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He stayed at my house and when he'd burned enough midnight oil talking, he said to Charlie, "I have nothing more to say." So, he went to Palm Springs and spent a few days there, and he came back and said, "I have something you're going to love. I have a sackful of stones for you. I found them outside in the desert while I was walking." And I said, "well, what am I going to do with it?" And he said, "You can use it as a doorstop, but if you love stones, here they are." Wasn't that sweet? 1
As part of my childhood was passed in a London orphanage. When Christmas time came around a big table was spread, and on it were laid little presents--tin watches, bags of candy, picture books, and other trivial things--for the inmates.
On this particular Christmas I was seven years old. We all formed in line, and long before it was my turn to reach the table and select what I wanted I had picked out with my eye a big, fat red apple for my present. It was the biggest apple I had ever seen outside of a picture book.
My eye and stomach got bigger and bigger as I approached that apple.
When the line had moved up so that I was fifth from the table a housekeeper, or somebody in authority, pounced on me, pushed me out of line and took me back to my room with the brutal words. "No Christmas present for you this year, Charlie--you keep the other boys awake by telling pirate stories."
I have always found that red apple of happiness just within reach of my hand when some invisible presence or force drags me away just as I am about to grab it.
--"The Hamlet-Like Nature of Charlie Chaplin" by Benjamin de Casseres, New York Times Book Review & Magazine, December 12th, 1920)
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Charlie & Douglas on the set of Douglas' film, His Majesty, The American, 1919 |
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Sketch of Charlie by Douglas, 1921 |
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early 1920s |
Near the completion of The Dictator, Douglas Fairbanks and his wife, Sylvia, visited us on location. Douglas had been inactive for the last five years and I had rarely seen him, or he had been traveling to and from England. I thought he had aged and grown a little stouter and seemed preoccupied. Nevertheless, he was still the same enthusiastic Douglas. He laughed uproariously during the taking of one of our scenes. "I can't wait to see it," he said.
Doug stayed about an hour. When he left I stood gazing after him, watching him help his wife up the steep incline; and as they walked away along the footpath, the distance growing between us, I felt a sudden tinge of sadness. Doug turned and I waved, and he waved back. That was the last I ever saw of him. A month later Douglas Junior telephoned to say his father had died in the night of a heart attack It was a terrible shock for he belonged so much to life.4
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Their last meeting, Nov. 15th, 1939 |
"I've lost the inspiration to make pictures, Mary," he said.
"You mustn't say that, Charlie; Douglas would be furious with you."
"You know how much I depended on his enthusiasm. You remember how I always showed my pictures first to Douglas."
"Yes, Charlie, I can still hear Douglas laughing so heartily he couldn't look at the screen. Remember those coughing fits he'd get at that moment?"
"More than anything else I remember this, Mary: whenever I made a particular scene I would always anticipate the pleasure it would give Douglas."
It all came back to me how Douglas used to treat Charlie like a younger brother, listening patiently and intently, hours on end to his repetitious stories which frankly bored me to extinction. Charlie had a way of developing his scenarios by repeating them over and over again to his most intimate friends--testing them privately to people he had faith in. Only then would he put them on film....I heard a catch in Charlie's voice.
I couldn't bear to see them put that heavy stone over Douglas."5
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Doug, Charlie, & Mary, 1924 |
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Pictures & Picturegoer, December 1924 |
I've never been intrigued by Switzerland. Personally I dislike all mountainous country. I feel hemmed in and isolated from from the rest of the world. The ominous presence of mountains towering above me gives me a feeling of futility. I suppose I am indigenous to the lowlands near the ocean, for my Romany instincts tell me that here I'm better suited to survive. Life opens out on a wider vista.
Nevertheless having basked in the sunshine of the Riviera and enjoyed London's spring and survived its autumn fogs, I felt that a change of atmospheric diet would be beneficial. Besides Douglas Fairbanks was in St. Moritz enjoying the winter sports and that was a good excuse to go there.1
You leave London in the morning and arrive in St. Moritz the following afternoon. The air is bracing and the whole country is blanketed in snow. The sharp whiteness gives zest and life to your spirit.
But all this is knocked out of you on discovering the price of your rooms. But it's worth it. The answer is I intended to stay two weeks and remained two months. ("A Comedian Sees The World, Pt. 4," A Woman's Home Companion, December 1933)
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May Reeves in St. Moritz. |
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Charlie with Syd |
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...and Douglas Fairbanks. |
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This scene was filmed at the back entrance of Chaplin's studio office. |
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This film has some great intertitles. (The Kid has a similar intertitle: "Awkward ass.") |
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Chaplin inscribed this photo: "To Joseph F. Triska, Consul of Czechoslovakia, My Best Wishes, Charlie Chaplin, Christmas 1927" |
Christmas came and we all looked forward to a family lunch together, Kay Kay1 and I included, also Auntie Gypsy2 from Lausanne. Another relation came for Christmas--I had not met this one before. She was Betty Tetrick, Mr. Chaplin's cousin from London, a widow [sic] who took great interest in the children. The table was decorated in red with two candle displays. Traditional crackers were in abundance, supplying the paper hats and small toys and puzzles. It was lovely. Mary had excelled herself with all the traditional foods common in England, even sixpences hidden in the Christmas puddings. The meal lasted all afternoon until Mr. Chaplin went off for a rest but, in the evening, he insisted that we all went to the movie viewing room to see The Gold Rush. Not again, said the children, but reluctantly went. --Pinnie: Behind The Limelight by Michael Parrett. (Pinnie, aka Mabel Rose Pinnegar, began working for the Chaplins in 1953.)
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From Pinnie: Behind The Limelight |
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McClure's, July 1915 |