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47
Chaplin wandered about on his ov/n while Goldwyn was with his friend, and found his way into a little sitting room. It contained a vast number of books, all obviously belonging to someone who enjoyed poetry, novels and literary criticism of the highest intellectual order, and Chaplin examined them with interest. A nurse came enquiringly towards him, obviously not recognizing him.
"Whose room is this?" said Chaplin.
"This? Oh, it's being used by Mrs. Mildred Harris Chaplin. Those are her books."
"So this is what she reads."
"Oh, no. The books she reads are in the locker in her bedroom." And they both laughed, for very different reasons.
Chaplin was forced henceforward to live his private life, to a very large extent, in the public eye. And his public life was also everybody's business. Everyone, from society women to young film extras, who wanted a successful career in films laid seige to him, and many went to the most extravagant lengths to secure publicity, or an engagement, through him.
There was one who arranged her own kidnapping in an attempt to bring herself more firmly to Chaplin's notice; there were others who fought to be photographed with him, who inserted notices in the press coupling his name with theirs. Chaplin began to feel like an unwilling Haroun al Raschid. His whole life was lived henceforward under the unremitting glare of constant publicity; and that part of the price he had to pay for his celebrity irked him considerably. He had accepted, as part of his position, the demands of normal publicity. But the excessive prying into his everyday concerns, the impossibility of achieving for more than a few moments either privacy or solitude, both of which he had always urgently needed, were a heavy and unexpected cross to bear.
But, however unpleasant the incessant demands of would-be film stars, hangers-on and socialities, however wearisome the incessant publicity, whatever his private tragedy, Chaplin could always turn with relief to his work. Once he had started a film, his absorption in it was so complete that he was unaware of anything outside its orbit.
Some time after his divorce, he was busily engaged upon The Kid, one of the best-remembered of his early films, and one which made a star overnight of a little boy of seven.
^ The Wonderful Visit
THOUGH ALL THE SUBSTANCE OF CHAPLIN'S FILMS, AS WE SHALL SEE
later, is subjective, and much of its incident drawn from his own