Chapter IV: Part 4

At this time we were just on the point of moving our studio from Fort Lee to California. This involved, of course, moving Miss Frederick. A gentle theory this, but its execution threatened danger. For Miss Frederick was devotedly attached to her husband and he was playing in New York.

I am not overrating the emotional pressure of this situation. Compared to Pauline Frederick Mrs. Micawber gave a wavering brand of devotion. She never would desert Mr. Mack--not for an hour. I have related that the first time I talked to her regarding a change, I found her in her husband’s dressing-room. This was no coincidence. It was a habit. After working hard all day on the set, she spent every evening back of the scenes with Mack.

In consideration of such strongly marked feeling on her part I obviously was compelled to do something about Mack. The fact of it is that, far from wanting him on the basis of agreeable surroundings for his wife, I was most anxious to shift him from theatrical work to our organisation. A playwright of skill, an actor of experience--why should I not have supposed that he would be a valuable addition to the Goldwyn Company?

The position which I offered him finally was head of the scenario department. Although he was making more on the stage, he accepted my appointment at five hundred dollars a week, for the salary was accompanied by the promise that if he made good I would raise his salary and give him a long-term contract. He started his new duties in the Fort Lee studio and they were achieved so satisfactorily that we transferred him together with his wife to the California establishment. Thereby hangs a tale.

In the old days when Zukor and I used to exchange confidences regarding our respective disagreements with various screen performers, he was always emphatic in his praise of Pauline Frederick. “Now, there’s a girl that anybody could get along with,” he would say. “Easy to handle, likes her stories, always on time on the set.” So consistent were his comments on the model star that I looked forward to Miss Frederick’s presence in my studio much as does a motorist to a stretch of glossy asphalt after innumerable rough detours.

Alas for such expectations! By the time that “teacher’s pet” reached me she had begun to share some of the characteristics of less exemplary performers. That this was so may be traced chiefly to her husband’s position in the studio. For it was on the question of scenarios that I found her most captious.

“I don’t like this story!” she would say to me after reading something that I had considered especially suited to her.

“What don’t you like about it?”

She was always able to assign a reason, but underneath this alleged objection I discovered gradually the vital source of prejudice. The rejected scenario had not been written by Willard Mack!

There was, too, another cause for the beautiful star’s departure from that ideal course of conduct hymned by Zukor. In the Summer following my formation of the Goldwyn Company I had engaged Geraldine Farrar. The latter and Pauline Frederick met in the Fort Lee studio. From that time forth the business of picture-production became more complicated.

“Of course,” Miss Frederick would say, “this story is nothing so good as the one you’ve given Geraldine Farrar.”

Miss Farrar, on the other hand, seemed to assume that Mack’s position in the editorial department gave Pauline a decided advantage in the choice of scenarios. Between two such fixed and divergent view-points there was only one course to steer. This was a Machiavellian one.

“I don’t like this story,” began Pauline one day.

“Very well,” retorted I equably, “we’ll give it to Miss Farrar. She wants it badly.”

Mysteriously, magically, these words seemed to overcome my star’s objections. She not only took the story, but ran away with it.

Meeting with such marked success in one direction, I was encouraged to extend the application of my guileful principle. The very next story, I showed Miss Farrar I accompanied with the confidence that Pauline Frederick was crazy to get it. Magic again! Here was the one scenario at which my prima donna never demurred.

The passage of time has enabled me to smile at such incidents. Then, however, I was less susceptible to the humour of the situation. This was hardly strange. For here was I attempting to do a big, constructive piece of work and at every turn I was met by trivial jealousies, trivial obstructions.

The worst of it is that the star’s warfare against a scenario does not end the struggle. Once he or she has been persuaded of its merits the director is next called in. Often, of course, this personage thinks that the one obstacle in his career of authorship is lack of time. Consequently when the drama is put into his hands he starts to rewrite it. The result is that before long star, director, and editorial department are embroiled in a long and bitter conflict. Naturally, in these days of which I am speaking the case was appealed to me by each of the combatants.

The wear and tear of all this are felt by the scenario as well as by the producer. Is it any wonder that of the original story bought by the editorial department, perhaps one idea survives the general assault? For by the time that you have wheedled your actress into accepting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” the director decides that a goat possesses infinitely greater revenues of humour. Then the editorial department, conceding the goat, insists on an alteration in the type of heroine. She becomes “Hildegarde, the girl with a punch.” After this everybody thinks up so much business for the goat while he is on the road that, of course, he never gets to school at all. He probably lands at Coney Island or, better still, in the lobby of a fashionable hotel. Of one thing at least you may be certain: the terminus will be some place where Hildegarde can wear all her latest Paris gowns and wraps.

If I had really submitted “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to some of my stars I think it would have been accepted more readily than many more mature dramas. For Mary was very young, and if there is one thing upon which the average screen performer insists it is a youthful part. In real life she herself may be the mother of an eighteen-year-old girl. No matter! On the screen she must appear “teenful.”

I remember one such experience in connection with Pauline Frederick. She had read a story in which she was very anxious to appear. The heroine of that story was a girl in her teens. Mr. Lehr had a long talk with her in which, as gently and diplomatically as was possible, he pointed out that such an extremely youthful rôle would accentuate rather than diminish the discrepancy between her own age--not that this was formidable--and that of the screen heroine. She looked a little crestfallen at first. Then with a very sweet smile she yielded.

“Ah, well,” she sighed, “I suppose you’re right!”

One of the most amusing bases of rivalry in my studio was that of orchestral accompaniment. A word of explanation is required at this point. When Miss Farrar first came to make pictures for the Lasky Company we provided a small orchestra for her inspiration on the set. This unprecedented luxury, now an almost universal feature behind the screen, was thereupon exacted by other performers. Furthermore some of them did very accurate bookkeeping on the subject.

One day Pauline came to me with a very injured expression. “I’m not pleased!” announced she.

I believe I managed to act as if I were meeting an entirely fresh situation. “Well, well,” asked I, “what’s the trouble now?”

“Why, it’s this: How can you expect me to do my best work--I ask you--how can you expect it? I have only one violin--one poor little violin----”

“But, Miss Frederick,” I interrupted her, “you had no music at all while you were with Zukor. How about that? Yet you were doing your best work there.”

She reflected for a moment, and I saw then that I had not reached the root of the matter. This was quite evidently the fact that Geraldine Farrar had two or three violins. I tried to point out that the latter’s operatic tradition demanded this excess of string stimulation, but I was not successful. The number of pieces each actress should have became, in fact, one of those absurd bones of contention on which I, as a producer, was compelled to throw away much vital energy. Finally my studio became a three-ring band. When I entered it in the morning I wandered from the jazz selections which were toning up Mabel Normand’s comedy to the realm where sad waltzes deepened Pauline Frederick’s emotional fervour. The circle was surrounded by the classic themes infolding Geraldine Farrar. It was hardly strange that outsiders used to gather every day to share in these free airs.

When not guarding her studio rights Miss Frederick is the most delightful of women. I have told in a previous chapter of her gift of getting along with only a few hours’ sleep. This same vitality sparkles in every look of her eyes, in every sentence she utters. It leads her to a deep interest in literature--she is one of the best-read women I have ever known--and to a hundred phases of human activities outside her own province. Altogether, a magnetic and bracing and colourful human being!

_Chapter Twelve_

A MARRIAGE OF TWO MINDS

While I was having difficulties with Pauline Frederick I was not enjoying an untroubled business relationship with the star whose supposed advantage she so much resented. Earlier in my story I have told of how Geraldine Farrar’s first invasion of our field brought to our ears nothing but delighted comments on her director, her stories, and her general environment. Sadly I am now compelled to ascribe this first fine, careless rapture to her inexperience in pictures. For when she came to work for the Goldwyn Company she had acquired enough information about the screen to make her critical of stories, directorship, and various other production details.

Now, too, a personal element in her life contributed to her attitude toward pictures. For since she worked on the Lasky lot she had married Lou Tellegen.

At the same time that Pauline Frederick was discontented with any scenario not written by Willard Mack, Geraldine Farrar was discontented with any leading man who was not Lou Tellegen.

The second Summer of her engagement with us we deferred to this longing. We brought Mr. Tellegen on to play with his wife. He did more than that. He frequently played against her.

About this time, I believe Mr. Howard Dietz, the brilliant young chief of my publicity department, gave out an interview with Tellegen to the effect that he was delighted to be back in pictures, particularly when under such ideal conditions and when they afforded him the opportunity of playing with Miss Farrar, who “was as excellent an artiste as she was a wife.” This sentiment warranted a smile from those who saw how he embraced that privilege.

To be concrete: While they were playing together on a set Tellegen would frequently try to arrogate to himself the most advantageous focussing of the camera.

He was apt to become sulky if this campaign was frustrated, and, seeing this, we hit at last upon a harmless method of humouring him.

“Take him that way,” we whispered to the director, “and then we’ll throw away the negatives. The ones we’ll keep will be those where Farrar is played up.”

He was almost equally insatiable of “close-ups.” “You haven’t made a single one of me yet,” he would complain after a careful computation of his wife’s advantages in this respect.

And she, the beautiful Farrar, hitherto so much the conqueror in love--did she realise the rivalry, the antagonism back of these efforts? She certainly did. Time and again she tried to bring him into the conspicuous position he so much desired. When she failed her look was all for the pain of his hurt, not for that which she might so reasonably have felt at such an attitude on the part of a beloved human being.

Tellegen did not seem much more appreciative of her off the set. Often when they were lunching together, for example, you overheard some teasing reference on his part to the fact that she was some years older than he. She never replied angrily to such remarks. Indeed, the general criticism of her behaviour was that she was entirely too nice for him.

“Watch him! He’s as sure of her as he is of the ice-man coming around. Why doesn’t she make him wonder a little?” So remarked one of a group watching the famous pair as they sat together one day in the studio café. The objection was well taken. Geraldine was bending toward her husband with her accustomed look of rapt absorption. She was talking to him eagerly with a frequent flash of the perfect white teeth. He, on his part, was silent, absent-minded, even a little sulky. When he answered her at all it was in monosyllables.

Time and again, in fact, studio folks beheld this metamorphosis of the romantic and ardent lover of another California Summer into the indifferent husband of this. And when it came time for the great prima donna to leave, what a saddening contrast to that former day when Tellegen had run madly beside the train bearing his love toward the East! A recent Summer Miss Farrar stood beside her special train. The fourteen personal attendants she had brought with her were running hither and thither with her baggage and possessions. She, however, seemed to know nothing of what was going on around her. For Lou Tellegen stood before her, and she was looking into his eyes.

At last, just before the train started, she threw her arms about him. All her dread of separation was in that embrace. You could see what it meant to her to leave him even for a few weeks. And he? Listlessly, with hardly one responsive gesture, he stood encircled by his wife’s arms.

Yet such apparent indifference never seemed to quench the fire kindled by that first glance of Tellegen’s on the Lasky lot. It was almost unbelievable--the reckless lengths to which she, this careful, methodical business woman, was driven by one despotic emotion. I am giving now what was perhaps her most tempestuous departure from usual standards.

During her second Summer with the Goldwyn Company, she had insisted 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.

The foremost figure of the entertainment world. The best known of all artists.]

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.

While he was thus occupied the friend I have mentioned happened to 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.

Now earning five hundred thousand dollars annually and not ten years old.]

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.