My Autobiography (28 page)

I now began preparing to fulfil my $670,000 contract. Mr Caulfield, who represented the Mutual Film Corporation and attended to all the business, rented a studio in the heart of Hollywood. With a competent little stock company including Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin, Lloyd Bacon, John Rand, Frank Jo Coleman and Leo White, I felt confident about starting to work.

My first picture,
The Floor Walker
, was happily a great success. It had a department store setting in which I did a chase on a moving staircase. When Sennett saw the film he commented: ‘Why the hell didn’t we ever think of a running staircase?’

Very soon I was in my stride, turning out a two-reel comedy every month. After
The Floor Walker
there followed
The Fireman, The Vagabond, One a.m., The Count, The Pawnshop, Behind the Screen, The Rink, Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, The Adventurer
. In all it took about sixteen months to complete these twelve comedies, which included time off for colds and minor impediments.

Sometimes a story would present a problem and I would have difficulty in solving it. At this juncture I would lay off work and try to think, striding up and down my dressing-room in torment or sitting for hours at the back of a set, struggling with the problem. The mere sight of. the management or the actors gaping at me was embarrassing, especially as Mutual was paying the cost of production, and Mr Caulfield was there to see that things kept moving.

At a distance I would see him crossing the lot. By his mere outline I knew well what he was thinking: nothing accomplished and the overheads increasing. And I would intimate as gently as
sledge-hammer that I never liked people around when I was thinking, or to feel that they were worrying.

At the end of a fruitless day, he would meet me accidentally on purpose as I left the studio, and would greet me with a phoney levity and inquire: ‘How’s she coming?’

‘Lousy! I guess I’m through! I can’t think any more!’

And he would make a hollow sound, meant for a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll come.’

Sometimes the solution came at the end of the day when I was in a state of despair, having thought of everything and discarded it; then the solution would suddenly reveal itself, as if a layer of dust had been swept off a marble floor – there it was, the beautiful mosaic I had been looking for. Tension was gone, the studio was set in motion, and how Mr Caulfield would laugh!

No member of my cast was injured in any of our pictures. Violence was carefully rehearsed and treated like choreography. A slap in the face was always tricked. No matter how much of a skirmish, everyone knew what he was doing, everything was timed. It was inexcusable to get hurt, because in films all effects – violence, earthquakes, shipwrecks, and catastrophes – can be faked.

We had only one accident in that whole series. It happened in
Easy Street
. While I was pulling a street-lamp over the big bully to gas him, the head of the lamp collapsed and its sharp metal edge fell across the bridge of my nose, necessitating two surgical stitches.

Fulfilling the Mutual contract, I suppose, was the happiest period of my career. I was light and unencumbered, twenty-seven years old, with fabulous prospects and a friendly, glamorous world before me. Within a short time I would be a millionaire – it all seemed slightly mad. Money was pouring into my coffers. The ten thousand dollars I received every week accumulated into hundreds of thousands. Now I was worth four hundred thousand, now five hundred thousand. I could never take it for granted.

I remember Maxine Elliott, a friend of J. P. Morgan, said to me once: ‘Money is only good to forget.’ But it is also something to remember say I.

There is no doubt that men of success live in a different world; when I met people their faces would light up with interest. Although I was a parvenu, my opinions were seriously considered. Acquaintances were willing to enter into the warmest of friendships and share my problems as though they were relatives. It was all very flattering, but my nature does not respond to such intimacy. I like friends as I like music – when I am in the mood. Such freedom, however, was at the price of occasional loneliness.

One day, towards the completion of my contract, my brother entered my bedroom at the Athletic Club and blithely announced: ‘Well, Charlie, you’re now in the millionaire class. I’ve just completed a deal for you to make eight two-reel comedies for First National for $1,200,000.’

I had just taken a bath and was wandering about the room with a towel around my loins, playing
The Tales of Hoffmann
on my violin. ‘Hum-um, I suppose that’s wonderful.’

Sydney suddenly burst into laughter. ‘This goes into my memoirs: you with that towel around your hips, playing the violin, and your reaction to the news that I’ve signed up for a million and a quarter!’

I admit there was a tinge of pose because of the task it involved – the money had to be earned.

Notwithstanding, all this promise of wealth did not change my mode of living. I was reconciled to wealth but not to the use of it. This money I earned was legendary – a symbol in figures, for I had never actually seen it. I therefore had to do something to prove that I had it. So I procured a secretary, a valet, a car and a chaffeur. Walking by a show-room one day, I noticed a seven-passenger Locomobile, which, in those days, was considered the best car in America. The thing looked too magnificently elegant to be for sale. However, I walked into the shop and asked: ‘How much?’

‘Four thousand nine hundred dollars.’

‘Wrap it up,’ I said.

The man was astonished and tried to put up a resistance to such an immediate sale. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see the engine?’ he asked.

‘Wouldn’t make any difference – I know nothing about them,’
I answered. However, I pressed the tyre with my thumb to show a professional touch.

The transaction was simple; it meant writing my name on a piece of paper and the car was mine.

Investing money was a problem and I knew little about it, but Sydney was familiar with all its nomenclature: he knew about book values, capital gains, preferred and common shares; A and B ratings, convertible stocks and bonds, industrial fiduciaries and legal securities of savings banks. Investment opportunities were rife in those days. A Los Angeles realtor pleaded with me to go into partnership with him, each of us putting up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to buy a large tract of land in the Los Angeles Valley. Had I invested in his project my share would have amounted to fifty million dollars, for oil was discovered and it became one of the richest areas in California.

M
ANY
illustrious visitors came to the studio at this time: Melba, Leopold Godowsky and Paderewski, Nijinsky and Pavlova.

Paderewski had great charm, but there was something bourgeois about him, an over-emphasis of dignity. He was impressive with his long hair, severe, slanting moustache and the small tuft of hair under his lower lip, which I thought revealed some form of mystic vanity. At his recitals, with house lights lowered and the atmosphere sombre and awesome when he was about to sit on the piano stool, I always felt someone should pull it from under him.

During the war I met him at the Ritz Hotel in New York and greeted him enthusiastically, asking if he were there to give a concert. With pontifical solemnity he replied: ‘I do not give concerts when I am in the service of my country.’

Paderewski became Prime Minister of Poland, but I felt like Clemenceau, who said to him during a conference of the ill-fated Versailles Treaty: ‘How is it that a gifted artist like you should stoop so low as to become a politician?’

On the other hand Leopold Godowsky, a greater pianist, was simple and humorous, a small man with a smiling, round face. After his concert in Los Angeles he rented a house there, and I visited him quite frequently. On Sundays I was privileged to listen to him practising and to witness the extraordinary facility and technique of his exceptionally small hands.

Nijinsky, with members of the Russian Ballet, also came to the studio. He was a serious man, beautiful-looking, with high cheekbones and sad eyes, who gave the impression of a monk dressed in civilian clothes. We were shooting
The Cure
. He sat behind the camera, watching me at work on a scene which I
thought was funny, but he never smiled. Although the other onlookers laughed, Nijinsky sat looking sadder and sadder. Before leaving he came and shook hands, and in his hollow voice said how much he enjoyed my work and asked if he could come again. ‘Of course,’ I said. For two more days he sat lugubriously watching me. On the last day I told the cameraman not to put film in the camera, knowing Nijinsky’s doleful presence would ruin my attempts to be funny. Nevertheless, at the end of each day he would compliment me. ‘Your comedy is balletique, you are a dancer,’ he said.

I had not yet seen the Russian Ballet, or any other ballet for that matter. But at the end of the week I was invited to attend the matinée.

At the theatre Diaghilev greeted me – a most vital and enthusiastic man. He apologized for not having the programme he thought I would most enjoy. ‘Too bad it isn’t
L’Après-midi d’un Faune,’
he said. ‘I think you would have liked it.’ Then quickly he turned to his manager. ‘Tell Nijinsky we’ll put on the
Faune
after the interval for Charlot.’

The first ballet was
Scheherazade
. My reaction was more or less negative. There was too much acting and too little dancing, and the music of Rimsky-Korsakov was repetitive, I thought. But the next was a
pas de deux
with Nijinsky. The moment he appeared I was electrified. I have seen few geniuses in the world, and Nijinsky was one of them. He was hypnotic, godlike, his sombreness suggesting moods of other worlds; every movement was poetry, every leap a flight into strange fancy.

He had asked Diaghilev to bring me to his dressing-room during the intermission. I was speechless. One cannot wring one’s hand and express in words one’s appreciation of great art. In his dressing-room I sat silent, watching the strange face in the mirror as he made up for the
Faune
, putting green circles around his cheeks. He was gauche in his attempt at conversation, asking inconsequential questions about my films, and I could only answer in monosyllables. The warning bell rang at the end of the interval, and I suggested returning to my seat.

‘No, no, not yet,’ he said.

There came a knock at the door. ‘Mr Nijinsky, the overture is finished.’

I began to look anxious.

‘That’s all right,’ he answered. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

I was shocked and at a loss to know why he was acting this way. ‘Don’t you think I had better go?’

‘No, no, let them play another overture.’

Diaghilev eventually came bursting into the dressing-room. ‘Come, come! The audience are applauding.’

‘Let them wait, this is more interesting,’ said Nijinsky, then began asking me more banal questions.

I was embarrassed. ‘I really must get back to my seat,’ I said.

No one has ever equalled Nijinsky in
L’Après-midi d’un Faune
. The mystic world he created, the tragic unseen lurking in the shadows of pastoral loveliness as he moved through its mystery, a god of passionate sadness – all this he conveyed in a few simple gestures without apparent effort.

Six months later Nijinsky went insane. There were signs of it that afternoon in his dressing-room, when he kept the audience waiting. I had witnessed the beginning of a sensitive mind on its way out of a brutal war-torn world into another of its own dreaming.

The sublime is rare in any vocation or art. And Pavlova was one of those rare artists who had it. She never failed to affect me profoundly. Her art, although brilliant, had a quality pale and luminous, as delicate as a white rose-petal. As she danced every move was the centre of gravity. The moment she made her entrance, no matter how gay or winsome she was, I wanted to weep.

I met ‘Pav’, as her friends called her, while she was in Hollywood making a picture at the Universal studios, and we became very good friends. It was a tragedy that the speed of the old cinema failed to capture the lyricism of her dancing, and because of that her great art has been lost to the world.

On one occasion the Russian Consulate gave her a testimonial dinner at which I was present. It was an international affair and quite a solemn one. During dinner there were many toasts and speeches, some in French and others in Russian. I believe I was the only Englishman called upon. Before my turn came to speak, however, a professor delivered a brilliant eulogy of Pavlova’s art in Russian. At one moment the professor burst
into tears, then went up to Pavlova and kissed her fervently. I knew that any attempt of mine would be tame after that, so I rose and said that as my English was totally inadequate to express the greatness of Pavlova’s art I would speak in Chinese. I spoke in a Chinese jargon, building up to a crescendo as the professor had done, finishing by kissing Pavlova more fervently than the professor, taking a napkin and placing it over both our heads as I continually kissed her. The party roared with laughter, and it broke the solemnity of the occasion.

Sarah Bernhardt played at the Orpheum vaudeville theatre. She was, of course, very old and at the end of her career, and I cannot give a true appraisal of her acting. But when Duse came to Los Angeles, even her age and approaching end could not dim the brilliance of her genius. She was supported by an excellent Italian cast. One handsome young actor gave a superb performance before she came on, holding the centre of the stage magnificently. How could Duse excel this young man’s remarkable performance? I wondered.

Then from extreme left up-stage Duse unobtrusively entered through an archway. She paused behind a basket of white chrysanthemums that stood on a grand piano, and began quietly rearranging them. A murmur went through the house, and my attention immediately left the young actor and centred on Duse. She looked neither at the young actor nor at any of the other characters, but continued quietly arranging the flowers and adding others which she had brought with her. When she had finished, she slowly walked diagonally down-stage and sat in an armchair by the fireplace and looked into the fire. Once, and only once, did she look at the young man, and all the wisdom and hurt of humanity was in that look. Then she continued listening and warming her hands – such beautiful, sensitive hands.