A Woman Clippings 37/72
Harry C. Carr, Photoplay, New York, August 1915.
The Jitney Bus
Words by Edith Maida Lessing, Music by Roy Ingram
Chicago, 1915, Margaret Herrick Library,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Part 1
„By making the most of the little subtle effects“
Editorial content. „Charlie Chaplin´s Story
His Stage Career and Movie Beginning
By Harry C. Carr
Drawings by E. W. Gale
The first part of the story of Charlie Chaplin – in the July
issue – was a record of his early career as narrated
to Mr. Carr by Mr. Chaplin. Part III – In the September
Issue, will describe his experiences at the Keystone
studios, where he became famous.
Part II
After he became old enough to be a ,regular actor,‘
Charlie Chaplin didn‘t find the going very easy.
The irony of his fate was that, after all his training
by his mother for the career of a legitimate actor,
the only direction in which he really scored was in rather
rough comedy. His success, however, was in the
quaint touch that he brought to what had formerly been
pointless horse play.
Chaplin tells his friends that he knocked around from
pillar to post on the stage in England – sometimes
in one job, sometimes in another. He says that he was glad
to eke out a bare living. Most of the time he was working
in burlesque and pantomime. He ascribes his success in the
pictures to the early training that he got under the great
English pantomimists.
About 1910, Fred Karno put on a variety act called
A Night in a London Music Hall. It concerned the adventures
of a very badly spiflicated young swell in a box at a music
hall with the boxes at one side of the stage. The tipsy young
swell sat in one of these boxes. He tried to ,queen‘
all the beautiful ladies on the music hall vaudeville bill. Several
times he climbed over the edge of the box onto the
miniature stage. Most of the time, he was either falling into
or out of the box. The swell had to do about a million
comic ,falls‘ during the progress of the sketch, it was very funny
and ended in a riot of boisterous mirth.
In England, the part of the tipsy young person was
taken by Billy Reeves, a well known comedian who is now with
the Universal Film Co. The sketch made such a hit
that Karno finally decided to send it over to the United States.
Reeves proved to be a riot here and Karno organized
and sent over a No. 2 company to tour the Western States.
Charlie Chaplin was employed to head the No. 2
company. His salary was $50 a week.
Chaplin often tells his friends of his adventures when
he first arrived in the United States. It is enough
to say when he first looked upon us as a nation, he decided
that he would not do. He didn‘t think anything of us
that we would enjoy remembering.
Chaplin says that shortly after arriving in New York, he went
to a show in a vaudeville theatre. It happened that some
vaudeville actor was giving an imitation of an English Swell –
or at least what he thought was an English swell...
a regular Bah Jove one... one of these remarkable creations,
the like of which really never lived on earth. Chaplin,
who is a very serious person, was deeply offended. To say
he was peeved at this reflection upon his countrymen
is putting it mildly. As the sketch went on, Charlie got so indignant
he couldn‘t stand it any longer. He rose in his seat and
started a public protest. He never got any further than ,Oh I say,
there,‘ when some of his loving friends grabbed him
and removed him from the place before the janitor got a chance
to cave in his now celebrated countenance.
Charlie likes America now. He confesses that he finally
returned to England at the head of his No. 2 Night in a
Music Hall company and found that he had outgrown England.
He cheerfully admits that England couldn‘t see him at
all. The English are peculiar as theatre audiences. They cling
to the old favorites and resent new comers taking their
places. So Charlie, after vainly tumbling around on the stages
of his native land, exclaimed to his companions,
,For God‘s sake let‘s get back to the United States where
they know about us.‘
Chaplin‘s western tour was a huge success. He played
the Sullivan and Considine Circuit on the Pacific Coast.
To tell the truth he was simply a riot. In Los Angeles especially,
he made an immense hit. The word flew around the
,wise alleys‘ to ,go over to the Empress and see that drunk,
He‘ll kill you sure.‘ Chaplin made a special hit with
other theatre people. His rough comedy had in it a touch
of real thought and superiority and earnestness
that was recognized as something different. Every drunken
fall showed the planning of a fine brain.
Owing to the manner in which the word was passed
around among Theatre people, Chaplin was well
known to actors and to moving picture people around the studios
of Los Angeles for sometime before he went into the
business.
The year after he played his Night in a London Music
Hall, he came back to the Western States in another
sketch called The Wow Wows. In this he again took the part
of a swell drunk. In fact all Chaplin‘s early successes
were drunken ,dress suit comedies.‘
The Wow Wows was only fairly well received
and the following years he came out again in the London
Music Hall.
By this time, his sketch had become one of the most
famous in ten-twent-thirt vaudeville. During this third
year some one of the Baumann and Kessel people who own
the New York Motion company conceived the idea
of getting Chaplin to come into moving pictures. Mack Sennett,
who heads the Keystone Comedy Company was
consulted and approved of the idea. He was delegated
to sign up Chaplin.
Chaplin was then getting $75. Sennett called on him
at the Empress Theatre and offered him a prodigal
raise; he offered Chaplin a year‘s contract at $175 a week.
Chaplin was nearly scared to death.
A Los Angeles friend tells about it: ,One night Charlie
stopped me on the street and told me about the
offer. He was excited and didn‘t know what to do. He said
he was afraid to try as he didn‘t think he would make
good. The money, though, was a terrible temptation. He filled
and backed for a while, but finally decided to sign.
He was largely influenced to do this by the contract. I remember
that he kept saying, ,Well, you know they can‘t fire me
for a year anyhow. No matter what a flivver I make of it, they
will have to pay me my salary for a year anyhow.‘
Charlie played out his vaudeville engagement and went
out to the Keystone. He felt about as sure
of himself as a man going up in a flying machine.
To make this story right, our young hero should have
gone out to the Keystone and scored a triumph; but,
alas, the facts are agin him. His first days at the Keystone were
anything but happy ones. They didn‘t understand him
and he didn‘t understand them. Chaplin had been carefully
trained along the lines of English pantomime. He
found the silent drama a la American to be utterly different
in every particular. They didn‘t get effects the same
way. American comedy was, in those days, a whirlwind
of action without any particular technique. Charlie
was more shocked than he had been at the vaudeville actor
who mocked his countryman.
From all accounts he and the lovely Mabel Normand,
now the best of friends and the warmest admirers of
one another, got along about as well as a dog and cat with
one soup bone to arbitrate. He told Mabel what he
thought of her methods and Mabel told him a lot of things.
In those days Charlie used to come wandering
back of the scenes at the theatres as lonesome as a lost soul.
He was ready to chuck the whole business.
,They won‘t let me do what I want; they won‘t let me work
in the way I am used to,‘ he complained. His first
pictures for the Keystone were not much of a success. In one
of them he appeared in the part of a woman. Chaplin
was mis-fit in the organization. The directors couldn‘t understand
his particular style of comedy and things were going very
badly. Chaplin‘s did not fit into the Keystone comedies. A play
has to be especially built up to Chaplin‘s style.
Chaplin was a very likable chap, however, and was very
popular with the other actors. He was modest to a fault;
they liked him because he didn‘t try to hog either the film or
the scene. Also in a shy way, he taught them a lot.
In those early days, the art of the comic fall was not
well understood. The Keystone policemen were half
the time in the hospital. Actors suffered more casualties than
the German army. Chaplin had had a thorough training
in ,falls‘ from the trained English pantomimists. He knew exactly
how to do it. He very generously passed on this
knowledge to the sore and suffering Keystone police force.
The hospitals were the poorer thereby.
Also, the Keystone people began to see there was
something in Chaplin‘s methods worth studying.
Chaplin, on the other hand, began to adopt the American
film methods.
He never made a real success however, until Mack
Sennett let him direct his own comedies. Sennett is a very keen
judge of character and he saw that if anything was
to be had out of Chaplin, it must be had in Chaplin‘s own way.
He reconstructed the organization to enable Chaplin
to direct his own comedies.
Sennetts‘s decision brought into being the quaint
character with the little stubby moustache, the big
shoes and the cane that is known wherever motion pictures
are known.
Chaplin‘s first picture with the Keystone company
was a little comedy sketch called A Film Johnny. It was taken
at the first cycle car races given in southern California.
Chaplin had the part of a picture fan who was always wandering
out in front of the cameras that were trained on the
race. His part was merely intended to ,carry‘ the motion
pictures of a race.
A good many of Chaplin‘s earliest pictures with the
Keystone were of this character; he was used to put in incidental
business in big news events. In one news picture
taken at San Pedro Harbor, for instance, he was assigned
the part of a rough-neck woman who was very severe
with her husband.
The first picture that he directed himself was called
Caught in the Rain.
As a director, Chaplin introduced a new note into
moving picture. Theretoforemost of the comedy effects had
been riotous boisterousness. Chaplin, like many
foreign pantomimists got his effects in a more subtle way and
with less action. Also he worked alone to a greater
extent than any other picture comedian.
By making the most of the little subtle effects, Chaplin
enlarged the field of all motion picture comedies.
It goes without saying that the simpler effects a man needs
for his fun-making the more effects he has to draw
on. One of the very funniest situations, for instance, in any
of the Chaplin comedies was in His Trysting Place
where Chaplin used the whiskers of a guest in a cafe for
a napkin.“
One photo. One drawing. One comic strip.
The film with Chaplin wandering out in front of the cameras
is Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal., not A Film Johnnie,
and Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. is not Chaplin‘s first film
at Keystone. It was not „in those days“ that he was
working at Keystone, it was last year.
Harry C. Carr, Charlie Chaplin´s Story,
Photoplay, July 1915
Photoplay, August 1915
Photoplay, September 1915
Photoplay, October 1915
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