The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Edna Pu rvia nee, Mildred Harris, Lita Grey, Paulet+e Goddard — two have been his wives, all he has loved. LOVE LAUGHS AT the LITTLE CLOWN Charlie Chaplin seeks, in women, a heart-breaking dream that is lost and gone, never to be recaptured ONE evening at Hollywood's famed Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel Charlie Chaplin was accompanied by a girl he had been with almost daily for a fortnight. It was, Hollywood felt sure, a budding romance. Perhaps this one . . . Chaplin said something to her and she laughed; a high, shrill, metallic laugh. His smile disappeared and he stared at her across the table as though seeing her for the first time. Surprise and wonderment were upon his face. He might well have said aloud, "Who is this girl? What is she doing here with me? What am I doing here with her?" He was never seen with her again. The first time Charlie Chaplin really looks at a girl he is through with her. That is a hard statement to make of any man. It indicates a shallow, callous, selfish nature has been true of Charlie Chaplin. Yet those close to him know he is not shallow, not callous, selfish ; they know instead the depth of his feeling and compassion is such that, as I saw one day on the beach at Santa Monica, tears well into his eyes at the sight of a hurt bird. The ladies and loves Charlie Chaplin has known through* the years have been many. Edna Pur viance, smiling, carefree daughter of the Golden West, his first leading lady; blonde and ringleted Mildred Harris; exotic and foreign Pola Negri — and her counterpart, Sari Maritza; May Collins, Georgia Hale, Merna Kennedy; swarthy Lita Grey; young Virginia Cherrill; the semi-mysterious It not But the girl who has been Charles Spencer Chaplin's ideal, his dream, whom he loved more than life, no one ever saw, and no one knew. By DICK HYLAND "Mary" Reeves of Europe. Others who touched his life so fieetingly failed to leave their imprint upon the memories of his most intimate friends. We can conjure in our minds a parade of beauty which suggests his heart is the surface of a pond rippled by every passing breeze. Only — Chaplin's breezes have always been quickly forming tempests of the same furious, intense degree. They have lasted alike — until — he really looked at them. Then they have been swiftly dropped into the limbo of forgotten things. So we start a story that in its entirety has never been told because where facts have been known reasons and effects have been hidden. It is the story of a boy-girl love that outlasted the years. A story that explains and gives rhyme to the conflicting, incongruous actions of a man who has puzzled Hollywood for years: Charles Spencer Chaplin, the ace of the world's comedians. I have known it for six years. It has not been told before because, well, we'll come to that. Sid Grauman, great showman and theater owner, Charles Furthman, ace scenario writer, Harry Crocker, young California newspaper man then living with Chaplin, the comedian himself and I dropped into the Cocoanut Grove one night after witnessing some boxing bouts. Chaplin was but recently divorced from Lita Grey — and there she was dancing on the floor before us. Chaplin followed her with his eyes, but they seemed focused on something distant, as if he were seeing far into the past. Furthman, noting, grinned and said to him: (Please turn to page 62) The New Movie Magazine, August, 1935