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With Jackie Coogan on the set of THE KID
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Boar hunt in Normandy, March 25th, 1931
Shortly after Charlie arrived in Paris, he took a side trip to Normandy to go boar hunting with the Duke of Westminster. At the train station, a reporter asked him about the hunt: "I shall enjoy [it] but I shouldn't like to shoot anything. I am too soft-hearted."
This would be the first time Charlie had been on a horse in years and he was concerned about whether or not he could stay on the animal and what he would do if he were actually confronted with a boar. These were the thoughts that kept him awake the night before the hunt.
Adding to his worries was the fact that he didn't bring the proper clothing and had to borrow a jacket & gloves from the Duke, who was twice his size. ("The duke's gloves were so large I found I could close my fist inside without disturbing the fingers.")
The Duke was informed that boar tracks had been found so the hunting party drove forty miles to the location. They had to wait another hour in the cold for the horses and dogs to arrive. The first horse that was presented to Charlie “reared up on her hind legs, cavorted and pranced around, then sidled towards me as though desiring to sweep me off the road. But I was too quick for her. I was behind one of the cars in a jiffy.” Charlie was brought another, more well-behaved horse.
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| Illustration from "A Comedian Sees The World," A Woman's Home Companion, 1933 |
He returned to the Duke's chateau where his valet, Kono, was waiting for him. After dinner, they left for Paris where Charlie was eager to take a Turkish bath. "It was four in the morning before I emerged from the manipulations of a masseur," recalled Charlie.
For days, he could not sit or stand without groaning and had to eat his meals standing up at the fireplace. He decided then and there that he would confine his future participation in sports to "tiddledy winks."
Sources:
A Comedian Sees The World, November 1933
Charlie Chaplin: King Of Tragedy by Gerith von Ulm
The Daily News, Perth, May 5th, 1931
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c. 1922
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Photos by James Abbe, Paris, 1931
I added the photo below because I think it might be from this session with Abbe. If not, it was definitely taken while Charlie was in Europe.
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Photos by Lee Miller, Paris, 1931
Model-turned-photographer Miller first met Charlie in New York in 1927 and the two are rumored to have been lovers.
Arguably the most famous image from this 1931 session is the shot of Charlie posing beneath a large Art Nouveau chandelier. Both of them enjoyed the session. Thinking about it years later, Miller laughed: “Charlie told me that he had never had such a good time in his life as he had with what he called my surréaliste photography."*
I have only ever seen three photos from this session but evidently a fourth photo was published in the French magazine Pour Vous in April 1932 (the bottom photo is on the cover). I have not yet been able to get my hands on a copy of this magazine.
Charlie participated in at least three professional photo sessions while he was in Paris during his world tour. I will post photos from one more tomorrow. Since he returned to Paris at least once later in the year, it's unlikely all of them were done during his week-long visit in March but it is difficult to find the exact dates of the sessions.
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*Lee Miller: A Life by Carolyn Burke
Arguably the most famous image from this 1931 session is the shot of Charlie posing beneath a large Art Nouveau chandelier. Both of them enjoyed the session. Thinking about it years later, Miller laughed: “Charlie told me that he had never had such a good time in his life as he had with what he called my surréaliste photography."*
I have only ever seen three photos from this session but evidently a fourth photo was published in the French magazine Pour Vous in April 1932 (the bottom photo is on the cover). I have not yet been able to get my hands on a copy of this magazine.
Charlie participated in at least three professional photo sessions while he was in Paris during his world tour. I will post photos from one more tomorrow. Since he returned to Paris at least once later in the year, it's unlikely all of them were done during his week-long visit in March but it is difficult to find the exact dates of the sessions.
*Lee Miller: A Life by Carolyn Burke
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Al Jolson visits Charlie on the set of A Day’s Pleasure, c. 1919
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Charlie (left) at the wedding of Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks, March 28th, 1920
In his autobiography, Charlie claimed he was not invited to the ceremony because he had spoken so strongly against their marrying (he told them they should “just live together and get it out of their systems”) that when Doug & Mary finally did so, they invited all of their friends but him. Not so, apparently.
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Photos by George Hoyningen-Huene, Paris, 1931
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Ad for Bell & Howell cameras, 1929
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"Chaplin Blooper Reel"
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Charlie's left-handed Rolex watch will be up for auction in NYC on April 10th
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Charlie leaves Paris for Nice, March 30th, 1931
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| Charlie on the Riviera, 1931 (Lisa Stein Haven) |
Charlie's visit to the French Riviera will prove to be a turning point. Not only will he see his half-brother, Sydney, but more significantly, he will meet an Austrian dancer named May Reeves, who will become his lover and traveling companion for the next year. More on that to come...
World tour scorecard (so far):
Duration: almost 7 weeks
# of cities visited: 5
Girlfriends: 5-6 (at least one at every "port")
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Charlie Chaplin, Jr. describes Easter 1938
Up until this year, Syd and I had not participated in the coloring of the eggs. But that Easter Eve we were allowed to help Paulette, all three of us working away in the living room. Dad reserved himself the hiding of the eggs, a chore he loved because of its conspiratorial nature. I have never ceased to be amazed at the simplicity of the things in which my father found so much pleasure. I can remember him with that sly expression on his face, packing us off to bed so he would have freedom to work. He hid the eggs in the chairs and the sofa of the living room, in the dining room, out on the lawn.
Easter morning we had a late breakfast together on the porch, and the relaxed atmosphere was like a burst of sunshine after Dad’s tension of the last months. A little later Syd’s and my friends gathered for the hunt. Soon there were children all over the place, squealing and yelling and tearing everything apart in their exuberant search. And there was Dad following right behind us with his hands clasped behind his back, as though to keep from rooting out the eggs himself.
“Now you’re hot! Now you’re cold! Lukewarm now!” his steady monologue guided us like manikins on a string until we found them all. (My Father, Charlie Chaplin, 1960)
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: Nice, March 31st, 1931
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| Charlie at the train station in Nice. |
Except from A Comedian Sees The World:
My next move was to the south of France to visit my brother who had been living there for the last six months. I was to be the guest of Frank J. Gould in Nice, so after nine days in Paris, I arrived in the south of France, the playground of the fashionable world.
Nice is a night's journey from Paris, and you arrive on the Cote d'Azur, "the blue coast," about noon, getting your first glimpse of the Mediterranean. It is a pity the railroads are so near the sea. They spoil the coastline. I am a little disappointed with my first glimpse of the country. It seems so congested with its houses on top of one another, so different from the open spaces of the coastline of California.
My friend Frank Gould and his wife met me at the station, along with my brother Syd and his family. I shall not go into the details of the welcome I received from the crowd. Nevertheless Frank Gould was considerably moved by the demonstration.
"It must make you very happy to be so admired," he remarked.
But after lunch he went with me to buy some tennis rackets, and as we walked along crowds started gathering until we stopped the traffic. People were pushing and shouting, "Hooray, Charlie!" They became so dense and demonstrative that we could hardly move on our way.
I could see Frank getting quite worried and when we eventually arrived home he declared, "I wouldn't be you for ten million dollars."
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| A gathering at the Majestic Hotel in Nice. Chaplin's host, Frank J. Gould, is on his right. Gould, who was once married to Hetty Kelly's sister, owned the hotel and provided Charlie and his entourage with a suite. His wife, Florence, is on Charlie's left. Syd is seated next to her. |
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| Syd and Charlie in Nice. |
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Charlie's April Fool
From the Ediburgh Scotsman, April 3rd, 1931 (reprinted in Syd Chaplin: A Biography by Lisa K. Stein):
Chaplin found out today that it was April 1. He lunched with his brother Sydney and a large number of friends at a hotel, and one item on the menu was Charlie's favourite dish, "crepes suzette," the fascinating little rolled pancakes which are served with blazing rum. When the dish arrived Charlie took three, and began to tell everyone of the excellent pancakes he had eaten in all four corners of the world. "Ah!" said his brother Sydney, "just eat these, Charlie; I'll bet you've never tasted any like them." Charlie struggled with them for some time before he discovered that they were made of cheesecloth covered with batter. It then gradually dawned on him that he had forgotten the date. "These are too hard on a man," he said, and then joined heartily in the laughter until he was otherwise occupied with some real "crepes suzette."
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More Lee Miller photos
Here are two more photos taken by Lee Miller in 1931. Many thanks to Dominique Dugros for sending me these rare & wonderful photos which he scanned from his own copy of Pour Vous magazine (see my earlier post). Check out Dominique's impressive collection of Chaplin books from all over the world at the "Chaplin Library" located on the Edna Purviance website: Click here.
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World Tour (1931-32) Revisited: May Reeves
On the afternoon of his arrival in Nice, Charlie saw a performance by an Austrian dancer named May Reeves at a casino owned by his host, Frank J. Gould. He was immediately captivated, not only by her beauty, but also by her talent. His brother, Sydney, who lived in Nice and was already acquainted with her, offered to introduce them. Since she was fluent in several languages, she was initially hired to help Carlyle Robinson with Charlie's correspondence, but this job lasted less than a day for she soon became Charlie's constant companion. "She was footloose like myself and we accepted each other at face value," Charlie later remembered in My Autobiography.* "We dined and tangoed and did all the usual froufrou. But propinquity caught me in the meshes of her charm and the inevitable happened: my emotions became involved; and thinking about returning to America, I was not too sure about leaving her behind."
Their relationship lasted until early 1932. Three years later, May published a memoir about her time with Charlie called Charlie Chaplin intime. I find it to be one of the more reliable and informative portraits written about him, mainly because it was written so soon after their time together. It was originally published in French and was not available in English until 2001.** There is no trace of May after her book was published in 1935. Her co-author, novelist Claire Goll, fled Europe to escape the Nazis in 1939. Unfortunately, we do not know what became of May.
Below are three photos of May from Voila magazine (1934) plus a photo with photographer Willy Michel who was famous for posing with his subjects in a photo booth he set up in his studio.
*Charlie makes no mention of May in "A Comedian Sees The World." However thirty years later in My Autobiography he briefly refers to their relationship but doesn't mention her by name.
**Charlie Chaplin Intime (aka The Intimate Charlie Chaplin) was translated in 2001 by Chaplin scholar Constance Brown Kuriyama. The book was serialized in seven issues of of the French magazine, Voila in 1934. All photos on this page (except the Willy Michel photo) were scanned from my own copies of the magazines.
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PAY DAY, released April 2nd, 1922
Pay Day was Charlie's final two-reel effort, while I don't believe it's one of his best films, it certainly has some entertaining moments.
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| Charlie used reverse photography for the bricklaying sequence. |
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| Phyllis Allen plays Charlie's battle-ax wife. |
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| A drunken night out. Syd Chaplin is on the left. Both he and Charlie had experience playing drunks in vaudeville. |
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| Charlie's use of artificial lighting for the nighttime street car scene was sophisticated for the time. |
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With actor Maurice Schwartz (in costume) after a Yiddish Art Theater production of "Yoshe Kalb" in Los Angeles, c.1934
This photo is an uncropped version of a more commonly-seen photo of Chaplin (below) which he used for autographs and publicity until the 1950s.
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World Tour Revisited: Charlie meets tango singer, Carlos Gardel, at a party in Nice, early April, 1931
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| Gardel & Charlie are in the center. May Reeves is behind Charlie in white. The host of the party, Sadie Baron Wakefield, is in front on the left. Carlyle Robinson is standing at far left. Notice Syd Chaplin peeking out at bottom right. Charlie and May had only met a few days before this gathering and this could easily be one of the first photos taken of them together. |
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| "An Argentine singer [Gardel],* accompanied by a guitarist, sang in Chaplin's honor while he slipped behind the bar, drank from an immense bottle of cognac, and cut a gigantic tart with an enormous knife." (May Reeves, The Intimate Charlie Chaplin) |
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| Charlie performs for the guests. He mimed two of his favorite sketches: a French farce & a Japanese melodrama. |
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