Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1920 - Feb 1921)

30 The Boy Whom And straightway the bride flew off to the telephone to tell her friend and imitator of the happy event. There is an ingenuousness about Charlie that is captivating. Of the stars I have met, Charlie Chaplin and Nazimova stand forth as the most genuine human beings. They are absolutely devoid of pose. Yet a half hour's conversation is sufficient to catch flashes of that inherent talent for impersonation. The instant they become engrossed in a subject they are free from restraint and proceed to give a description with pantomime as well as words. Neither manifests a shade of egotism or star-consciousness. Chaplin shrinks from attention when in public. He is as bashful as a boy when the conversation revolves about him as subject, yet he cannot conceal his pleasure when a compliment is paid him. From the sparkle in his eyes you would think he was hearing praise for the first time. He does not try to disguise his gratification. Some of the bourgeoisie of the movie colony have called Chaplin a poser. They say he affects the company of artists, writers, and musicians because it pleases his vanity. This is not true. Charlie Chaplin has an unusually good mind, not a mind trained by systematic education, but one eager for information, and alert in the appreciation of another's talent. He particularly enjoyed meeting such musicians as Mischa Elman, and Yzaye. Chaplin himself plays the violin with considerable feeling and understanding. I have known celebrities to be charmed by Charlie's rapt attention. How interested he seemed ! What a good listener ! Really, a charming fellow ! And after their departure Charlie might remark : "Yes, I liked them. You know, I can use their ideas in a picture." Everybody Liked Little did the erudite personages fancy they were being adapted to a Chaplin comedy ! Of late Charlie has been the victim of much ill rumor — a rather helpless victim because he seems constitutionally unsuited to verbal combat. The most criminal accusation hurled at him seems to be "tightwad." In contrast to most of the movie plutocrats, Charlie is a Silas Marner. To think that a movie star possesses only one automobile and but one chauffeur. It's heinous ! And I don't think he has a valet. At least he has never talked of one, and I've never seen any one in livery hanging about him. His automobile is. just a cheap six or seven thousand dollar stock car. It hasn't any gilt on it, no kalogram, no aluminum, or anything worth while. He likes simple food and eats it. He dresses most simply. Perhaps this quiet manner of living is the reason he has been accused of bolshevist and socialist sympathies. Most people using those terms don't know what they mean, anyhow, so it doesn't matter. I do not know that it is an offense to be a socialist, now that things are settling down again. This is presumably a free country, where one may elect his own political party or religion. As for Chaplin's being a socialist, a Republican, a Democrat — he's an actor. He may take a casual interest in politics, just as he does in art, music, and the Vernon boxing matches. These issues are in the minority. His work holds the overwhelming majority. The public does not pay to see the man Chaplin, it pays to see the artist, and we only protest when the artist's goods deteriorate and fall off as Chaplin's have of late. A mind divided cannot accomplish its best. Chaplin has had various vitiating claims upon his mind. We hope he soon may be freed of them. The Boy Whom Everybody Liked Photo by Hartsook IT was only a short time ago that we saw them together on the screen — Clarine Seymour and Bobby Harron —in "The Girl Who Stayed at Home," that tense, throbbing picture, so full of life and youth. And it seems strange that we will never see either of them again. Harron, who died on September 5th, was one of that small group of Griffith "finds" who had stuck with the great producer from the days of the Biograph Company, where he got his first job, at fourteen, as errand and property boy. His first big role was the otae he played in "The Birth of a Nation;" after that the fans came to know him through his appearances opposite Mae Marsh. His role in "Hearts of the World" marked him as star material, and not long after that picture was released it was announced that he would head his own company, working under Mr. Griffith's supervision, however. He had completed but one picture, "Coincidence," when the accident occurred which resulted in his death. Bobby Harron as an actor was well known, but it is as a boy whom every one who worked with him admired tremendously, whom every one liked, that he will be remembered. Dick Barthelmess, the Gish girls — all his associates would sidetrack an interviewer who wanted to question them while they talked eagerly about Bobby Harron.