Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1922)

{ARYP^t^^y Magazine 21 Indeed — "Why should one go through the unpleasantness of a channel crossing when one can fly ? did not dress. I had been browsing about all day. and did not go back to my hotel. I was motioned unceremoniously to the farthest corner, and the tiniest table, of the big dining-room. It was a beautiful place, and there were many beautiful women and well-dressed men there. I couldn't see much from my table, but I meekly sat there, and I enjoyed myself hugely. I was passing out as unceremoniously as I came, when a man from one of the t;ood tables, rushed up to me. It was Al Kaufman, Paramount European representative. He brought me to hitable. There sat Pola Negri and Mrs. Kaufman. She is a delightful person. Young, vivacious, beautiful. She speaks no English — she is Polish, you know, not German, even though she has played in the German pictures, "Passion" and "Gypsy Blood'* — and we became good friend-. I dined with the same party every one of the three nights I spent in Berlin. Negri is coming to America in January to make pictures in California. She will be a revelation. I also met Ernst Lubitsch, the German director of "Deception" and "Passion" and "Gypsy Blood." He does not speak English; nothing but German — so we did not have manv conversations. The others collapsed. I had difficulty in suppressing my own laughter, until I realized how very well meant was this outburst. It was impossible to be amused by it. Instead, it touched me. I visited the Quartier Latin. (Since we are in France, we must not call it the Latin Quarter!) I wanted to see it, but I was frankly afraid of the "intellectuals." I went, and I didn't get near enough to the intellectuals to be afraid of them. I AM reminded suddenly of an incident in London. You remember last month I told you about the little restaurant noted for the excellence of its stewed eels? Well, I went there one night and had four helpings. The news that I had been there got about and some imaginative person said that as stewed eels evidently were a gastronomic obsession with me, I would surely be there the following evening. I didn't come — but others did, so that the restaurant was popular and the bobbies busy! I didn't know about it until later. If I had known it would have been a great temptation to go again! I left Paris to go to Germany. I came back to Paris. I made up my mind quite abruptly to go into Germany and spend several days in Berlin. It never entered my head that there might be passport difficulties. There weren't. The Belgian inspector who looked at my passport as we came into Germany sent it back to me in the train with this message: "I see your face and I know it. You may go." I was not recognized in Berlin. Not for a day. At the Adlon Hotel they did not know me at all. This was a great relief. I do not mean that I am ungrateful for the splendid receptions that have been given me everywhere. I mean I was glad, for a day or two, to be simply myself, to see Berlin without being seen. They have had only one of my pictures there, "The Rink," a very old one. It was playing the week I arrived. The evening of my arrival, I went to the leading restaurant, the "smart" cafe of Berlin. I 1HAVE picked up many ideas for future pictures. The "serious" photoplay I am going to do someday will not be entirely tragic. It will have humor in it. just as "The Kid" did. Because of the picture pirates — who grab ideas of others and use them — I cannot tell you what it is going to be about, but it will be in seven or eight reels. I am going to start a new picture as soon as I return to California. This will be the seventh of my eight short reel pictures and the last will follow as soon as this one is completed. I am going back to America as hastily as I left it. Somehow I do things that way. I made up my mind in Hollywood that I was going around the world. I left twenty-four hours after I made my decision. I fully intended to visit other countries besides England and France. But I've got to get back to work. I'm happiest when I am working, even though it seems to me mine is the hardest work in the world. All the while I was traveling, I was thinking ( Continued on page 105) Newspaper men ; where. They are it Cherbourg. France, are like newspaper men cvcryall waiting and waiting to talk to the Mr. Chaplin