My Autobiography (21 page)

There was no one by that name in the company, but, as Reeves suggested, the name might mean Chaplin. Then I became excited, for Longacre Building, I discovered, was in the centre of Broadway and was full of lawyers’ offices; remembering that I had a rich aunt somewhere in the States, my imagination took flight; she might have died and left me a fortune. So I wired back to Kessel and Bauman that there was a Chaplin in the company whom they perhaps meant. I waited anxiously for a reply. It came the same day. I tore open the telegram. It read: ‘Will you have Chaplin call at our office as soon as possible?’

With excitement and anticipation, I caught the early morning train for New York, which was only two and a half hours from Philadelphia. I did not know what to expect – I imagined sitting in a lawyer’s office listening to a will being read.

When I arrived, however, I was somewhat disappointed, for Kessel and Bauman were not lawyers but producers of motion pictures. However, the actual facts of the situation were to be thrilling.

Mr Charles Kessel, one of the owners of the Keystone Comedy Film Company, said that Mr Mack Sennett had seen me playing the drunk in the American Music Hall on Forty-second Street and if I were the same man he would like to engage me to take the place of Mr Ford Sterling. I had often played with the idea of working in films, and even offered to go into partnership with Reeves, our manager, to buy the rights of all Karno’s sketches and make movies of them. But Reeves had been sceptical and sensibly so, because we knew nothing about making them.

Had I seen a Keystone Comedy? asked Mr Kessel. Of course, I had seen several, but I did not tell him that I thought they were a crude mélange of rough and rumble. However, a pretty, dark-eyed girl named Mabel Normand, who was quite charming, weaved in and out of them and justified their existence. I was not
terribly enthusiastic about the Keystone type of comedy, but I realized their publicity value. A year at that racket and I could return to vaudeville an international star. Besides, it would mean a new life and a pleasant environment. Kessel said the contract would call for appearing in three films a week at a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars. This was twice what I was getting with the Karno Company. However, I hemmed and hawed and said I could not accept less than two hundred dollars a week. Mr Kessel said that was up to Mr Sennett; he would notify him in California and let me know.

I did not exist while waiting to hear from Kessel. Perhaps I had asked too much? At last the letter came, stating they were willing to sign a year’s contract for one hundred and fifty dollars the first three months and one hundred and seventy-five dollars for the remaining nine, more money than I had ever been offered in my life. It was to start with the termination of our Sullivan and Considine tour.

When we played the Empress in Los Angeles, we were a howling success, thank God. It was a comedy called
A Night at the Club
. I played a decrepit old drunk and looked at least fifty years old. Mr Sennett came round after the performance and congratulated me. In that short interview, I was aware of a heavy-set man with a beetling brow, a heavy, coarse mouth and a strong jaw, all of which impressed me. But I wondered how sympathetic he would be in our future relationship. All through that interview I was extremely nervous and was not sure whether he was pleased with me or not.

He asked casually when I would join them. I told him that I could start the first week in September, which would be the termination of my contract with the Karno Company.

I had qualms about leaving the troupe in Kansas City. The company was returning to England, and I to Los Angeles, where I would be on my own, and the feeling was not too reassuring. Before the last performance I ordered drinks for everyone and felt rather sad at the thought of parting.

A member of our troupe, Arthur Dando, who for some reason disliked me, thought he would play a joke and conveyed by whispered innuendoes that I was to receive a small gift from the company. I must confess I was touched by the thought. However,
nothing happened. When everyone had left the dressing-room, Fred Karno Junior confessed that Dando had arranged to make a speech and present me with the gift, but after I had bought drinks for everyone he had not had the courage to go through with it and had left the so-called ‘present’ behind the dressing-table mirror. It was an empty tobacco-box, wrapped in tinfoil, containing small ends of old pieces of grease-paint.

E
AGER
and anxious, I arrived in Los Angeles and took a room at a small hotel, the Great Northern. The first evening I took a busman’s holiday and saw the second show at the Empress, where the Karno Company had worked. The attendant recognized me and came a few moments later to tell me that Mr Sennett and Miss Mabel Normand were sitting two rows back and had asked if I would join them. I was thrilled, and after a hurried, whispered introduction we all watched the show together. When it was over, we walked a few paces down Main Street, and went to a rathskeller for a light supper and a drink. Mr Sennett was shocked to see how young I looked. ‘I thought you were a much older man,’ he said. I could detect a tinge of concern, which made me anxious, remembering that all Sennett’s comedians were oldish-looking men. Fred Mace was over fifty and Ford Sterling in his forties. ‘I can make up as old as you like,’ I answered. Mabel Normand, however, was more reassuring. Whatever her reservations were about me, she did not reveal them. Mr Sennett said that I would not start immediately, but should come to the studio in Edendale and get acquainted with the people. When we left the café, we bundled into Mr Sennett’s glamorous racing car and I was driven to my hotel.

The following morning I boarded a street-car for Edendale, a suburb of Los Angeles. It was an anomalous-looking place that could not make up its mind whether to be a humble residential district or a semi-industrial one. It had small lumber-yards and junk-yards, and abandoned-looking small farms on which were built one or two shacky wooden stores that fronted the road. After many inquiries I found myself opposite the Keystone Studio. It was a dilapidated affair with a green fence round it, one
hundred and fifty feet square. The entrance to it was up a garden path through an old bungalow – the whole place looked just as anomalous as Edendale itself. I stood gazing at it from the opposite side of the road, debating whether to go in or not.

It was lunch-time and I watched the men and women in their make-up come pouring out of the bungalow, including the Keystone Cops. They crossed the road to a small general store and came out eating sandwiches and hot dogs. Some called after each other in loud, raucous voices: ‘Hey, Hank, come on!’ ‘Tell Slim to hurry!’

Suddenly I was seized with shyness and walked quickly to the corner at a safe distance, looking to see if Mr Sennett or Miss Normand would come out of the bungalow, but they did not appear. For half an hour I stood there, then decided to go back to the hotel. The problem of entering the studio and facing all those people became an insuperable one. For two days I arrived outside the studio, but I had not the courage to go in. The third day Mr Sennett telephoned and wanted to know why I had not shown up. I made some sort of excuse. ‘Come down right away, we’ll be waiting for you,’ he said. So I went down and boldly marched into the bungalow and asked for Mr Sennett.

He was pleased to see me and took me immediately into the studio. I was enthralled. A soft even light pervaded the whole stage. It came from broad streams of white linen that diffused the sun and gave an ethereal quality to everything. This diffusion was for photographing in daylight.

After being introduced to one or two actors I became interested in what was going on. There were three sets side by side, and three comedy companies were at work in them. It was like viewing something at the World’s Fair. In one set Mabel Normand was banging on a door shouting: ‘Let me in!’ Then the camera stopped and that was it – I had no idea films were made piecemeal in this fashion.

On another set was the great Ford Sterling whom I was to replace. Mr Sennett introduced me to him. Ford was leaving Keystone to form his own company with Universal. He was immensely popular with the public and with everyone in the studio. They surrounded his set and were laughing eagerly at him.

Sennett took me aside and explained their method of working. ‘We have no scenario – we get an idea then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy.’

This method was edifying, but personally I hated a chase. It dissipates one’s personality; little as I knew about movies, I knew that nothing transcended personality.

That day I went from set to set watching the companies at work. They all seemed to be imitating Ford Sterling. This worried me, because his style did not suit me. He played a harassed Dutchman, ad-libbing through the scene with a Dutch accent, which was funny but was lost in silent pictures. I wondered what Sennett expected of me. He had seen my work and must have known that I was not suitable to play Ford’s type of comedy; my style was just the opposite. Yet every story of situation conceived in the studio was consciously or unconsciously made for Sterling; even Roscoe Arbuckle was imitating Sterling.

The studio had evidently been a farm. Mabel Normand’s dressing-room was situated in an old bungalow and adjoining it was another room where the ladies of the stock company dressed. Across from the bungalow was what had evidently been a barn, the main dressing-room for minor members of the stock company and the Keystone Cops, the majority of whom were ex-circus clowns and prize-fighters. I was allotted the star dressing-room used by Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling and Roscoe Arbuckle. It was another barn-like structure which might have been the harness-room. Besides Mabel Normand, there were several other beautiful girls. It was a strange and unique atmosphere of beauty and beast.

For days I wandered around the studio, wondering when I would start work. Occasionally I would meet Sennett crossing the stage, but he would look through me, preoccupied. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he thought he had made a mistake in engaging me which did little to ameliorate my nervous tension.

Each day my peace of mind depended on Sennett. If perchance he saw me and smiled, my hopes would rise. The rest of the company had a wait-and-see attitude but some, I felt, considered me a doubtful substitute for Ford Sterling.

When Saturday came Sennett was most amiable. Said he:
‘Go to the front office and get your cheque.’ I told him I was more anxious to get to work. I wanted to talk about imitating Ford Sterling, but he dismissed me with the remark: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get round to that.’

Nine days of inactivity had passed and the tension was excruciating. Ford, however, would console me and after work he would occasionally give me a lift down-town, where we would stop in at the Alexandria Bar for a drink and meet several of his friends. One of them, a Mr Elmer Ellsworth, whom I disliked at first and thought rather crass, would jokingly taunt me: ‘I understand you’re taking Ford’s place. Well, are you funny?’

‘Modesty forbids,’ I said squirmishly. This sort of ribbing was most embarrassing, especially in the presence of Ford. But he graciously took me off the hook with a remark. ‘Didn’t you catch him at the Empress playing the drunk? Very funny.’

‘Well, he hasn’t made me laugh yet,’ said Ellsworth.

He was a big, cumbersome man, and looked glandular, with a melancholy, hangdog expression, hairless face, sad eyes, a loose mouth and a smile that showed two missing front teeth. Ford whispered impressively that he was a great authority on literature, finance and politics, one of the best-informed men in the country, and that he had a great sense of humour. However, I did not appreciate it and would try to avoid him. But one night at the Alexandria bar, he said: ‘Hasn’t this limey got started yet?’

‘Not yet,’ I laughed uncomfortably.

‘Well, you’d better be funny.’

Having taken a great deal from the gentleman, I gave him back some of his own medicine: ‘Well, if I’m half as funny as you look, I’ll do all right.’

‘Blimey! A sarcastic wit, eh? I’ll buy him a drink after that.’

*

At last the moment came. Sennett was away on location with Mabel Normand as well as the Ford Sterling Company, so there was hardly anyone left in the studio. Mr Henry Lehrman, Keystone’s top director after Sennett, was to start a new picture and wanted me to play a newspaper reporter. Lehrman was a vain man and very conscious of the fact that he had made some successful comedies of a mechanical nature; he used to say that he didn’t
need personalities, that he got all his laughs from mechanical effects and film-cutting.

We had no story. It was to be a documentary about the printing press done with a few comedy touches. I wore a light frock-coat, a top hat and a handlebar moustache. When we started I could see that Lehrman was groping for ideas. And of course being a newcomer at Keystone, I was anxious to make suggestions. This was where I created antagonism with Lehrman. In a scene in which I had an interview with an editor of a newspaper I crammed in every conceivable gag I could think of, even to suggesting business for others in the cast. Although the picture was completed in three days, I thought we contrived some very funny gags. But when I saw the finished film it broke my heart, for the cutter had butchered it beyond recognition, cutting into the middle of all my funny business. I was bewildered and wondered why they had done this. Henry Lehrman confessed years later that he had deliberately done it, because, as he put it, he thought I knew too much.

The day after I finished with Lehrman, Sennett returned from location. Ford Sterling was on one set, Arbuckle on another; the whole stage was crowded with three companies at work. I was in my street clothes and had nothing to do, so I stood where Sennett could see me. He was standing with Mabel, looking into a hotel lobby set, biting the end of a cigar. ‘We need some gags here,’ he said, then turned to me. ‘Put on a comedy make-up. Anything will do.’