My Autobiography (44 page)

‘I would like to see this girl,’ said Pola airily. ‘Have her come downstairs to the sitting-room.’ I demurred, feeling it would be embarrassing for everyone. However, the girl entered the room with great poise. Reynolds was right: she was young and attractive. She told us she had been hanging around outside the studio all day. We offered her dinner, but she would only take a glass of milk.

As she sat sipping it, Pola plied her with questions. ‘Are you in love with Mr Chaplin?’ (I winced).

The girl laughed. ‘In love! Oh no, I only admire him because he is a great artist.’

Proffered Pola: ‘Have you seen any of my pictures?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said casually.

‘What do you think of them?’

‘Very good – but you are not as great an artist as Mr Chaplin.’

Pola’s expression was a study.

I warned the girl that her actions could be misunderstood, then asked her if she had any means of getting back to Mexico City. She said that she had; and after Reynolds had given her more advice she left the house.

But the following midday, the butler again came rushing into the room, saying she was lying in the middle of the road, having poisoned herself. Without further ado, we telephoned the police and she was taken away in an ambulance.

There was quite a spread in the newspapers the following day, with photographs of her sitting up in bed in hospital. She had been given the stomach-pump and was now receiving the Press. She declared that she had not taken poison but had only wanted to attract attention, that she was not in love with Charlie Chaplin, but had come to Hollywood only to try and get into movies.

After her discharge from hospital she was placed in the custody of the Welfare League, who wrote a nice letter to me, asking if I would care to help in getting her back to Mexico City. ‘She is harmless and not a bad sort,’ they declared, so we paid her fare home.

*

I was now free to make my first comedy for United Artists and anxious to top the success of
The Kid
. For weeks I strove, thought and brooded, trying to get an idea. I kept saying to myself: ‘This next film must be an epic! The greatest!’ But nothing would come. Then one Sunday morning, while spending the week-end at the Fairbankses, I sat with Douglas after breakfast, looking at stereoscopic views. Some were of Alaska and the Klondike; one a view of the Chilkoot Pass, with a long line of prospectors climbing up over its frozen mountain, with a caption printed on the back describing the trials and hardships endured in surmounting it. This was a wonderful theme, I thought, enough to stimulate my imagination. Immediately ideas and comedy business began to develop, and, although I had no story, the image of one began to grow.

In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose, is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature – or go insane. I read a book about the Donner party who, on the way to California, missed the route and were snowbound in the mountains of Sierra Nevada. Out of one hundred and sixty pioneers only eighteen survived, most of them dying of hunger and cold. Some resorted to cannibalism, eating their dead, others roasted
their moccasins to relieve their hunger. Out of this harrowing tragedy I conceived one of our funniest scenes. In dire hunger I boil my shoe and eat it, picking the nails as though they were bones of a delicious capon, and eating the shoe-laces as though they were spaghetti. In this delirium of hunger, my partner is convinced I am a chicken and wants to eat me.

For six months I developed a series of comedy sequences and began shooting without a script, feeling that a story would evolve from comedy routines and business. Of course, I was led up many a blind alley, and many amusing sequences were discarded. One was a love scene with an Eskimo girl who teaches the tramp to kiss in Eskimo fashion by rubbing noses together. When he departs in quest of gold, he passionately rubs his nose against hers in a fond farewell. And as he walks away he turns and touches his nose with his middle finger and throws her a last fond kiss, then surreptitiously wipes his finger on his trousers, for he has a bit of a cold. But the Eskimo part was cut out because it conflicted with the more important story of the dance-hall girl.

During the filming of
The Gold Rush
I married for the second time. Because we have two grown sons of whom I am very fond, I will not go into any details. For two years we were married and tried to make a go of it, but it was hopeless and ended in a great deal of bitterness.

The Gold Rush
opened at the Strand Theatre in New York and I attended its première. From the moment the film started, showing me blithely rounding a precipice unconscious of a bear following, the audience yelled and applauded. Throughout the laughter there was sporadic applause till the end of the picture. Hiram Abrams, the United Artists sales manager, later came up and embraced me. ‘Charlie, I guarantee that it will gross at least six million dollars’ – and it did!

After the première, I had a collapse. I was staying at the Ritz Hotel and I could not breathe, so I frantically telephoned a friend. ‘I’m dying,’ I gasped. ‘Call my lawyer!’

‘Lawyer! You want a doctor,’ said he, alarmed.

‘No, no, my lawyer, I want to make a will.’

My friend, shocked and alarmed, called both, but, as my lawyer happened to be in Europe, only the doctor arrived.

After a perfunctory examination he found nothing wrong but
an attack of nerves. ‘It’s the heat,’ he said. ‘Get out of New York and down by the ocean where you can be quiet and get the sea air.’

Within half an hour I was bundled off to Brighton Beach. On the way I wept for no reason. However, I procured a front room at a hotel facing the ocean and sat at the window breathing in deep draughts of sea air. But crowds began to gather outside the hotel: ‘Hi, Charlie!’ ‘Attaboy, Charlie!’ so that I had to move back from my window in order not to be seen.

Suddenly there was a yell like the barking of a dog. It was a man drowning. The lifeguards brought him in, right in front of my window, and gave him first aid, but it was too late; he was dead. No sooner had the ambulance taken him away than another barked. In all there were three brought in: the other two recovered. I was in a worse state than ever, so I decided to return to New York. Two days later I was well enough to return to California.

B
ACK
in Beverly Hills, I received an invitation to meet Gertrude Stein at the house of a friend of mine. When I arrived, Miss Stein was seated on a chair in the centre of the drawing-room, dressed in brown, wearing a lace collar, her hands on her lap. For some reason she looked like Van Gogh’s portrait of Madam Roulin, only instead of red hair with a bun on top Gertrude had short-cropped brown hair.

The guests stood around at a respectful distance, forming a circle. A lady-in-waiting whispered something to Gertrude, then came to me. ‘Miss Gertrude Stein would like to meet you.’ I hopped forward. There was little opportunity to talk at that moment because others were arriving and waiting to be introduced.

At lunch the hostess placed me next to her and in some way or other we got on to the subject of art. I believe it started by my admiring the view from the dining-room window. But Gertrude showed little enthusiasm. ‘Nature,’ she said, ‘is commonplace; imitation is more interesting.’ She enlarged on this thesis, stating that imitation marble looked more beautiful than the real thing, and that a Turner sunset was lovelier than any real sky. Although these pronouncements were rather derivative, I politely agreed with her.

She theorized about cinema plots: ‘They are too hackneyed, complicated and contrived.’ She would like to see me in a movie just walking up the street and turning a corner, then another corner, and another. I thought of saying that her idea was a paraphrase of that mystic emphasis of hers: ‘Rose is a rose is a rose’ – but an instinct stopped me.

The luncheon was served on a beautiful Belgian lace
tablecloth, which evoked several compliments from the guests. During our confab, coffee was served in very light lacquer cups and mine was placed too near my sleeve, so that when I slightly moved my hand I upset my coffee over the table-cloth. I was mortified! In the middle of my profuse apologies to my hostess, Gertrude did exactly the same thing, upsetting her coffee. I was inwardly relieved, for now I was not alone in my embarrassment. But Gertrude never dropped a spangle. Said she: ‘It’s all right, it didn’t spill on my dress.’

John Masefield visited the studio; he was a tall, handsome, gentle man, kindly and understanding. But for some reason these qualities made me extremely shy. Fortunately I had just read
The Widow in the Bye Street
which I admired, so I was not entirely mum and quoted some of my favourite lines from it:

There was a group outside the prison gate,

Waiting to hear them ring the passing bell,

Waiting as empty people always wait,

For the strong toxic of another’s hell.

*

During the production of
The Gold Rush
, I received a telephone call from Elinor Glyn: ‘My dear Charlie, you must meet Marion Davies; she is really a dear, and would adore meeting you, so will you dine with us at the Ambassador Hotel and afterwards come with us to Pasadena to see your picture,
The Idle Class?’

I had never met Marion, but had encountered her bizarre publicity. It was in every Hearst newspaper and magazine and hit one full in the face
ad nauseam
. It was so overdone that the name Marion Davies became the target of many jokes. There was Beatrice Lillie’s remark when someone showed her the clustered lights of Los Angeles. ‘How wonderful!’ said Beatrice. ‘I suppose later they all merge and spell “Marion Davies”!’ One could not open a Hearst magazine or newspaper without a large picture of Marion. All this only kept the public away from the box office.

But one evening at the Fairbankses’ they ran a Marion Davies film,
When Knighthood Was in Flower
. To my surprise she was quite a comedienne, with charm and appeal, and would have
been a star in her own right without the Hearst cyclonic publicity. At Elinor Glyn’s dinner I found her simple and charming and from that moment we struck up a great friendship.

The relationship between Hearst and Marion is legendary in the United States, and throughout the world for that matter. It was an association of over thirty years, lasting until the day he died.

If I were asked what personality in my life has made the deepest impression on me, I would say the late William Randolph Hearst. I should explain that the impression was not always a pleasant one – although he had commendable qualities. It was the enigma of his personality that fascinated me, his boyishness, his shrewdness, his kindness, his ruthlessness, his immense power and wealth, and above all his genuine naturalness. In worldly values, he was the freest man I have ever known. His business empire was fabulous and diversified, consisting of hundreds of publications, large holdings in New York real estate, mining, and vast tracts of land in Mexico. His secretary told me that Hearst’s enterprises were worth $400,000,000 – a lot of money in those days.

There are conflicting opinions about Hearst. Some maintain that he was a sincere American patriot, others that he was an opportunist merely interested in the circulation of his newspapers and enlarging his fortune. But as a young man he was adventurous and liberal. Moreover, the parental exchequer was always at hand. The story goes that Russell Sage, the financier, met Hearst’s mother, Phoebe Hearst, on Fifth Avenue. Said he: ‘If your son persists in attacking Wall Street his newspaper will lose a million dollars a year.’

‘At that rate, Mr Sage, he can stay in business for another eighty years,’ said his mother.

The first time I met Hearst I committed a
faux pas
. Sime Silverman, editor and publisher of
Variety
, took me up to Hearst’s apartment on Riverside Drive for lunch. It was the conventional rich man’s home, a duplex affair, with rare paintings, high ceilings, mahogany panelling and built-in cases displaying porcelain. After I had been introduced to the Hearst family, we all sat down to lunch.

Mrs Hearst was an attractive woman with a kindly, easy
manner. Hearst, on the other hand, was wide-eyed and let me do the talking.

‘The first time I saw you, Mr Hearst,’ I said, ‘was at the Beaux Arts Restaurant, sitting with two ladies. You were pointed out to me by a friend.’

From under the table I felt a pressure on my foot. I gathered it was Sime Silverman.

‘Oh!’ said Hearst with a humorous expression.

I began to falter. ‘Well, if it wasn’t you, it was someone very much like you – of course my friend was not quite sure,’ I said naïvely.

‘Well,’ said Hearst with a twinkle, ‘it’s very convenient to have a double.’

‘Yes,’ I laughed, perhaps a little too loudly.

Mrs Hearst rescued me. ‘Yes,’ she emphasized humorously, ‘it’s very convenient.’

However, it passed off lightly and I thought the lunch went very well.

Marion Davies came to Hollywood to star in Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions. She rented a house in Beverly Hills and Hearst brought his two-hundred-and-eighty-foot cruiser through the Panama Canal into Californian waters. From then on the film colony enjoyed an era of Arabian Nights. Two or three times a week, Marion gave stupendous dinner parties with as many as a hundred guests, a mélange of actors, actresses, senators, polo-players, chorus boys, foreign potentates and Hearst’s executives and editorial staff to boot. It was a curious atmosphere of tension and frivolity, for no one could predict the mercurial temper of the powerful Hearst, which was the barometer of whether the evening would go or not.

I remember an incident at a dinner Marion gave in her rented house. About fifty of us were standing about, while Hearst, looking saturnine, was seated in a high-backed chair surrounded by his editorial staff. Marion, gowned
à la
Madame Recamier, reclined on a settee, looking radiantly beautiful, but growing more taciturn as Hearst continued his business. Suddenly she shouted indignantly: ‘Hey! You!’