The original captions say he is looking over his notes for Modern Times.
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Chaplin at Lake Arrowhead, CA, 1934
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Just in time for Thanksgiving
Charlie's Apple Roll recipe:
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This recipe originally appeared in the 1916 book Celebrated Actor-Folks' Cookeries: A Collection of The Favorite Foods of Famous Players.
More recipes from the book can be found here.
This recipe originally appeared in the 1916 book Celebrated Actor-Folks' Cookeries: A Collection of The Favorite Foods of Famous Players.
More recipes from the book can be found here.
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Happy Thanksgiving to fans in the U.S.
I hope you don't have to eat your own boot!
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UK Penguin reprint of David Robinson's definitive bio "Chaplin: His Life & Art" now available
Click here to order.
While I think this book is a great resource and a must-read for fans, I personally think there's room for a new comprehensive bio of Chaplin. That's not such a tall order, is it?
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While I think this book is a great resource and a must-read for fans, I personally think there's room for a new comprehensive bio of Chaplin. That's not such a tall order, is it?
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Czech writer & journalist Egon Erwin Kisch visits the set of CITY LIGHTS, 1929
Following his visit, Kisch wrote an article entitled “I Work With Charlie Chaplin." In it, he describes Chaplin agonizing over a way to show how the flower girl comes to believe Charlie is a millionaire. Chaplin acted out some of his ideas for Kisch, but the journalist did not understand the gag. Kisch wrote: “Why is it so terrible if a foreigner, passing through town, does not understand one of his gags? But it is much more than a gag. It is the fundamental idea of the film."
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Chaplin greets fans in Detroit, October 1923
Charlie was en route to Los Angeles from New York, where he had attended the premiere of A Woman Of Paris. The highlight of his pitstop in Detroit was a visit to the Ford assembly plant.
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With Paulette at a tennis match, 1933
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Charlie on Hollywood Blvd., 1922
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World Tour Revisited: Chaplin is sued for backpay by his secretary, May Shepherd
On February 19th, 1931, not long after Chaplin arrived in London from America, his press agent Carlyle Robinson hired May Shepherd to help with the growing fan mail problem, which had become too cumbersome for Robinson to deal with by himself. Shepherd had previously handled correspondence for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford in London. She had also worked for Rudolph Valentino, Jackie Coogan, and Tom Mix.
When Chaplin left England for Berlin in March, Shepherd stayed behind at his suite at the Ritz Carlton to finish up his correspondence. Her employment ended on April 20th. Chaplin was in Biarritz in August when he received a letter from Shepherd demanding backpay. She felt that she should have been paid more than five pounds a week for the work she had done for him and wanted one hundred pounds in backpay. United Artists and Chaplin's immediate entourage, including Kono, told him to agree to pay her the money she wanted, but Chaplin stubbornly refused out of principle--five pounds per week was the amount she had agreed to and he was going to hold her to it. The attorneys for United Artists also felt that perhaps she was blackmailing Chaplin. She had inferred in statements that if her demands weren't met, she would make public the goings on in Chaplin's suite, i.e. that he had flirted with her.* Furthermore that she was privy to letters from females, some of them well-known, that contained salacious offers or a recounting of previous sexual encounters. Maurice Silverstone, the managing director for UA in London, claimed that Shepherd was asking for five times the going rate for secretarial help. Not only that, while working in Chaplin's suite, she had run up a considerable room service bill--charging expensive meals and bottles of champagne. To make a long story short, Shepherd eventually sued Chaplin. She testified in court that she was often asked to make excuses for her boss when he didn't want to keep an important engagement, including a dinner with Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald. Chaplin was not present for Shepherd's testimony but agreed to a settlement when he received word that names of prominent people whom he considered friends were being "bandied about" in court. The next day, December 1st, Chaplin appeared before the judge and announced through his lawyers that he would like to make a statement. Instead of summarizing these events, I will post an article from the New York Times of Dec. 2nd, 1931. It goes without saying that not only was this a bad day for Charlie, but he has horrible luck with women named May.
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*She accused Douglas Fairbanks of the same thing. However, she didn't have a problem with Valentino because "Madame Valentino was constantly in the office."
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| May Shepherd handling Chaplin's fan mail-- and wishing she was getting paid more for it. |
When Chaplin left England for Berlin in March, Shepherd stayed behind at his suite at the Ritz Carlton to finish up his correspondence. Her employment ended on April 20th. Chaplin was in Biarritz in August when he received a letter from Shepherd demanding backpay. She felt that she should have been paid more than five pounds a week for the work she had done for him and wanted one hundred pounds in backpay. United Artists and Chaplin's immediate entourage, including Kono, told him to agree to pay her the money she wanted, but Chaplin stubbornly refused out of principle--five pounds per week was the amount she had agreed to and he was going to hold her to it. The attorneys for United Artists also felt that perhaps she was blackmailing Chaplin. She had inferred in statements that if her demands weren't met, she would make public the goings on in Chaplin's suite, i.e. that he had flirted with her.* Furthermore that she was privy to letters from females, some of them well-known, that contained salacious offers or a recounting of previous sexual encounters. Maurice Silverstone, the managing director for UA in London, claimed that Shepherd was asking for five times the going rate for secretarial help. Not only that, while working in Chaplin's suite, she had run up a considerable room service bill--charging expensive meals and bottles of champagne. To make a long story short, Shepherd eventually sued Chaplin. She testified in court that she was often asked to make excuses for her boss when he didn't want to keep an important engagement, including a dinner with Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald. Chaplin was not present for Shepherd's testimony but agreed to a settlement when he received word that names of prominent people whom he considered friends were being "bandied about" in court. The next day, December 1st, Chaplin appeared before the judge and announced through his lawyers that he would like to make a statement. Instead of summarizing these events, I will post an article from the New York Times of Dec. 2nd, 1931. It goes without saying that not only was this a bad day for Charlie, but he has horrible luck with women named May.
*She accused Douglas Fairbanks of the same thing. However, she didn't have a problem with Valentino because "Madame Valentino was constantly in the office."
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Cover of Jours de France, December 1958
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Photo of Chaplin by Apeda Studio, New York, 1925
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Random Excerpt
From "No Talkies For Charlie: Some Intimate and Never-Told Facts About the Screen's Only Practical Genius" by Harry Lang, Photoplay, May 1930
1 Virginia Cherrill made a very similar observation in an article she wrote in 1935 about working with Chaplin: "One week he solemnly informs us that he is a vegetarian, that meat is bad for one, and that lettuce and fruit form the ideal food. We all become vegetarian. The next week, he looks up and says: 'What I need is a big juicy steak. Good meat to build up the body and brain.'"
2May Reeves recalled in her memoir that Charlie woke her up in the middle of the night moaning, "I'm going to die! I'm going to die!" Panicking, she tried to call a doctor, but his problem was only indigestion from eating too many green beans the night before.
3 Three of Chaplin's compositions were published by the short-lived Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing Company in 1916: "There's Always One You Can't Forget,""Peace Patrol," and "Oh, That Cello" (years later, in his autobiography, Charlie would describe these songs as “very bad.") He published two more songs in 1925: With You Dear, In Bombay," and "Sing A Song," which were recorded by the Abe Lyman Orchestra with Chaplin guest conducting & playing a violin solo.
4 City Lights' theme song, "La Violatera" was written by Jose Padilla.
5 Chaplin took violin lessons while on tour with the Fred Karno Company. "As for the cello," he later wrote, " I could pose well with it but that's about all."
6 Guerlain's Mitsouko was Charlie's favorite cologne for many years.
7 Chaplin didn't completely give up smoking until the early 1940s.
8 Chaplin describes seeing a talkie in c. late 1927 in My Autobiography.
Charles Chaplin likes stewed tripe and hates whiskey. He does like good wines, and drinks cocktails when the occasion seems to require it. Before prohibition, he always had a well-stocked cellar, never drank much himself, and always was a perfect host alcoholically. Since prohibition came, the same is true.
Besides stewed tripe, he likes lamb stew. Those are two of his three favorite dishes. He dislikes seasoning, never uses sauces or violent condiments and doesn't care for highly spiced dishes. The one exception is curry, the hotter the better. That's his third favorite dish.
He is utterly inconsistent about eating. Sometimes he will go for twenty-four hours or longer without taking a morsel. Then he'll eat four or five meals within the next day. He goes on diets but never keeps them up. He went rabidly on a raw vegetable diet for several days. "Look at animals," he said, "they eat raw vegetables and are healthy. The elephant is the biggest and strongest animal; he eats only vegetables." That night, Charlie ate two beefsteaks, rare.1
His cook will work for a day or two to prepare an epicurean meal for him. Charlie sits down and it is served. He doesn't like the looks or aroma of something before him. So he leaves the table and goes to a cheap lunch counter and eats ham and eggs. He likes to eat at drug store lunch counters. His favorite restaurant is Henry's. The proprietor is his assistant director.
When he is served something he likes very much, he takes as many as five helpings. It makes him violently ill.2
Chaplin is very much afraid of illness. He has a wiry body. He takes cold very easily. Whenever he is ill, it frightens him and the best available physicians are called. The sight of a sick friend affects him so that he cannot work....
Reading is one of his three favorite relaxations. The other two are walking and playing tennis. He plays tennis well. He wears partners out, because he insists on playing for five or six hours at a stretch. When he has no partner, he will play alone, against a wall, for as long as five hours without rest. He plays, then, automatically. He is not thinking of the game; he is thinking of other things. With the racket, he is ambidextrous. That is true too of his handwriting. He is naturally but not exclusively left-handed. He can write equally well with either hand, and writes very little. Within the past ten years, he has not written in his own hand more than a dozen personal letters. When he does write, he writes in short sentences--five or six words each.
Rather than buy sheet music, he writes his own. He has composed more than twenty numbers, ranging from jazz to ballads and music of classical type. He has never published any of his own compositions.3 He has written a half dozen numbers for his current picture, "City Lights," including the theme song. 4
He never took a music lesson in his life and plays proficiently the piano, organ, violin, cello, concertina, saxophone, guitar and ukulele. He has a huge pipe organ in his home,and sits alone at it for hours, improvising. He bows his violin and cello with his left hand, fingering with his right. The instruments are strung "backwards...." 5
His hair grows very fast. He has to have it cut at least four times a month. It used to be dark brown. Now it comes out grey, but for his pictures, he dyes it dark brown. Because it grows so rapidly, he has to have it dyed every ten days or so while making a film. He doesn't dye it at other times.
He has never worn a beard. He has only once had a mustache of his own and it wasn't much. He raised it while on a vacation with Douglas Fairbanks. When he got back to the studio, everybody laughed at it. He got mad and shaved it off at once. He has never raised one since.
His prop mustache has dwindled steadily through the years. When he first began in pictures, it extended beyond his lip-ends. Now it is a tiny double smudge under his nostrils. In three years, at the present rate, it should disappear entirely....
He wears very loud pajamas and locks himself in his bedroom. He locks every door in his bedroom, even that to his private bathroom. He will not unlock one of these doors until he awakes for morning. He keeps his windows open.
His pocket kerchief and his necktie must match. He hates breaking in new shoes. He has a favorite pair of shoes, black patent leather with grey cloth button tops. He has owned that pair twelve years and prefers them to all others.
They have been resoled and heeled beyond track.
He uses a great deal of a certain perfume for which he pays $40 per two-ounce container.6
He likes women and likes to be in their company but is afraid of them. He fears he cannot please them. They are usually wild about him. He believes he is a good judge of women, but has been known to be notoriously wrong. He thinks he can analyze their characters by the shape of their mouths, ears, nostrils and other facial characteristics, and tries to criticize his friends' women on that basis. He will not stand for any criticism of the women he is with on any basis.
He rarely goes out alone with women, and when he does it is usually Georgia Hale. He denies he will marry her....
He loves traveling and dislikes flying. He was one of the first to fly in aviation's infancy and doesn't think it's "ready" now, so he doesn't fly any more....
When he reads, he wears horn-rimmed glasses. He does not smoke. Up to a year ago, he smoked between four and five packs of cigarettes a day. For no reason he decided to quit. He has never smoked since unless the action of a scene calls for it, and then he prefers a cigar....7
He likes to dance and his favorite dance is the tango. He dreads social functions until he gets there and then he's the center of the party, no matter how big it is. Whenever he gives a function himself, he gives it on a big scale and swears the next day he'll never give another....
He has no pets. He had a parrot but when the newspapers began printing about parrot fever, he gave it away. He has no dogs but if he had one, he would have a mongrel because he prefers them to thoroughbreds....
He likes good plays and silent pictures and newsreels. He takes newsreels home by the half dozen to run in his private projection room at nights.
He has never sat through a talking picture.8 He insists they are far inferior to silents. He says he will never, never, never make a talkie._________________________________________________________________________________
1 Virginia Cherrill made a very similar observation in an article she wrote in 1935 about working with Chaplin: "One week he solemnly informs us that he is a vegetarian, that meat is bad for one, and that lettuce and fruit form the ideal food. We all become vegetarian. The next week, he looks up and says: 'What I need is a big juicy steak. Good meat to build up the body and brain.'"
2May Reeves recalled in her memoir that Charlie woke her up in the middle of the night moaning, "I'm going to die! I'm going to die!" Panicking, she tried to call a doctor, but his problem was only indigestion from eating too many green beans the night before.
3 Three of Chaplin's compositions were published by the short-lived Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing Company in 1916: "There's Always One You Can't Forget,""Peace Patrol," and "Oh, That Cello" (years later, in his autobiography, Charlie would describe these songs as “very bad.") He published two more songs in 1925: With You Dear, In Bombay," and "Sing A Song," which were recorded by the Abe Lyman Orchestra with Chaplin guest conducting & playing a violin solo.
4 City Lights' theme song, "La Violatera" was written by Jose Padilla.
5 Chaplin took violin lessons while on tour with the Fred Karno Company. "As for the cello," he later wrote, " I could pose well with it but that's about all."
6 Guerlain's Mitsouko was Charlie's favorite cologne for many years.
7 Chaplin didn't completely give up smoking until the early 1940s.
8 Chaplin describes seeing a talkie in c. late 1927 in My Autobiography.
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THE RINK, released December 4th, 1916
To give an idea of The Rink's popularity with audiences, here is a clipping from a 1917 issue of Motography. It's hard to tell if the owner of the theater was being serious or not, but it's funny nevertheless:
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The Rink was Chaplin's 8th film for Mutual. Much has been said about his skating talents. He no doubt honed his skills in this area in the c.1909 Fred Karno sketch, Skating, which was co-written by Syd Chaplin (both brothers performed the sketch for different touring companies). Chaplin employed another skating routine twenty years later in Modern Times, which also revives some of the restaurant gags as well.
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The Rink was Chaplin's 8th film for Mutual. Much has been said about his skating talents. He no doubt honed his skills in this area in the c.1909 Fred Karno sketch, Skating, which was co-written by Syd Chaplin (both brothers performed the sketch for different touring companies). Chaplin employed another skating routine twenty years later in Modern Times, which also revives some of the restaurant gags as well.
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Chaplin photographed at his home in Beverly Hills, c.1946
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Postcard, c. 1920s
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Behind-the-scenes footage of Chaplin directing City Lights
Filmed c.1929 by Chaplin's friend, Ralph Barton, this footage not only shows Chaplin directing one of his most famous and beloved films, but it also shows us a side of his personality that we don't normally see. For instance, in one scene we see him vent his frustrations on his Asst. Director Harry Crocker (who was later fired from the production), in others we see him spitting, chewing gum, and looking annoyed and preoccupied. All the while, he is dressed in his Tramp outfit, although he's not acting very Tramp-like. Additionally, there is some great footage of the Chaplin studio grounds, fellow cast and crew members, and a cute clip of Charlie clowning in front of the camera.
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Charlie and Edna in publicity stills for Work, 1915
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Charlie with daughters Josephine (in his lap) & Geraldine at the Knie Circus in Switzerland, c. 1953
Chaplin family friend, Jerry Epstein, is at far left.
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HIS PREHISTORIC PAST, released December 7th, 1914
In his final film for Keystone, Charlie plays Weakchin, a prehistoric man, who wears a bearskin, a derby hat, and carries a cane. In My Autobiography, Charlie described how he came up with the idea: "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." Charlie also recalled that it was a "strain" to finish the film because there were so many business propositions requiring his attention. “I suppose that was the most exciting period of my career, for I was on the threshold of something wonderful.”
In 1982, silent film historian, Bo Berglund, identified Charlie's half-brother, Sydney, as the cop in the final scene. Syd had just begun his contract with the Keystone company & His Prehistoric Past was only his second film. As Syd's biographer, Lisa Stein Haven, noted, "It seems significant somehow that the brothers would work together in Charlie's final film for Keystone." 1
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1Lisa K. Stein, Syd Chaplin: A Biography, McFarland, 2011
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c. 1925
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