Part 9

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.

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.