Charlie Chaplin (1951)

$10,000 a week from Mutual 61 a year later, left him to join Billy West, Chaplin's leading imitator. A new recruit was Eric Campbell, the giant "heavy," who came from the D'Oyly Carte Gilbert and Sullivan Company, as his Mikado-like make-up suggests. He distinguished himself in "Easy Street." He died in an auto accident in December 1917, just as he was about to launch an independent career. Tall, lean, curly-haired Albert Austin, who distinguished himself in "Behind the Screen," was a Karno alumnus who had played with Chaplin in "A Night in an English Music-Hail." He was to have a hand, acting or directing, in almost all subsequent Chaplin films. The short, stout Henry Bergman came on as both actor and assistant director. Since Chaplin both directs and acts, he needs another's view when he is before the camera. Through the years, until his death in 1946, "Uncle" Bergman remained Chaplin's closest assistant. Between pictures he operated a Hollywood Cafe called "Henry's." Lloyd Bacon, now a prominent director, played juvenile leads, and Leota Bryan played second feminine leads. As assistant scenario writers, later called "gagmen," Chaplin had Vincent Bryan, a skit and song writer, and Maverick Terrill. Early in 1916 Chaplin sued Essanay for tampering with "Carmen," to be met with a countersuit for six hundred thousand dollars for alleged contract violations — not completing the stipulated number of pictures. Chaplin still lived in a small room in the old Stowell Hotel in Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. Outside of his work he was pretty much of a lone wolf, avoiding the places where the movie crowd congregated, and wandering at night through the poorer quarters of the town. Julian Eltinge, the noted female impersonator, then making films for Lasky, and a Hofbrau House habitue along with William Farnum, Raymond Hitchcock, and