A Woman Clippings 50/72
Harry C. Carr, Photoplay, New York, September 1915.
Charlie Chaplin impersonator at the Royal Easter
Show, Sydney, Australia, 1916, newsreel, anzacsightsound
& WEST‘S NEW SERIES TO-DAY.
Glaciarium Only
Charles Chaplin in „Woman.“
Charlie Chaplin! That magic name gets ‘em.
Understand? His name smacks of thrills
an‘ throbs. There‘s always something doing when Charlie enters.
De Groen‘s Orchestra
(...) Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, Aug. 28, 1915
& THE PICTURE BLOCK THEATRES.
Specials in To-Day‘s Programs. (...)
COLONIAL AND EMPRESS THEATRES.
Showing to-day,
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
in the latest Two-reel Essanay Comedy,
„A WOMAN.“
(...) Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 28, 1915
„Until it was finally the little toothbrush that is now so famous“
Editorial content. „Charlie Chaplin´s Story
Through Disappointment to World Fame
By Harry C. Carr
Illustrations by E. W. Gale
This is the third installment of Mr. Carr‘s whimsical
biography of the world‘s funniest man
Part III
The question that nearly every one asks about Charlie
Chaplin‘s early career is ,Where did he get that make-up? Those
shoes and that hat?‘ The general impression is that
Chaplin worked with this same outfit from the beginning
of his picture work, but this is not true. In his first
pictures for the Keystone, Chaplin wore a long drooping
moustache and a top hat. He wore ordinary shoes.
In almost his first pictures, however, he began wearing the
amazing ,pants‘ that still disadorn him.
His first costume didn‘t suit him at all. The Keystone
people say he was always poking around the property
room trying to hit upon some sort of clothes that would ,register.‘
One day he came out grinning, with a funny old pair
of shoes in his hands. They were long and curled up at the toes.
They reached right out and shook hands with
Chaplin as soon as he saw them. They had been Ford
Sterling‘s and had been left behind when Sterling
quit the company. Chaplin has worn those identical shoes
ever since. Then he began trimming off his his long
drooping moustache. Every day it grew shorter until it was finally
the little toothbrush that is now so famous. He then
substituted a round derby for his top hat and his costume
was complete as it now appears in his pictures.
His costume was not the only difficulty he found in getting
adjusted to the movies. To tell the truth, he was miserably
unhappy at first, and hated the work in every way. Ford Sterling
had just left the company and it was hoped that Chaplin
would take his place. They naturally looked to see Chaplin work
on the same lines as the comedian they had lost.
Chaplin, however, worked on entirely different methods.
Sterling worked very rapidly, dashing hither and thither
at top speed. Chaplin‘s comedy was slow and deliberate and
he made a great deal out of little things – little subtleties.
They tried to force him to take up the Ford Sterling style and
Chaplin refused. That is to say, he wouldn‘t. He just
listened to what they had to say; then he did in his own way.
The net result was a very sultry time. Chaplin‘s first
director was Pathe Lehrmann. They quarreled all the time during
the first of Chaplin‘s work. Mabel Normand and
Chaplin fought like a black dog and a monkey. Lehrmann
finally appealed to Mack Sennett: he said he couldn‘t
do anything with Chaplin. Sennett called Chaplin to time. The
Keystone people say that the hardest ,call-down‘
anybody ever got at the Keystone was that handed to Charlie
Chaplin by Sennett because he refused to obey
the director. Chaplin took the boss‘s breezy remarks as toasts
to the President are drunk – standing and in silence.
But he went right on acting in his own way. Finally Lehrmann
passed him on to another director, who had an equally
bad time with him.
The Keystone people came to the conclusion that they
had picked up a fine lemon in Chaplin. Personally
he was very popular, but it was generally agreed that he would
never make good as a picture actor.
Finally, Mack Sennett took a hand at directing Chaplin
himself. They were then putting on a piece called
Mabel‘s Strange Predicament. Chaplin had a small part
where he did some funny business in the lobby of a
hotel. Mack Sennett decided to see just what this Englishman
would do if they let him have his own way. He turned
the misfit loose and let him be funny as he liked.
Then and there Charlie Chaplin suddenly ,happened.‘
Mack Sennett saw in a flash that some big stuff
was going over, and from that minute Chaplin became
a real star.
Sennett, during the next few pictures, put in Chaplin to do
little comedy bits that called for some kind of stuff he
showed in the lobby of the hotel. Chaplin was always funny
in these bits, but Sennett saw that, to be entirely
successful he must have a company of his own. The other actors‘
work was out of tune with the Chaplin method. Sennett
was quick to see that almost immeasurable things could be
gotten out of Chaplin, but he also saw that the Chaplin
pictures must, in the future, be built with Chaplin as the foundation.
The whole comedy must be adjusted to his tempo,
and even the scenario would have to be different from
the kind of scenario ordinarily used by the
Keystone people. It must be slower and more subtle.
The end of it was that Chaplin was finally allowed to direct
his own scenarios. No American picture director understood
his peculiar style of comedy well enough to work out the stuff.
In another chapter I will tell about Chaplin‘s work and his
methods as a director.
Chaplin‘s first big hit as a director of his own work was
Dough and Dynamite. This was started as a part of the
scenario afterward known as the Pangs of Love. In his rather
aimless way of directing without any scenario, Chaplin
and Mr. Conklin began working up a play in which both he and
Conklin were in love with the landlady of a boarding
house and stuck hatpins into each other through a curtain
to interrupt one another‘s courtship. They decided
that they both ought to be workmen of some kind and decided
upon being bakers. As part of the play they worked up
a scene in a bake shop. This turned out to be so funny that
they finally changed the whole idea and made two
different scenarios.
As a director-actor at the Keystone, Chaplin had the
reputation of being the most generous star in the
movie business. Every comedian was allowed to grab all the
laughs he could get. Chaplin always insisted on having
them do the comedy stuff in his way, but he always built up their parts
for them without regard for the fact that his own might suffer.
His work began making a tremendous impression. Every one
began talking about the new funny man. People
who never went to the movies before were drawn by the
accounts of the new comedian.
Naturally the other movie companies took notice, and Chaplin
got several big offers. One from the Essanay was so
big that he did not feel justified in refusing. When his contract
expired with the Keystone, he changed companies. He
went with the understanding that he was to have full swing
in his work: direct all his own scenarios and do pretty
much as he pleased.
The first of the Essanay work was done in Chicago.
His first Essanay film was His New Job. After that he put on
a two-reeler, His Night Out. Chaplin then insisted
on moving back to California. The picture conditions didn‘t
suit him in the Middle West. On returning to the Coast,
he went to the Essanay studio at Niles.
In a separate chapter there will be an account of his
adventures at this rural studio. He produced The Tramp at Niles.
This is regarded in some ways as the most remarkable
step forward that has ever been made in moving picture comedy.
Returning from Niles, Chaplin went in the Essanay
studio in an old mansion near the business district of Los Angeles.
Here he has been working ever since. At least this is his
base of operations. From this house he works out to the benches
and various ,locations‘ near Los Angeles.
By this time a perfect storm of fame had struck Chaplin.
To tell the truth, it seemed to scare more than anything
else. He used to say to his intimate friends, ,I can‘t understand
all this stuff. I am just a little nickel comedian trying
to make people laugh. They act as though I were the King of
England.‘ Chaplin even to this day is much alarmed
over being so famous. He says his reputation can‘t last.
But he began to suffer the penalties of the
great. He was asked to speak at banquets; to lead parades;
to referee prize fights. When the baseball season
opened, it was announced that Chaplin would throw the first ball.
All of this stuff worried Chaplin a good deal at first.
He said he picked up the paper every morning with apprehension
to see what fool thing he was due for that day. He found
that it didn‘t worry the promoters of these various events at all,
however. They announced that he would referee at prize
fights, and when he did not appear they simply dressed up a boy
in Chaplin‘s style in clothes and he appeared, serene in the
belief that nobody would know the difference. There is a boy in
Los Angeles who makes a good living by dressing up like
Charlie Chaplin and parading up and down in front of the theaters
where the Chaplin films are being shown.
Charlie was pursued like a wounded bear by all kind
of people with all kinds of business propositions.
If half the life insurance agents who were on his trail could
be gathered into an army, there wouldn‘t be any
danger of a war with Germany. Real estate agents wanted
him to buy houses. Investors wanted him to take
stock in their discoveries. About a million people wrote him letters.
Many of them were mash letters. One young lady
in Chicago undertook the job of censoring all his work. Every
day of her life she wrote Chaplin a letter, commenting
critically on some of his latest films. Sometimes she complimented
them; sometimes she roasted them untenderly.
Chaplin has about as much business system as a chicken.
When his friends came to see him at his hotel they found
him sitting helplessly behind a pile of letters. finally some of his
friends prevailed on him to hire a secretary. Wherefore
a severe young man with glasses now opens Charlie‘s mash
letters.
One sort of pest scared Chaplin to death. This was
the auto agent. They wanted him to buy their cars:
to be photographed in their cars and to write endorsements
of their cars. But Charlie was adamant. He wouldn‘t
listen to any of them. He told them he had an aversion to cars
on principle and when he retired he was going to have
an old white horse and buggy and a ranch. The truth is, Charlie
had once been bitten by an automobile bug.
While he was with the Keystone, Chaplin fell for the
blandishments of an auto agent and came out one day nervously
driving a runabout. He had some weird experience with
that car. He never could learn how the things worked. He knew
how it started but he never could remember – at least
in times of emergency – what you did when you wanted the
thing to stop.
One day while he was parading the boulevards with
his vehicle, Chaplin came to the intersection of two
crowded streets. The traffic cop majestically gave the signal for
the car to stop. Charlie reached for the thingamajig
and pulled the wrong lever. The car bounded blithely forward.
The cop waved his club and that was all he did before
the auto struck him amid-ships and mopped up the floor
with him. They picked up the fragments of the officer
of the law. They also picked up Chaplin and took him to the
police station, where they advised him to learn
how to manage his car and charged him $75 for the advice.
Another time, Charlie was driving in through the big
front gate at the Keystone and got too near one of the posts.
He had been used to sailing small boats. When a small
boat gets too near the wharf the thing to do is to drop the tiller
and fend off by pushing against the wharf. Charlie thought
this ought to apply equally well to a car. So when he saw he was
going to bump the gate, he dropped the steering wheel
and tried to push off from the post. The results were sensational
and startling. Another time, Charlie‘s car was on the
side of a hill. It started to roll down and Chaplin tried to stop
it by grabbing the hind wheels. Results equally
startling and sensational.
When Chaplin discovered that new tires for his motor
cost $75 each, his soul called ,Enough,‘ and he returned to street
cars. Since then he has been a mighty poor prospect
for an auto agent.
Some of the attention that came to Chaplin with his fame
was enjoyable. Thousands of people speak to Chaplin
on the street without knowing him. They are always answered
courteously. Not long ago, I saw two old people stop
and stare and begin to nudge each other in great excitement.
Charlie Chaplin was coming down the street. When
he came near, the old man gathered his courage and said,
,Hello, Charlie Chaplin.‘ Chaplin lifted his hat in the odd
way that he does on the screen and said, ,Howdydo‘ and passed
on. The old people were tickled to death.
The one thing that got the comedian‘s goat was speaking
at banquets. Just once it is recorded that he was prevailed
upon and human agony can have no fuller expression than this
quivering actor waiting to speak his piece.
The culmination of his fame came probably with the offer
of a New York theatrical man to give him $25,000
for an engagement of two weeks – an offer which the Essanay
company is supposed to have met to induce him to stay
away from the stage.“
One photo. Nine drawings.
Harry C. Carr, Charlie Chaplin´s Story,
Photoplay, July 1915
Photoplay, August 1915
Photoplay, September 1915
Photoplay, October 1915
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