From German film magazine, Revue des Monats, Sept. 1929
From German film magazine, Revue des Monats, Sept. 1929
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"Prominent Among Themselves"
From German film magazine, Revue des Monats, Sept. 1929
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With boxer Ted Lewis, 1918
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Annette with her father and Uncle Syd
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Photos by Chaplin studio cameraman, Jack Wilson, c. 1920
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Random Excerpt
While I was slithering around Sunset Boulevard, Charlie was a more and more frequent guest at our house. He had just recently been starred for the first time at Essanay, and was now making a fortune with a series of one-reelers at Mutual. He and three other friends of mine--Mary Pickford, Doug Fairbanks, and David Griffith--were about to join forces as the United Artists.
Though Popsy was wary of my Hollywood companions, he trusted Chaplin because he knew him. It has always amused me to see cautious parents accept as suitable suitors old friends who are often as eligible as Don Juan. It is probably the quality of the unknown that terrifies them so.
To me, there remained very little unknown about Charlie. He unburdened his heart to me. He loved talking about himself; but I adored his sense of humor and appreciated his sense of values. He was marvelous fun to be with, Charlie!
He wasn't very prompt, and one night he arrived for dinner an hour and a half late. Mutz, who had kept her patience for weeks, now was furious. Such a tirade! She told him how selfish and thoughtless he was; and we were all sure that we would never see him again. What did he do when mother finished? He kissed her and said, "How wonderful you are. You've scolded me just as you would your own son. Now I know I'm one of the family. Thank you, thank you."
What could one do with such a reaction? We all adored him. How stimulating Charlie was! Those intense gray eyes! Even in repose, there was always a faint smile hovering around his lips. There was always an imp in Charlie, no matter how serious he was being, an element of the unpredictable. He was an elf with a memory of sadness.
He loved playing with abstract ideas. His brain never stopped buzzing. When he was working he would ask me to the studio so I could watch him work. Though he used a script, ideas, fresh and sparkling, would spill from him while the camera was going. Some of his most famous scenes were spontaneous. His slim, nervous body would respond instantly to any improvisation that struck him. He was nimble in everything. He moved like a dancer.
Charlie was still to become the intellectual's darling, the controversial exile, the legend. Life was simple then--like the people. Chaplin was funny and the public laughed. The scholars and students hadn't recognized him as a genius. He was loved as a clown.
Charlie, however, was always impressed with himself--like a small child who has suddenly found a doting audience for his antics. He was quicker than his audience and always ahead of them. I loved going to the movies with him. He would laugh until he cried. Then he would nudge me.
"Wait, Daggie. Wait till you see what's going to happen now!"
When it happened, he would become convulsed. I think I enjoyed watching Charlie watching Charlie more than the movie.— Dagmar Godowsky, First Person Plural: The Lives Of Dagmar Godowsky, 1958.
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| Dagmar appeared in 24 films between 1919 & 1926, including The Sainted Devil in which she co-starred with Rudolph Valentino. She is also among the many celebrities, including Chaplin, to appear in the 1923 film, Souls For Sale. |
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| Charlie with Dagmar's father, pianist/composer Leopold Godowsky, c. 1917. |
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With his friend & political mentor, writer Rob Wagner
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Putting on his mustache
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Charlie & Paulette at a tennis match, 1934
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World Tour Revisited: Charlie meets Napoleon biographer Emil Ludwig, late May 1931
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| Chaplin, May Reeves, & Emil Ludwig |
During the early part of his holiday in the French Riviera, Charlie received a telegram from German writer Emil Ludwig. He would be in the south of France for only one day and would like to meet him. Charlie made plans for his visit.
We are to lunch at the Palm Beach Casino, a beautiful location opposite the island of Sainte Marguerite upon which stands the historical prison reputed to be the place where The Man in the Iron Mask was incarcerated.
Ludwig has a likeness to Byron--the same high lofty, brow and well-formed chin, with a full sensitive mouth almost feminine--a man in his early forties. Upon meeting him I was impressed by his eager youthful spirit.Ludwig was equally impressed by Chaplin:
He came toward me with a frank open look--a small, closely knit man who, obviously, had won through to serenity--or at least an appearance of serenity--which, earlier, had not been his. There was in him a fresh vigor and in his eyes a lively sparkle which I had not expected.May Reeves recalled that Charlie was ill at ease during the meeting and kept nervously repeating, "Well, well, well." She thought Ludwig seemed relieved that she could speak German with him.
During lunch, Ludwig produced a bay leaf saying: "It was a custom of the ancient Greeks to bestow a laurel leaf upon those whom they admired, and so I want you to keep this as a token of my esteem." (Afterward, when they were alone, Charlie told May: "He must have a complete herb garden in his baggage.")
Later in the conversation, Ludwig noticed that Charlie's mouth suddenly drooped,
...and when the same expression repeated itself later, I saw it was his mouth that truly revealed him, which united the two Chaplins--Chaplin the actor and Chaplin the man.
In his drooping, sensitive mouth, when he leaves it for a moment undisciplined, is expressed all the resignation, all the renunciation which cannot be acted unless it has been experienced.
It is not the mouth of a lover of humanity. Chaplin is a fighter, for his passion against the smug and sated rich is deeper, it seemed to me, than his compassion for the suffering poor.
Chaplin's mouth is a tragic mouth; but it is a mouth that can bite.Charlie recalled that they also discussed what they considered to be the most beautiful things they had seen in life:
I related the action of Helen Wills playing tennis, also a moving picture from a news weekly of a man plowing the fields of Flanders after the war. The tragic stoop of his back, the determination and courage as he furrowed into the soil, the indomitable spirit and will to build up over the wreckage.
Ludwig gave a beautiful description of the glow of a red sun setting on the beach in Florida, an automobile rolling along at twelve miles an hour, and a girl in a bathing suit reclining on the running board, her toe lightly trailing over the smooth surface of the sand, leaving a thin line as she rode along._________________________________________________________________
Sources:
"A Comedian Sees The World Part 3," A Woman's Home Companion, November 1933
"Emil Ludwig X-Rays Charlie Chaplin," Liberty, August 22, 1931
May Reeves, The Intimate Charlie Chaplin, trans. & ed. by Constance Brown Kuriyama, McFarland, 2001
Gerith Von Ulm, Charlie Chaplin: King Of Tragedy, Caxton, 1940
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Charlie & Edna in THE FIREMAN (1916)
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Charlie, c. 1943
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New York City, September 1921
With Douglas & Mary, who were in town for the premiere of Doug's film, The Three Musketeers.
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...And by himself. Charlie was in the city en route to England.
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...And by himself. Charlie was in the city en route to England.
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Hiatus
Fellow fans,
This will be my last post for at least 3 weeks. We are finally leaving for our trip to Seattle. I hope to see you right back here sometime around the middle of June.
Love,
Jess
This will be my last post for at least 3 weeks. We are finally leaving for our trip to Seattle. I hope to see you right back here sometime around the middle of June.
Love,
Jess
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| Charlie arrives in Seattle from Japan, June 1932 |
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Article 2
Hello everyone!
I'm back and the blog will return to normal (hopefully) tomorrow. We had a fantastic trip, which ended way too soon. I'm anxious to return to life as I knew it before I left, although it is a difficult transition after so much time away. But I'm sure in a couple of days, it will be as though I never left.
Thanks so much for your loyalty to this blog, and most of all, your friendship.
Much love,
Jess
I'm back and the blog will return to normal (hopefully) tomorrow. We had a fantastic trip, which ended way too soon. I'm anxious to return to life as I knew it before I left, although it is a difficult transition after so much time away. But I'm sure in a couple of days, it will be as though I never left.
Thanks so much for your loyalty to this blog, and most of all, your friendship.
Much love,
Jess
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Publicity photo for THE CIRCUS (1928)
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Charlie & Paulette at Catalina Island, c. 1934
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World Tour Revisited: Charlie & May Reeves visit H.G Wells in the south of France, c. May/June 1931
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From A Comedian Sees The World:
H.G. Wells was staying near Grasse and invited me* to spend a few days with him. He was just completing his book, "The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind"- a colossal undertaking upon which he had been working three years.
"What are you going to do after it's finished?" I asked.
"Start on another one."
"Good heavens! I should imagine you'd want to get away from work for a while and do something else."
H.G. laughed mischievously. "What else is there to do?"
Discussing my pictures he said he would like to see me return to the shorter comedy subjects. "You set yourself a difficult task, adhering to plot and theme so much. Who remembers the plots of Dickens' books--Pickwick Papers, for instance? It was their incidents and characterizations that made the appeal. Personally I would like to see you oftener on the screen in those two-reel pictures which had so much spontaneity.
Grasse is celebrated for the manufacture of perfumery, and H.G. and I planned to go over some of the factories. I've heard somewhere that the preparation of attar of roses requires the crushingof four million flowers to obtain a pound of essence which costs approximately five hundred dollars.
We intended viewing the monuments of the city and the cathedral. However as we were climbing the narrow streets my garter broke. This made it necessary for us to go to the shopping center to buy a new pair.
As we wended our way, H.G. extolling the beauties of the city, he was unconscious of the people who began to crowd in the doorways of the stores. They seemed to come from nowhere, and before we knew it we were like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
It was no use. Normal conversation was impossible. H.G. became alarmed. "I think you'd better walk by yourself," he suggested, "and I'll meet you at the car later."
"Oh, no," I insisted. "You're going to see it, through."
We took refuge in the shop for a while, but eventually had to brave the storm, marching through alleys with the throngs at the back of us.
To visit the perfume factories or the cathedral now was impossible. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to put it off until you've grown a beard," he said and so we made our way back to the automobile and escaped. (ACSTW Part Three, A Woman's Home Companion, Nov. 1933)
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A few stills from SUNNYSIDE, released June 15th, 1919
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With the original "gold digger" Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Catalina Island, 1922
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| Source: Chaplin: Genius Of The Cinema (Vance) |
Chaplin’s 1923 film A Woman Of Paris was inspired by Peggy’s recollections of her Parisian love affairs, which she passed on to him during their "bizarre, though brief" (as Charlie later described it) affair.
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Happy 70th Anniversary...
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| Charlie & Oona after their wedding on June 16th, 1943 |
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