Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1920 - Feb 1921)

What's the Matter with Chaplin? for a week, and then discard it as quickly as it was conceived. His rehearsals are as painstaking a s those of D. W. Griffith. Sometimes he substitutes another person for himself in order to gauge the effect from an impersonal angle. Every move is calculated and usually is guided by a certain rhythmic order. Chaplin is keen on rhythm when he wants speed in action. ''One — you step forward to strike me ; two, I slip away ; three, the other chap gets it." Such an episode is rehearsed innumerable times. His screen scrimmages are never extemporaneous. "Rough-and-tumble fights may be funny," he observes. "More often they aren't. Besides, some one may get hurt." Like Flaubert pacing the floor in quest of "le mot juste," Chaplin paces his "set" in quest of the logical form of expression. If he is penurious it certainly is not with film. Each scene is shot from five to ten times in order to get the most effective angle and action. All the time he is as grave as Hamlet. "Yes, that's very good," he will say. "Very good, yes, yes, yes. Now let's do it over again." There is nothing gay or rollicking about Chaplin's atelier. It bears the same resemblance to the Mack Sennett studio as an undertaker's parlor to a circus dressing tent. The studio grounds are as formal as a cemetery with white walks and welltrimmed plots. There is a sepulchral stillness even during working hours. Externally the studio appears to be a series of prim English cottages. Chaplin's home, too, was of English architecture. 1 say was, for long before he left Los Angeles, he had moved to the Los Angeles Athletic Club — that haven for bachelors and would-be bachelors. Charlie is as loyal to his England as Tony Moreno is to his Spain. As Moreno delights in having a Spanish menage and a few Spaniards, male and female, scattered through his company, so Chaplin shows a preference for English retainers. He was born in Paris, where his parents, both English, were appearing in the music halls. While he was very young his parents returned to London, and it was there Charles Spencer was educated. 29 The family lived in a poor section of London. Mother Chaplin would sit by the window with Charlie on her knees and imitate the expressions of the passersby. "My mother was a fine acremarks gravely, touch of tress, Charlie with a pride. One The home in which the Chaplins' ill-fated marriage venture began. act. His time she returned home from shopping and, quite excited, told Charlie to put on his cap and come with her at once. She led him down one of the tortuous by-streets of London to a bookshop. In the window of this shop was an open book containing a poem about a teacher and a scholar. Mrs. Chaplin had no money to buy the book so she read the lines, slowly and one at a time, to the youngster, who repeated them carefully in her tones until he had memorized the complete poem. Later he recited it in the schoolroom For a movie actor Chaplin with great success. is conspicuous by being very Chaplin has the memory of a cash simple in his dress. register. He recited "The Teacher and the Scholar" one evening not long ago when playing charades with several of his friends. He hadn't forgotten a word, and he delivered it with the same boyish inflection and gesture that he had used in" the first rendition. Like Nazimova, Chaplin was born to He would act if no one ever saw him. favorite _ pastime is charades. A single word is sufficient to conjure from his mind a whole series of tableaux. So eloquent are these parlor pantomimes of his that it is a genuine theatrical treat to watch them. Particularly do I recall an exposition of senilitv. He made me think of Cyril Maude as Grumpy. And the only disguise he wore was a towel tied to his chin as a beard! Every movement, every ine of his face, every tremor of his voice was eloquent of age. His mimicry of Mary Pickford is of uncanny realism. No one appreciates it more keenly than Mary herself, who is very fond of Charlie. As for Charlie, he has an overwhelming admiration for Mary, both as an artist and a business woman. When several newspaper reporters called at the Fairbanks home to learn the details of the Fairbanks-Pickford wedding, the morning that the secret was revealed, the interview was suddenly halted by a startled exclamation from Mary: "Why, Dou?!" she cried. "We haven't told Charlie!"