My Autobiography (23 page)

The mechanics of directing were simple in those days. I had only to know my left from my right for entrances and exists. If one exited right from a scene, one came in left in the next scene; if one exited towards the camera, one entered with one’s back to the camera in the next scene. These, of course, were primary rules.

But with more experience I found that the placing of a camera was not only psychological but articulated a scene; in fact it was the basis of cinematic style. If the camera is a little too near, or too far, it can enhance or spoil an effect. Because economy of movement is important you don’t want an actor to walk any unnecessary distance unless there is a special reason, for walking is not dramatic. Therefore placement of camera should effect composition and a graceful entrance for the actor. Placement of camera is cinematic inflection. There is no set rule that a close-up gives more emphasis than a long shot. A close-up is a question of feeling; in some instances a long shot can effect greater emphasis.

An example of this is on one of my early comedies,
Skating
, The tramp enters the rink and skates with one foot up, gliding and twirling, tripping and bumping into people and getting into all sorts of mischief, eventually leaving everyone piled up on their backs in the foreground of the camera while he skates to the rear of the rink, becoming a very small figure in the background, and sits amongst the spectators innocently reviewing the havoc he has just created. Yet the small figure of the tramp in the distance was funnier than he would have been in a close-up.

When I started directing my first picture, I was not as confident as I thought I would be; in fact, I had a slight attack of panic. But after Sennett saw the first day’s work I was reassured. The picture was called
Caught in the Rain
. It was not a world-beater, but it was funny and quite a success. When I finished it, I was
anxious to know Sennett’s reaction. I waited for him as he came out of the projection-room. ‘Well, are you ready to start another?’ he said. From then on I wrote and directed all my own comedies. As an inducement, Sennett gave me twenty-five dollars’ bonus for each picture.

He now practically adopted me, and took me to dinner every night. He would discuss stories for the other companies with me and I would suggest crazy ideas which I felt were too personal to be understood by the public. But Sennett would laugh and accept them.

Now, when I saw my films with an audience, their reaction was different. The stir and excitement at the announcement of a Keystone Comedy, those joyful little screams that my first appearance evoked even before I had done anything, were most gratifying. I was a great favourite with the audience: if I could just continue this way of life I could be satisfied. With my bonus I was making two hundred dollars a week.

Since I was engrossed in work I had little time for the Alexandria Bar or my sarcastic friend, Elmer Ellsworth. I met him, however, weeks later, on the street. ‘Say, listen,’ said he, ‘I’ve been seeing your pictures lately, and, by God, you’re good! You have a quality entirely different from all the rest. And I’m not kidding. You’re funny! Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?’ Of course, we became very good friends after that.

There was a lot Keystone taught me and a lot I taught Keystone. In those days they knew little about technique, stage-craft, or movement, which I brought to them from the theatre. They also knew little about natural pantomime. In blocking a scene, a director would have three or four actors blatantly stand in a straight line facing the camera, and, with the broadest gestures, one would pantomime ‘I-want-to-marry-your-daughter’ by pointing to himself, then to his ring finger, then to the girl. Their miming dealt little with subtlety or effectiveness, so I stood out in contrast. In those early movies, I knew I had many advantages, and that, like a geologist, I was entering a rich unexplored field. I suppose that was the most exciting period of my career, for I was on the threshold of something wonderful.

Success makes one endearing and I became the familiar friend of everyone in the studio. I was ‘Charlie’ to the extras, to the
stage-hands, the wardrobe department, and the camera-men. Although I am not a fraternizer, this pleased me indeed, for I knew that this familiarity meant I was a success.

Now I had confidence in my ideas, and I can thank Sennett for that, for although unlettered like myself, he had belief in his own taste, and such belief he instilled in me. His manner of working had given me confidence; it seemed right. His remark that first day at the studio: ‘We have no scenario. We get an idea, then follow the natural sequence of events’ had stimulated my imagination.

*

Creating this way made films exciting. In the theatre I had been confined to a rigid, non-deviating routine of repeating the same thing night after night; once stage business had been tried out and set, one rarely attempted to invent new business. The only motivating thing about acting in the theatre was a good performance or a bad one. But films were freer. They gave me a sense of adventure. ‘What do you think of this for an idea?’ Sennett would say, or: ‘There’s a flood down town on Main Street.’ Such remarks launched a Keystone comedy. It was this charming alfresco spirit that was a delight – a challenge to one’s creativeness. It was so free and easy – no literature, no writers, we just had a notion around which we built gags, then made up the story as we went along.

For instance, in
His Prehistoric Past
I started with one gag, which was my first entrance. I appeared dressed as a prehistoric man wearing a bearskin, and, as I scanned the landscape, I began pulling the hair from the bearskin to fill my pipe. This was enough of an idea to stimulate a prehistoric story, introducing love, rivalry, combat and chase. This was the method by which we all worked at Keystone.

I can trace the first prompting of desire to add another dimension to my films besides that of comedy. I was playing in a picture called
The New Janitor
, in a scene in which the manager of the office fires me. In pleading with him to take pity on me and let me retain my job, I started to pantomime appealingly that I had a large family of little children. Although I was enacting mock sentiment, Dorothy Davenport, an old actress, was on the sidelines watching the scene, and during rehearsal I looked up and to my
surprise found her in tears. ‘I know it’s supposed to be funny,’ she said, ‘but you just make me weep.’ She confirmed something I already felt: I had the ability to evoke tears as well as laughter.

The ‘he-man’ atmosphere of the studio would have been almost intolerable but for the pulchritudinous influence. Mabel Nor-mand’s presence, of course, graced the studio with glamour. She was extremely pretty, with large heavy-lidded eyes and full lips that curled delicately at the corners of her mouth, expressing humour and all sorts of indulgence. She was light-hearted and gay, a good fellow, kind and generous; and everyone adored her.

Stories went around of Mabel’s generosity to the wardrobe woman’s child, of the jokes she played on the camera-man. Mabel liked me in a sisterly fashion, for at that time she was very much enamoured of Mack Sennett. Because of Mack I saw a lot of Mabel; the three of us would dine together and afterwards Mack would fall asleep in the hotel lobby and we would while away an hour at the movies or in a café, then come back and wake him up. Such propinquity one might think would result in a romance, but it did not; we remained, unfortunately, only good friends.

Once, however, when Mabel, Roscoe Arbuckle and I appeared for some charity at one of the theatres in San Francisco, Mabel and I came very near to being emotionally involved. It was a glamorous evening and the three of us had appeared with great success at the theatre. Mabel had left her coat in the dressing-room and asked me to take her there to get it. Arbuckle and the others were waiting below outside in a car. For a moment we were alone. She looked radiantly beautiful and as I placed her wrap over her shoulders I kissed her and she kissed me back. We might have gone further, but people were waiting. Later I tried to follow up the episode, but nothing ever came of it. ‘No, Charlie,’ she said good-humouredly, ‘I’m not your type, neither are you mine.’

About this time Diamond Jim Brady came to Los Angeles – Hollywood was then in embryo. He arrived with the Dolly Sisters and their husbands, and entertained lavishly. At a dinner he gave at the Alexandria Hotel there were the Dolly Twins and their husbands, Carlotta Monterey, Lou Tellegen, leading man of Sarah Bernhardt, Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Blanche Sweet, Nat Goodwin and many others. The Dolly Twins were sensationally
beautiful. The two of them, their husbands and Diamond Jim Brady were almost inseparable; their association was puzzling.

Diamond Jim was a unique American character, who looked like a benign John Bull. That first night I could not believe my eyes, for he wore diamond cuff-links and studs in his shirtfront, each stone larger than a shilling. A few nights later we dined at Nat Goodwin’s Café on the pier, and this time Diamond Jim showed up with his emerald set, each stone the size of a small matchbox. At first I thought he was wearing them as a joke, and innocently asked if they were genuine. He said they were. ‘But,’ I said, with astonishment, ‘they are fabulous.’ ‘If you want to see beautiful emeralds, here,’ he replied. He lifted his dress waistcoat, showing a belt the size of the Marquess of Queens-berry’s championship belt, completely covered with the largest emeralds I have ever seen. He was quite proud to tell me that he had ten sets of precious stones and wore a different set every night.

It was 1914 and I was twenty-five years old, in the flush of youth and enamoured with my work, not alone for the success of it, but for its enchantment, as it gave me an opportunity of meeting all the film stars – and I was their fan at one time or other. Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Miriam Cooper, Clara Kimball Young, the Gish sisters and others – all of them beautiful, and actually to meet them face to face was Elysian.

Thomas Ince gave barbecues and dances at his studio, which was in the wilds of northern Santa Monica, facing the Pacific Ocean. What wondrous nights – youth and beauty dancing to plaintive music on an open-air stage, with the soft sound of waves pounding on the nearby shore.

Peggy Pierce, an exceptionally beautiful girl with delicately chiselled features, beautiful white neck and a ravishing figure, was my first heart-throb. She did not make her appearance until my third week at the Keystone, having been ill with flu. But the moment we met we ignited; it was mutual, and my heart sang. How romantic were those morning’s turning up for work with the anticipation of seeing her each day.

On Sunday I would call for her at her parents’ apartment. Each night we met was an avowal of love, each night was a struggle. Yes. Peggy loved me, but it was a lost cause. She resisted and
resisted, until I gave up in despair. At that time I had no desire to marry anyone. Freedom was too much of an adventure. No woman could measure up to that vague image I had in my mind.

Each studio was like a family. Films were made in a week, feature-length films never took more than two or three weeks. We worked by sunlight, which was why we worked in California: it was known to have nine months of sunshine each year.

Klieg lights came in about 1915; but Keystone never used them because they wavered, were not as clear as sunlight, and the lamps took up too much time to arrange. A Keystone Comedy rarely took more than a week to make, in fact I had made one in an afternoon, a picture called
Twenty Minutes of Love
, and it was a continuous laugh throughout.
Dough and Dynamite
, a most successful film, took nine days, at a cost of eighteen hundred dollars. And because I went over the budget of one thousand dollars, which was the limit for a Keystone comedy, I lost my bonus of twenty-five dollars. The only way they could retrieve themselves, said Sennett, would be to put it out as a two-reeler, which they did, and it grossed more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars the first year.

*

Now I had several successful pictures under my belt, including
Twenty Minutes of Love, Dough and Dynamite, Laughing Gas
, and
The Stage Hand
. During this time Mabel and I starred in a feature picture with Marie Dressler. It was pleasant working with Marie, but I did not think the picture had much merit. I was more than happy to get back to directing myself again.

I recommended Sydney to Sennett; as the name Chaplin was being featured, he was only too pleased to annex another member of our family. Sennett signed him up for a year at a salary of two hundred dollars a week, which was twenty-five dollars more than I was getting. Sydney and his wife, fresh from England, came to the studio as I was leaving for location. Later that evening we dined together. I inquired how my pictures went in England.

Before my name was advertised, he said, many music-hall artists had spoken enthusiastically to him about a new American cinema comedian they had just seen. He also told me that before
he had seen any of my comedies he called up the film exchange to find out when they would be released and, when he told them who he was, they invited him to see three of them. He had sat alone in the projection room and laughed like the devil.

‘What was your reaction to all this?’ I asked him.

Sydney expressed no great wonderment. ‘Oh, I knew you’d make good,’ he said confidently.

Mack Sennett was a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which entitled him to give a temporary membership card to a friend, and he gave one to me. It was the headquarters of all the bachelors and business men in town, an elaborate club with a large dining-room and lounge rooms on the first floor, which were open to the ladies in the evening, and a cocktail bar.

I had a large corner room on the top floor, with a piano and a small library, next to Mose Hamberger, who owned the May Department Store (the largest in town). The cost of living was remarkably cheap in those days. I paid twelve dollars a week for my room, which gave me the use of all the facilities of the club, including elaborate gymnasiums, swimming pools and excellent service. All told, I lived in a sumptuous style for seventy-five dollars a week, out of which I kept my end up in rounds of drinks and occasional dinners.