My Autobiography (27 page)

L
ONELINESS
is repellent. It has a subtle aura of sadness, an inadequacy to attract or interest; one feels slightly ashamed of it. But, to a more or less degree, it is the theme of everyone. However, my loneliness was frustrating because I had all the requisite means for making friends; I was young, rich and celebrated, yet I was wandering about New York alone and embarrassed. I remember meeting the beautiful Josie Collins, the English musical comedy star, who suddenly came upon me walking along Fifth Avenue. ‘Oh,’ she said sympathetically, ‘what are you doing all alone?’ I felt I had been apprehended in some petty crime. I smiled and said that I was just on my way to have lunch with some friends; but I would like to have told her the truth – that I was lonely and would have loved to have taken her to lunch – only my shyness prevented it.

The same afternoon I took a stroll by the Metropolitan Opera House and ran into Maurice Guest, son-in-law of David Belasco. I had met Maurice in Los Angeles. He had started as a ticket-scalper, a business quite prevalent when I first arrived in New York. (A scalper was a man who bought up the best seats in the house, and stood outside the theatre selling them for a profit.) Maurice had a meteoric rise as a theatrical entrepreneur, climaxed by the great spectacle,
The Miracle
, directed by Max Reinhardt. Maurice – Slavic, pale face with large kidney eyes, a wide mouth and thick lips – looked like a coarse edition of Oscar Wilde. He was an emotional man who when he spoke seemed to bully you.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Then before I could answer: ‘Why in hell didn’t you call me up?’

I told him that I was just taking a walk.

‘What the hell! You shouldn’t be alone! Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ I answered meekly. ‘Just getting some fresh air.’

‘Come on!’ he said, twisting me around in his direction and locking his arm through mine so that there was no escape. ‘I’ll introduce you to real people – the kind you should mix with.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked anxiously.

‘You’re going to meet my friend Caruso,’ said he.

My protestations were futile.

‘There’s a matinée of
Carmen
today with Caruso and Graldine Farrar.’

‘But I – ’

‘Christ’s sake, you’re not scared! Caruso’s a wonderful guy – simple and human like yourself. He’ll be crazy to meet you, draw your picture and everything.’

I tried to tell him that I wanted to walk and get some fresh air.

‘This’ll do you more good than fresh air!’

I found myself being marched through the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House and swept down the aisle to two vacant seats.

‘Sit there,’ whispered Guest. ‘I’ll be back at the interval.’ Then he strode up the aisle and disappeared.

I had heard the music of
Carmen
several times, but now it seemed unfamiliar. I looked at my programme; yes, it was Wednesday, and on that day it announced
Carmen
. But they were playing another aria which I thought familiar too and which sounded like
Rigoletto
. I was confused. About two minutes before the end of the act, Guest stole into his seat beside me.

‘Is this
Carmen?’
I whispered.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Haven’t you got a programme?’

He snatched it from me. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘Caruso and Graldine Farrar, Wednesday matinée,
Carmen –
there it is!’

The curtain came down and he bundled me along the seats to the side entrance leading back stage.

Men in muffled boots were shifting scenery in such a fashion that I seemed always in the way. The atmosphere was like a troubled dream. Out of it loomed a tall, rangy man,
solemn and austere, with a pointed beard and bloodhound eyes that peered down at me from a height. He stood in the centre of the stage, a worried man, as scenery went and came about him.

‘How’s my good friend Signor Gatti-Casazza?’ said Maurice Guest, extending his hand.

Gatti-Casazza shook it and made a disparaging gesture, then mumbled something. Then Guest turned to me. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t
Carmen
, it was
Rigoletto
. Geraldine Farrar called up at the last minute to say she had a cold. This is Charlie Chaplin,’ said Guest. ‘I’m taking him round to meet Caruso, maybe it’ll cheer him up. Come with us.’ But Gatti-Casazza shook his head mournfully.

‘Where’s his dressing-room?’

Gatti-Casazza called the stage-manager. ‘He’ll show you.’

My instinct warned me not to bother Caruso at such a time and I told Guest so.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he answered.

We groped our way along the passage to his dressing-room. ‘Somebody’s turned off the light,’ said the stage-manager. ‘Just a moment and I’ll find the switch.’

‘Listen,’ said Guest, ‘I have people waiting for me, so I must run along.’

‘You’re not leaving?’ I asked quickly.

‘You’ll be O.K.’

Before I could answer he disappeared, leaving me in utter darkness. The stage-manager struck a match. ‘Here we are,’ he said, and gently knocked at a door. A voice in Italian exploded from within.

My friend answered back in Italian, ending with ‘Charlie Chaplin!’

There came another explosion.

‘Listen,’ I whispered, ‘some other time.’

‘No, no,’ he said; now he had a mission to fulfil. The door opened a crack and the dresser peered through the darkness. My friend in an aggrieved tone explained who I was.

‘Oh!’ said the dresser, then closed the door again. The door re-opened. ‘Come in, please!’

This little victory seemed to give my friend a lift. When we entered, Caruso was seated at his dressing-table before a mirror,
his back towards us, clipping his moustache. ‘Ah, signor,’ said my friend cheerfully. ‘It is my very great pleasure to present to you the Caruso of the cinema, Mr Charlie Chaplin.’

Caruso nodded into the mirror and continued clipping his moustache.

Eventually he got up and surveyed me as he fastened his belt. ‘You have big success, eh? You make plenty of money.’

‘Yes,’ I smiled.

‘You must be very ’appy.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Then I looked at the stage-manager.

‘So,’ said he cheerfully, intimating that it was time to leave.

I stood up, then smiled at Caruso. ‘I don’t want to miss the Toreador scene.’

‘That’s
Carmen
, this is
Rigoletto,’
he said, shaking my hand.

‘Oh yes, of course! Ha-Ha!’

*

I had assimilated as much of New York as was happily possible under the circumstances and thought it time to leave before the pleasures of vanity fair began to pall. Besides, I was anxious to start work under my new contract.

When I returned to Los Angeles I stayed at the Alexandria Hotel on Fifth Street and Main, the swankiest hotel in town. It was in the grand rococo style: marble columns and crystal chandeliers adorned the lobby, in the centre of which was the fabulous ‘million-dollar carpet’ – the mecca of big movie deals – humorously so named also because of the quidnuncs and quasi-promoters that stood about on it talking astronomical figures.

Nevertheless Abrahamson made a fortune on that carpet, selling cheap State Right pictures which he made economically by renting studio space and hiring unemployed actors. Such pictures were known as the products of ‘Poverty Row’. The late Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, also started in Poverty Row.

Abrahamson was a realist, admitting that he was not interested in art, only in money. He had a thick Russian accent, and when directing his films would shout to the leading lady: ‘All right, come in from de back side’ (meaning from the back). ‘Now you come to mirror and take a look at yourself. Ooh! Ain’t I pretty!
Now monkey around for twenty feet’ (meaning ad lib for twenty feet of film). The heroine was usually a bosomy young thing in a loose décolleté, showing plenty of cleavage. He would tell her to face the camera, bend over and tie her shoe, or rock a cradle or stroke a dog. Abrahamson made two million dollars this way, then wisely retired.

The million-dollar carpet brought Sid Grauman down from San Francisco to negotiate the building of his Los Angeles million-dollar theatres. As the town grew prosperous, so did Sid. He had a flair for bizarre publicity, and once startled Los Angeles with two taxis racing through town, the occupants shooting blank cartridges at each other, and on the back of the taxis placards announcing:
‘The Underworld
at Grauman’s Million Dollar Theatre.’

He was an innovator of gimcracks. A fantastic idea of Sid’s was to get Hollywood stars to stick their hands and feet in wet cement outside his Chinese Theatre; for some reason they did it. It became an honour almost as important as receiving the Oscar.

The first day I arrived at the Alexandria Hotel the desk clerk handed me a letter from Miss Maude Fealy, the famous actress who had been leading lady to Sir Henry Irving and William Gillette, inviting me to a dinner she was giving for Pavlova, Wednesday, at the Hollywood Hotel. Of course, I was delighted. Although I had never met Miss Fealy, I had seen postcards of her all over London, and was an admirer of her beauty.

The day before the dinner I told my secretary to phone and inquire whether it was informal or I should wear a black tie.

‘Who is calling?’ Miss Fealy asked.

‘This is Mr Chaplin’s secretary, about his dining with you on Wednesday evening –.’

Miss Fealy seemed alarmed. ‘Oh! By all means, informal,’ she said.

Miss Fealy was on the porch of the Hollywood Hotel waiting to greet me. She was as lovely as ever. We sat for at least half an hour conversing irrelevantly, and I began wondering when the other guests would arrive.

Eventually she said: ‘Shall we go in to dinner?’

To my surprise, I found we were dining alone!

Miss Fealy, besides being a lady of charm, was also very
reserved, and, looking across the table at her, I wondered what could be the motive for this
tête-à-tête
. Roguish and unworthy thoughts flashed through my mind – but she seemed too sensitive for my unseemly surmisings. Nevertheless, I began throwing out my antennae to find out what was expected of me. ‘This is really fun,’ I said ebulliently,’ dining alone this way!’

She smiled blandly.

‘Let’s do something amusing after dinner,’ I said: ‘go to a night-club or something.’

A look of mild alarm stole over her face, and she hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I must retire early this evening, as I start rehearsing tomorrow morning for
Macbeth’

My antennae wavered. I was completely baffled. Fortunately, the first course arrived and for a moment we ate in silence. Something was wrong, and we both knew it. Miss Fealy hesitated. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather dull for you this evening.’

‘It’s perfectly delightful,’ I replied.

‘I’m sorry you weren’t here three months ago at a dinner I gave for Pavlova, who, I know, is a friend of yours. But I understand you were in New York.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said quickly producing Miss Fealy’s letter, and for the first time I looked at the date. Then I handed it to her. ‘You see,’ I laughed, ‘I’ve arrived three months late!’

*

Los Angeles in 1910 was the end of an era of Western pioneers and tycoons, and I was entertained by most of them.

One was the late William A. Clark, multi-millionaire, railroad magnate and copper king, an amateur musician who donated $150,000 annually to the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in which he played second violin with the rest of the orchestra.

Death Valley Scottie was a phantom character, a jovial, fat-faced man who wore a ten-gallon hat, red shirt and dungarees, and spent thousands of dollars nightly along Spring Street’s rathskellers and night-clubs, throwing parties, tipping waiters hundred-dollar bills, then mysteriously disappearing, to show up a month or so later and throw another party, which he did for years. No one knew where his money came from. Some believed he had a secret mine in Death Valley and tried to
follow him there, but he always evaded them and no one, to this day, has ever learned his secret. Before he died in 1940 he built an enormous castle in Death Valley, in the middle of the desert, a fantastic structure costing over half a million. The building still stands rotting in the sun.

Mrs Craney-Gatts of Pasadena was a woman with forty million dollars, an ardent socialist who paid for the legal defence of many anarchists, socialists and members of the I.W.W.

Glenn Curtiss worked for Sennett in those days, doing aeroplane stunts, and was looking hungrily for capital to finance what is now the great Curtiss aircraft industry.

A. P. Giannini ran two small banks, which later developed into one of the greatest financial institutions in the United States: the Bank of America.

Howard Hughes inherited a large fortune from his father, the inventor of the modern oil-drill. Howard multiplied his millions by going into aircraft; he was an eccentric man who ran his large industrial enterprises over the telephone from a third-rate hotel room and was seldom seen. He also dabbled in motion pictures, achieving considerable success with such films as
Hell’s Angels
, starring the late Jean Harlow.

In those days, my routine pleasures were watching Jack Doyle’s Friday-night fights at Vernon; attending vaudeville at the Orpheum Theatre on Monday night; Morosco Theatre’s stock company on Thursday; and, occasionally, a symphony at Cluine’s Philharmonic Auditorium.

*

The Los Angeles Athletic Club was a centre where the élite of local society and business gathered at the cocktail hour. It was like a foreign settlement.

A young man, a bit player, used to sit around the lounge, a lonely fellow who had come to Hollywood to try his luck but was not doing very well, named Valentino. He was introduced to me by another bit player, Jack Gilbert. I did not see Valentino again for a year or so; in the interim he jumped to stardom. When we met he was diffident, until I said: ‘Since I last saw you you have joined the immortals.’ Then he laughed and dropped his defences and became quite friendly.

Valentino had an air of sadness. He wore his success gracefully, appearing almost subdued by it. He was intelligent, quiet and without vanity, and had great allure for women, but had little success with them, and those whom he married treated him rather shabbily. Soon after one marriage, his wife started an affair with one of the men in the developing laboratory, with whom she would disappear into the dark-room. No man had greater attraction for women than Valentino; no man was more deceived by them.