “The
Kid.”
Even my prejudice in favour of anything that Charlie does did not
prepare me for this supreme manifestation of his artistry. Just as the
world was afterward to do, Morris and I laughed and cried and gasped
as the wonderful story unrolled before us.
As for Charlie, he looked at us unbelievingly. He simply could not make
himself understand that we were not feigning this appreciation.
“Charlie,” I said after it was all over, “if you never had done or
never should do another picture your name would go down into history as
the creator of ‘The Kid.’”
With that peculiarly eager, wistful expression of his he looked at me.
“You really think it’s good then?” he asked. “You’re not just saying
this to make me feel encouraged?”
“If you don’t believe me,” I answered, “I’ll call in a few others to
help convince you. I tell you,” I added, “let me do something, won’t
you? Let me give a dinner over at my studio and then we’ll show them
‘The Kid.’”
Very reluctantly he agreed. I thereupon sent out invitations, and I
don’t suppose there was ever a more brilliant constellation of names
represented at any Hollywood celebration than that afforded by this
preview of “The Kid” at the Goldwyn Studio. Among authors we had Sir
Gilbert Parker, Somerset Maugham, Elinor Glyn, Edward Knoblach, Mrs.
Gertrude Atherton, Rupert Hughes, Rex Beach, and Rita Weiman. Among
the many famous personalities of the screen were Elsie Ferguson and
Pauline Frederick. As this group began to concentrate upon the picture,
Charlie, who had been intensely nervous throughout the course of the
dinner, seemed stricken with terror.
[Illustration: JACKIE COOGAN
Now earning five hundred thousand dollars annually and not ten years
old.]
[Illustration: GEORGE FITZMAURICE
This most noted of artistic directors, guiding Wallace Reid (at piano)
through a scene in “Peter Ibbetson.”]
I have attended many previews in my life, but never have I seen
anything like the enthusiasm with which “The Kid” was greeted by these
distinguished people of pen and screen and stage. Tears streamed down
the faces of many of the women and some of the men. Shouts of laughter
were interspersed with cries of applause. Yet still little Chaplin
sitting here beside me, could not believe in the miracle of success.
“Do you really think they like it--are you sure it’s going over?” he
would whisper to me from time to time.
I doubt if he was convinced even after the performance when many of
the women went up and threw their arms about him and when even the men
forgot Anglo-Saxon reserve in their congratulations.
One amusing glint from this evening is struck by a word of Elinor
Glyn’s. During the course of the dinner she happened to tell us all
that she had never in her life seen more than one picture. But when at
the end of the evening a newspaper man present asked Mrs. Glyn how
she liked “The Kid” she answered with prompt soulfulness, “The finest
picture I ever saw in my life.”
I have no doubt that by this time she had persuaded herself of broad
facilities of comparison.
_Chapter Fifteen_
DOUG AND MARY
As I have already mentioned, Charlie’s closest friends in the film
colony are Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Regarding the former
of these two, I may say that I have never had the same opportunity to
observe him professionally as that which favoured me in the case of his
famous wife. It is natural, therefore, that I should think of him first
as the adoring husband.
That he is very deeply in love with Mary no one who sees them together
can doubt for an instant. Not by any means a self-effacing person, he
is nevertheless always trying to turn the spotlight upon her and her
achievements. Of the latter he is inordinately proud. It seems to me,
in fact, that he is almost as much in love with Mary’s pictures as he
is with Mary herself.
I recall that once I attempted to talk to him about a certain picture
of his. “You were splendid in that scene,” I began.
“Glad you liked it,” he interposed politely but carelessly. And then,
his eyes glowing at the approach of a really significant subject, he
asked, “Have you seen Mary’s new picture yet?”
I shook my head.
He looked at me almost reproachfully. “Oh, it’s great--best thing she’s
ever done!”
Feebly I tried to turn back the conversation into its original channel.
“You certainly were great in that scene with the----”
“Oh, yes, but Mary,” he interrupted again; “my how that girl does know
how! She has the sure instinct.”
Et cetera, et cetera. Regarding his wife’s superior talents, Fairbanks
is as consistently uplifted as a wall-motto. He is no less sensible
of those attributes of hers which are not directly connected with the
screen.
“Mary has so much common sense, hasn’t she?”--friends of the celebrated
pair have heard Doug say this time and again.
As to Mary, I have already stated my certainty that Douglas Fairbanks
represents the great romance of her life. To see her with him is to see
Mary at her best. She never calls him “Doug”--indeed, I have an idea
she doesn’t much like to hear his name thus shorn by other people--and
somehow into her utterance of that “Douglas” you find, no matter how
casual the speech, the way she really feels about him.
Mary Pickford, according to her most intimate friends, fell in love
with Douglas Fairbanks the first time she saw him--fell in love in
terms on which she had never known it. As years have gone by this
first mad infatuation has been directed by real understanding, by
the closeness of their professional interests--most of all by a
solemn gratitude on her part for the care with which he so constantly
surrounds her.
Only last October when Douglas and Mary came on to New York for the
openings of their latest pictures I had dinner with the two.
“Mary,” said I when for a moment Fairbanks left us together, “you’re
looking wonderful. It seems to me you are ten years younger than when I
last saw you.”
“Yes,” replied she, “and it’s all due to Douglas. He’s as wonderful a
husband as he is an actor. Always, always, his first thought is of me
and you know what that means to me.”
I did know. I remembered the gallant battling little figure of Famous
Players days, of how she had always protected others--her mother and
her family--and I was touched by the thought that now this great gift
of protecting love was hers.
When I first met Mary she was married to Owen Moore. Regarding this
marriage, Mack Sennett has told me an interesting story.
“Mary and Moore were working together in the Biograph when Griffith
and I were there,” said he, “and I don’t think they ever once thought
of each other in any sentimental light--not until the rest of us put
it into their heads. But you see it was this way: She was such a
sweet-looking girl and he was such a sweet-looking boy--Owen Moore
used to make you think of a kid whose mother had scrubbed his face and
brushed his hair and got him all tidy for school--well, altogether they
seemed to the rest of us so exactly suited that we got to teasing them
about each other. We’d go up to Mary and say, ‘Why don’t you and Owen
get more friendly?’ and then we’d go after Moore in the same way about
her.”
It will be seen from this that Mary’s first marriage was not a case
of spontaneous combustion. It represents only a girl and boy fancy
and that stimulated much after the fashion that brought Shakespeare’s
_Beatrice_ and _Benedict_ together.
One thing which always impressed me about this phase of Mary’s life
was that, no matter what the differences which severed Owen and her,
she always spoke of him with great kindness and affection. With him it
was the same. I never heard Owen Moore say anything of his former wife
which was not admiring. As to their differences, I have heard people
say sometimes that all would have been well had it not been for Mrs.
Pickford’s determined efforts to keep them apart. Even though this
original assumption were true, I do not share the conclusion. I do not
even ascribe the break to certain temperamental defects of Moore’s.
To me it is explained by Sennett’s story, showing, as it does, that
the match came through the prompting of others rather than through any
irresistible attraction.
Undoubtedly Mary’s romance with Doug has been sustained by their
solidarity of interest. He is as much immersed in pictures as she
is. He has also the same capacity for hard and regular work. I heard
several remark that when Doug and Mary got back from their famous visit
to Europe he walked around the Fairbanks lot looking as happy as an
American boy who has got back to baseball after a trying experience
with musty churches and interminable art-galleries.
“Nothing like system--a regularised life!” he confided at intervals to
those about him.
Socially Fairbanks is just as full of dash as he is on the screen. He
is a delightful mimic. He talks well and he talks with great emphasis.
Frequently he tosses off a phrase distinguished for verbal nicety or
real wit. For it must be remembered that Douglas Fairbanks brings to
his profession a much greater educational and cultural equipment than
the average screen performer.
Doug likes to surprise by his remarks. Occasionally when listening
to him I have had the feeling that he was opening one of those paper
favours--first the snap as he tears it apart and then the whimsical
paper cap. For example, he once said, “Yes, ‘The Three Musketeers’ was
all right, but there were two miscasts. One of them was _D’Artagnan_.”
Did he really mean it? Perhaps he did; perhaps he really thought, as
he afterward explained, that _D’Artagnan_ should have been a “thin,
spidery little fellow.” However, that one should have been in any doubt
is sufficient comment. Indeed, it must be admitted even by one who has
genuine respect for his big achievements and an equally genuine liking
for his personality that Doug sometimes has the air of saying things
for effect. Certainly he is more self-conscious, more mannered then is
Mary Pickford.
To grasp the essence of Fairbanks it seems to me that you must think of
“Sentimental Tommy.” As he works out his gigantic historical films he
is exactly like Barrie’s boy hero playing with _Corp_ and _Shadrach_
in the den. There is no doubt about it. He thoroughly believes that
he is in truth _Robin Hood_ or _D’Artagnan_. To him, therefore, work
is one long engrossing game of make-believe; and if “Sentimental
Tommy’s” “methinks”--that one magical utterance which changed the
entire atmosphere from the literal to the romantic--sometimes pursues
Fairbanks to the drawing-room one can forgive this self-dramatisation
to the man who has given us such unforgettable pictures of ages far
removed from our own.
_Chapter Sixteen_
RODOLPH VALENTINO
When in Hollywood about four years ago I learned to know by sight
a young man who frequently stood around in the lobby of the Hotel
Alexandria. He was very dark and slim, and his eyes had the sombreness
of the Latin. I was especially struck by the grace of his walk and
of his gestures. Even when he leaned up against a cigar-case he did
it with a certain stateliness, and you felt that the column of some
ruined temple overlooking the Mediterranean would have been much more
appropriate than his present background.
Quite evidently he was looking for a job. In fact, before I was
introduced to him I heard him approaching various people in the
industry.
“Anything doing to-day?” “Have you finished casting So-and-So?” “When
do you start shooting?” These questions, so familiar in the lobby of a
Hollywood hotel, were made more touching in his case by a very naïve
manner, by a slightly foreign accent. He always looked so eager when he
put the question and so disappointed when he got the answer.
Not long ago when I was in Hollywood I saw this same young man at a
near-by seashore resort. On this day he was in a bathing-suit, and he
was leading three police-dogs. The dogs were not a protective measure,
but certainly the scene that day might have warranted some sort of
guard. For as the young man walked out toward the waves, as the sun
shone on his swarthy skin, the hundreds of women and girls who had come
to Long Beach pressed onward for a more satisfactory glimpse of the
bather. And as they did so an awed whisper passed through the feminine
multitude.
“That’s he--that’s Valentino.”
In all film history, replete as that is with instances of meteoric
success, there has been nothing quite so swift as the rise of this
young Italian pantomimist, Rodolph Valentino. The beginning of the
breathless ascent may be traced to a reception given one afternoon by a
certain Mr. Cole, a painter living in Hollywood. To this reception came
Rex Ingram, then lately returned from overseas service in the Flying
Corps. Came also in company with Paul Troubetsky, Rodolph Valentino.
At this point I shall allow Mr. Ingram to tell the story just as he
related it to me one evening last Summer while we sat chatting on the
porch of Mae Murray’s and Bobby Leonard’s home at Great Neck.
“I was attracted at once by Valentino’s face and by his remarkable
grace of movement,” said Ingram, “and I made immediately a mental note
of him. There’s a fellow, thought I, who would be great in pictures,
and if I get my job of directing back I’m going to use him. I was
pretty confident then, you see, that this experiment was due for
the very near future. Little did I think that months--yes, almost a
year--would go by and find me just as idle as I was that day when I
walked into Mr. Cole’s reception.
“I wasn’t remembering much about Valentino in those days, I can tell
you. I was so poor that I had to hock all the civilian clothes I had
left behind me in my storage-trunks. This left me nothing but my
uniform, and the uniform proved, as it did to so many other ex-service
men, anything but a talisman. The only effect it seemed to produce
was to prejudice any possible employer against me. At last--of course
that’s the way it always happens--I had two jobs offered to me at
once. In the meantime, though, I had been obliged to give up my little
two-dollar room. In fact, when I got my double offer I was owing two
months’ rent for it.
“The job I chose was with the ----. No sooner had I started to work
than I discovered Valentino was on the same lot under Holubar. This
second contact with the young foreigner deepened my confidence that
he would be a great success on the silver-sheet, and when ‘The Four
Horsemen’ came along I thought of him immediately.
“Of course it was obvious that he was the exact type for the young
tango-dancer hero of the story. Even after I started work with him,
though, I had no idea how far he’d go--not at the very first. But
when we came to rehearsing the tango, “Rudy” did so well that I made
up my mind to expand this phase of the story. I did this by means of
a sequence in a Universal picture I had made several years before.
The sequence showed an adventurous youth going into a Bowery dive and
taking the dancer after he had first floored her partner. Bones and
marrow, I transposed this action to South America--yet only a few of my
wise Universal friends recognised it.
“This bit of acting not in the book gave Valentino a chance for one of
his showiest pieces of work. I rehearsed it very carefully for three
days right on the set, and I think the result showed it.”
At this point in the director’s story I asked him if he thought, as so
many people do, that Valentino was a mere flash in the pan.
“By no means,” rejoined he promptly; “he’s very ambitious and earnest,
and if he doesn’t take what the fans say too seriously he will live a
long time as a picture idol--provided, of course, that he is kept in
good stories and has a capable director.”
Here at this point I can not refrain from quoting the most famous
of directors on the subject of the present-day idol. In talking to
Griffith one day I asked him what he thought of Valentino.
“I declare I don’t know,” replied he; “all the time I was looking at
him in ‘The Four Horsemen’ I kept asking myself, ‘Is this fellow really
acting or is he so perfectly the type that he doesn’t need to act?’”
The existing impression that this famous novel afforded Valentino his
first part in pictures is erroneous. Not only had the young Latin
worked with Holubar, as Ingram mentioned, but he had been cast with
Mae Murray by Bobby Leonard. And, of course, he had rounded out his
experience as an extra. Had it not been, however, for Rex Ingram and
for the materialisation of a story so exactly adapted to his type,
Valentino might still be standing around in the lobby of some Hollywood
hotel--one of the thousands of young men and women whose hearts are
suffocating with that one cry, “The chance! If only they’d give me the
chance!”
“Hail, Czar of Hollywood!”--thus some woman addressed Charlie Chaplin
not long ago.
“Oh, no,” smiled Charlie, “that no longer. Valentino is the present
ruler.” And then he went on to say, “I like the fellow, you know. He’s
got a lot of colour and charm. I went around to see him the other
day and it just delighted me to see him stepping about on his thick
beautiful rugs among his gorgeous bric-à-brac and his incense-burners.
They seemed to suit him, you know, and he was so pleased with all his
new splendour--just like a child.”
There is Chaplin for you--always delighted with the colourful, the
pictorial, the thing which sets his imagination going.
In line with Charlie’s approval come the words of another man I know,
a man well-read, cultured, and charming. “Any one who thinks Valentino
is an illiterate young foreigner with a handsome face and a talent for
dancing is mistaken”--so protests this witness. “I know him well and I
am always interested in his comments on life and work. You’ve got to
remember that ‘Rudy’ doesn’t come from the lower classes in Italy. His
father was a scientist and his family connections are with professional
people.”
“The Four Horsemen” carried not only Valentino high into the ether
of popular success. Although Rex Ingram had made successful pictures
before this, he had never so thoroughly demonstrated his capacity for
that difficult union of finely knit narrative and sweep of vision as
did he in Ibañez’s masterpiece. To my mind the skill with which the
personal element is presented against the background of great epic
disaster places Ingram in the very foremost rank of screen directors.
As for Alice Terry, her rôle of the wife in the story afforded her
the first satisfactory avenue for that exquisite something which
differentiates her.
The story of Alice Terry has the same fairy-tale quality as Valentino’s
own. Like him, she had worked hard as an extra for many years, and the
hard work had resulted in little recognition. However, discouraging as
had been her experience, it was not without results. For Rex Ingram
happened to see her in New York when, as a girl still in her mid-teens,
she played with Bessie Barriscale in “Not My Little Sister.” The
promise which she gave impressed the young director almost immediately.
When, indeed, he moved from New York to the Coast he welcomed the fact
that she, too, had shifted from East to West. Had it not been for the
War, in fact, Alice Terry would probably have been his leading lady
some years before.
When Ingram on his return from overseas service finally located the job
which put a roof once more over his head and civilian clothes again
upon his back, he was to resume his slight acquaintance with Miss
Terry. For she came to his office then and applied for a position as
script girl, the functionary who, working on the set, chalks off the
scenes as they are made and notes the new ones extemporised.
[Illustration: RUDOLPH VALENTINO
The most talked-of personality the screen has ever known.]
[Illustration: MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Who journeyed from Paris to Hollywood for Mr Goldwyn.]
He looked at her in amazement. “What,” cried he, “you don’t mean to say
that you’ve given up acting, do you?”
She looked at him somewhat sadly. “Oh, dear, yes,” she replied. “I
did that some time ago. It was too discouraging--I wasn’t getting any
place, you see. No matter how hard I worked nothing seemed to come
of it. And of course being an extra or getting some bit now and then
doesn’t keep you. So I decided I’d just get a regular job.”
“And what have you been doing since?” inquired Ingram.
“I’ve been working in the cutting-room,” replied she, “and that was
fine--I mean it was fine--knowing just what you were going to get each
week. But the ether commenced to get into my lungs and that’s why I’m
looking around for something else.”
Ingram promised to give her the desired position in the picture
following “Shore Acres.” However, something changed his plans and
instead he cast her for a wild and woolly Drury Lane melodrama called
“Hearts Are Trumps.” To his surprise she seemed loath to accept this
chance of returning to the screen.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to try--I’ve given it all up, you see,” she kept
protesting in a way that showed how completely previous discouragements
had shattered her self-confidence.
But he finally succeeded in overcoming her fears, and since then she
has been his leading woman in every story except “Trifling Women.” It
was not, however, until the appearance of “The Four Horsemen” that
Alice Terry, the girl who, heartsick from her discouragements on the
set, had wanted to retire to the comparative obscurity of script work,
won the wide recognition which her beauty and her screen personality
had so long deserved.