Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

THE FIRST OF SCREENLAND'S fLScreenland presents a remarkable chronicle of the meteoric career of Charlie Chaplin from his first music hall appearance at the age of five to his present zenith of success. protagonist of custard-pie drama — Charlie Chaplin, the funny man of the screen — the world's buffoon extraordinary. And yet this same Charlie Chaplin is being hailed today in Hollywood as the cinema's greatest dramatic director. They say he has begun where the Griffiths and Lubitsches and De Milles left off; that he has done what other great directors have always hoped to do — and for years have been promising to do. If he has done these things, there is no one to claim a share of the credit. It all belongs to Charlie. It was his story, his continuity, his direction; his final editing. Even if he hasn't done the impossible, the fact that the big people of filmland, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Lubitsch, Niblo, Xeilan, and writers of note, believe that he has. which is sufficient evidence that it is a remarkable achievement. The Chaplin opus, A Woman of Paris, (frowns a career that has no counterpart in history or fiction, a career that had its beginning in the most abject poverty. QMr. Cohn is going to delve into the careers of our famous screen folk --and tell you, step by step, of their picturesque lives. No mere biographies are these --but absorbing underthe-skin revelations, with many an anecdote that has never before seen printer's ink. {^These heart-throb chronicles are going to paint the rise to fame of Mabel Normand, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Mack Sennett, Erich Von Stroheim, William S. Hart, Marshall Neilan, Pola Negri, Rodolph Valentino, Charles Ray, Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. De Mille and Rex Ingram. A remarkable story of Order your copy now! H^Next month? Gloria Swanson. Music Hall Debut at Five HASHES might have written the early part of that history;'the tale of the little five year old boy, half starved and half dead with fright, pushed out on a music hall stage at Aldershot, the English garrison town, and told to sing. "Sing 'Jack Jones' and ye'd better sing it good !" was the parting command. Somehow or other he got through the first verse of the coster song. Strength was beginning to flow back into the thin pipestems of legs. And then as he started . the second 18 verse, something struck him on the cheek. He winced, closed his eyes and sang bravely on, although his lips trembled and his cheeks twitched. Again something from "out front" struck him. He faltered for a moment and then suddenly the truth dawned and he realized in his childish way that it had been a mistake. It wasn't what he thought. The sound was different. He had not failed after all. He opened his eyes and looked down on the stage. Yes, that was it. They were throwing coins on the stage, pennies, sixpences and shillings, and even a half crown or two. Then hazy memories of the illness and death of the elder Charles, the family's chief breadwinner, the collapse of the mother . . the poorhouse. Perhaps it was a year, maybe only six months of clogdancing in cheap music halls or public houses — dancing in unison with other ill-nourished youngsters under the ever threatening guidance of a' heavy handed prompter. The thrill of a first engagement in legitimate drama, playing the boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes with William Gillette in London. The disappointment because Gillette did not offer to take the boy to America and later the dwindling of any chance to become a great tragedian. Then a job as a comedian as an alternative to starvation. Eventually America in his early twenties on various vaudeville circuits. 'That Lonesome Little Englishman" w e all have a favorite "memory." Mine is of a night just ten years ago this fall. It was in the old Press Club of Los Angeles, where the newspapermen of the city used to meet and play cards and dance and maybe drink things that are now extinct. It was one of the periodic dances, about the nearest thing to Bohemianism the town could boast of. One of the boys at the Keystone, Harry McCoy, Sertnett's