Charlie Chaplin Page 23

  The film met no greater success with its first critics than with its first audiences. Howard Barnes, in the New York Herald Tribune, commented that “Charles Chaplin has composed what he likes to term ‘a comedy of murders’ with a woeful lack of humour, melodrama or dramatic taste.” The reviewer for the New Yorker berated Chaplin for trying to exonerate Verdoux’s murders “on the ground that they were justified by the twisted economic shape of the modern world.” Yet there can be no doubt that the film was coldly received as a direct result of his unhappy public reputation in the period. Oona Chaplin wrote to a close friend that the film “got a lot of bad—really bad—reviews—even the good ones were not very good—this was a great blow to Charlie—and to me naturally … Poor Charlie is so depressed and low—this has never happened to him before—it is really a horrible strain.”

  Chaplin held a press conference in the ballroom of the hotel at which he was staying on 14 April, three days after the opening. One of the publicity staff at United Artists sent out a memorandum that “Chaplin today requested mass meeting of the press … I am setting up such a mass meeting for Monday April 14. Chaplin expects this will be controversial and understands we can do nothing to protect him or [the] picture once he submits to mass questioning.”

  The press conference was described by Orson Welles as “the worst lynching by critics you ever heard.” A radio reporter who recorded the entire event observed that “the ballroom was literally filled to the rafters. Every seat on the floor was taken. People were standing in the doorways, and on the seats encircling the balcony.” “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Chaplin began. “I am not going to waste your time. I should say—proceed with the butchery. If there’s any question anybody wants to ask, I’m here, fire away at this old grey head.”

  And so the interrogation began, of which these extracts will give the flavour.

  “QUESTION: There have been several stories in the past accusing you more or less of being a fellow traveller, a Communist sympathiser. Could you define your present beliefs, sir?

  “CHAPLIN: Well, I think that is very difficult to do these days, to define anything politically … I have no political persuasions whatever. I’ve never belonged to any political party in my life, and I have never voted in my life. Does that answer your question?

  “QUESTION: Could you answer a direct question? Are you a Communist?

  “CHAPLIN: I am not a Communist.

  “QUESTION: A Communist sympathiser was the question.

  “CHAPLIN: A Communist sympathiser? That has to be qualified again … during the war I sympathised very much with Russia because I believe that she was holding the front.”

  He was then asked why he had decried patriotism or nationalism and had declared himself to be a “citizen of the world”; he was told that this was considered to be an insult to the American soldiers who had recently fought in the war.

  “CHAPLIN: Now whether you say that you object to me for not having patriotism is a qualified thing. I’ve been that way ever since I have been a young child. I can’t help it. I’ve travelled all over the world, and my patriotism doesn’t rest with one class. It rests with the whole world.”

  And so it went on.

  “QUESTION: Mr. Chaplin, according to a report from Hollywood, you are a personal friend of Hanns Eisler, the composer?

  “CHAPLIN: I am. I am very proud of the fact.

  “QUESTION: Are you aware of the fact that his brother is the Soviet agent, so attested by—

  “CHAPLIN: I know nothing about his brother!

  “QUESTION: Do you think that Mr. Eisler is a Communist?

  “CHAPLIN: I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know whether he is a Communist or not. I know he is a fine artist and a great musician and a very sympathetic friend.

  “QUESTION: Would it make any difference to you if he were a Communist?

  “CHAPLIN: No, it wouldn’t.

  “QUESTION: A Soviet agent, as he’s been accused of being.

  “CHAPLIN: I don’t know what you know of. A Soviet agent? I don’t know—I don’t—amplify that. Do you mean a spy?

  “QUESTION: Yes.

  “CHAPLIN: It certainly would. If he were a spy, that would make a great deal of difference.”

  The interrogation then turned to the film itself.

  “QUESTION: What was your reaction to the reviews—the press reviews—in New York on the picture?

  “CHAPLIN: Well, the one optimistic note is that they were mixed.

  “QUESTION: I say you have stopped being such a good comedian since your pictures have been bringing messages—so called.

  “CHAPLIN: Oh you have. That’s your privilege. I mean—I do something and I throw it, as we say, to the wolves. That’s your privilege.”

  If he had hoped to confront and quell his critics, he had failed in the attempt. His equivocations about his possible Communist sympathies, and the political allegiances of Hanns Eisler, did not help his position.

  The takings at the box office of the Broadway Theatre were so poor that the manager closed down the film after five weeks. Chaplin immediately withdrew it from circulation, only to reintroduce it in the early autumn with the slogan “Chaplin changes! Can you?” The public did not in fact rise to the challenge. For the first time in Chaplin’s career, one of his films had lost money. Chaplin, however, remained defiant and proclaimed the virtues of the film. At a later date he restrained his enthusiasm a little. He said in an interview that “there was some clever dialogue in Monsieur Verdoux but now I think it was too cerebral and should have had more business. If you have a bit of a message it’s better to put it over through business than through words—better for me, anyhow.” It is perhaps regrettable that in his last films he did not take his own advice.

  Nevertheless Monsieur Verdoux is in fact much more accomplished and entertaining than its early reception might suggest. It has many moments of high drama and Chaplin’s part offers him the opportunity for subtle and ingenious comedy; he perfectly enacts Verdoux’s air of fastidious disdain. It is a fable, or a satire, in the manner of Swift. It is in certain respects too explicit and too overt, with a prevailing expository tone, but it has scenes of genuine power. In one of them Verdoux changes his mind about killing a prostitute. “Life is beyond reason,” he tells her. “Fulfil your destiny.” “My destiny!”

  His energy was such that in this period he found the time and patience to work with a small theatrical company called the Circle Theatre; it had been founded by Jerry Epstein, a friend of his youngest son, and Sydney Chaplin himself played many of the leading roles. Chaplin came to the performances and, soon enough, took on a more active role as an adviser and then a producer. A friend of his, Lillian Ross, left a verbatim record of his conversations with the young actors. “You must not act. You must give the audience the impression that you’ve just read the script. It’s phoney now. We don’t talk that way. Just state it … Give the audience the feeling that they’re looking through the keyhole.” He told them later to keep the action simple and that “too many gestures are creeping in … Good exits and entrances. That’s all theatre is. And punctuation. That’s all it is.”

  One of the members of the Circle, Julian Ludwig, recalled that on one occasion Chaplin remembered every word and every stage direction from the play Sherlock Holmes, in which he had acted forty-four years before. His memory, however, was less perfect in more immediate matters. Ludwig said that “Mr. Chaplin couldn’t remember his own phone number, he couldn’t remember names.”

  In this year, 1947, Chaplin came under direct and sustained attack from the American government. Two months after the hostile press conference in New York, a congressman demanded Chaplin’s deportation on the ground that he was “detrimental to the moral fabric of America.” In July Chaplin learned that he was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and responded by writing that “I suggest you view carefully my latest production, Monsieur Verdoux. It is against
war and the futile slaughter of our youth. I trust you will not find its humane message distasteful. While you are preparing your engraved subpoena I will give you a hint on where I stand. I am not a Communist. I am a peace-monger.” There the matter rested. He told his son that “they don’t call me because they have nothing on me.”

  Yet it was a highly dangerous moment. The committee, under the chairmanship of Joseph McCarthy, had vigorously pursued anyone whom they considered to be disloyal or subversive, resulting for most of the victims in ostracism or unemployment. In 1947 the committee had turned its attention to supposed Communists working in the film industry; as a result of their investigations 300 employees were blacklisted or boycotted by the studios, and only thirty of them ever worked again in Hollywood. It was a desperate time, even for Chaplin.

  In the spring of 1948 an official from the Immigration and Nationalisation Service came to Summit Drive with an FBI officer and a stenographer; Chaplin had planned a short visit to London and had applied for a re-entry certificate. The official began to question Chaplin about his association with various Communists or Communist organisations, but Chaplin was studiously vague in his responses. “Oh I am sure I am not a member of anything … I think yes, maybe, yes … I think I have to belong to an Actors’ Guild in order to work … I think I met him once.” Of his close friendship with Hanns Eisler he said only that “I met him socially, through other people.” When asked if he had ever entertained members of the Soviet embassy he replied that “I don’t recall. You see, we get a lot of people.”

  “QUESTION: Have you ever made any donations to the Communist Party?

  “ANSWER: I am sure, never, not to my—I am sure.”

  The official from the INS said that he would grant him a re-entry certificate if Chaplin would sign the stenographer’s report of the interview. Chaplin’s lawyer, who was present at the proceedings, advised him not to do so; he may have suspected that his client had not been telling the whole truth and might later be accused of perjury. Chaplin followed his advice, refused to sign, and cancelled his proposed journey to London.

  19

  No Return

  He was angered and frustrated by the humiliations that he had been obliged to endure. In an article for the English newspaper Reynolds News, he wrote at the end of 1947 that “I have made up my mind to declare war, once and for all, on Hollywood and its inhabitants … I, Charlie Chaplin, declare that Hollywood is dying”; he also wrote that “before long, I shall perhaps leave the United States.” At the beginning of the following year he began preparations for the last film that he would ever make in his adopted country.

  In the autumn of 1948 the records of his studio refer to a project known as Footlights; yet at this stage it was a novel rather than a film. Chaplin was dictating passages of it into a Dictaphone that his secretary would then transcribe. At the same time he was trying out various stray melodies on his piano that might help to invoke the spirit of London immediately before the First World War. Once more he was returning to the past, and to the life that he and his mother had known. For many months he remained at Summit Drive, drawing inspiration from his memories of the world of the music hall. By the autumn of 1950, a script had emerged with the title of Limelight.

  The original prose narrative was some 100,000 words in length. It was in part autobiographical with the depiction of the central character, the clown Calvero, who had once longed to be a romantic actor but “he was too small and his diction was too uncultured.” He was bound instead for the late Victorian music-hall stage, upon which he became a principal comedian with top billing. On the first page of the manuscript Chaplin wrote that Calvero despised comedy because it required some kind of intimacy with the audience which he never felt. Calvero was analytical, introspective, understanding himself by perceiving others.

  Other passages from the novel never reached the film script. Chaplin wrote that Calvero had taken revenge on bourgeois society as a result of his experience of poverty as a child, that he was highly strung and nervous, emotional and egotistical. In the film itself an old poster hanging in Calvero’s small flat bears the inscription “Calvero, Tramp Comedian.” Over the mantelpiece hangs a photograph of Chaplin himself from the 1920s. The audience is invited to see Chaplin’s own story in Calvero’s downfall and loss of popularity.

  Other memories and fantasies abound. Calvero, like Mr. Charles Chaplin, follows a trajectory from success to failure upon the music-hall stage; he eventually drinks himself to death. Like Chaplin’s father, too, Calvero was unfortunate in marriage; his wife, Eva, was unfaithful to him with the promptings of a sexual desire that “was insatiable and verged on being pathological.” It may be possible to glimpse here something of the relationship between Hannah Chaplin and her husband.

  Yet in Limelight Calvero himself is redeemed by the love of a young ballet dancer, Terry Ambrose, whom he has saved from an attempt at suicide; Terry’s older sister had been a London prostitute who financed the young girl’s training as a dancer and in this vignette, too, we may glimpse Chaplin’s abiding preoccupation with his mother. In the rapport between Calvero and Terry there is also some intimation of the relationship between Chaplin and his young wife. The actress whom he chose for the part bore a strong resemblance to Oona Chaplin. The film is filled with so many allusions and duplications that it becomes an echo-chamber of Chaplin’s own memories or desires.

  An advertisement had been placed in the press. “Wanted: young girl to play leading lady to a comedian generally recognised as the world’s greatest.” For seven months at the beginning of 1951 he interviewed and tested many aspiring actresses and eventually, after much deliberation, he chose a twenty-year-old Englishwoman by the name of Claire Bloom.

  Claire Bloom recalled in her memoir, Limelight and After, that Chaplin discussed the plot of the film almost as soon as he met her and her mother at the airport in New York. He told her that the story “took place in the London of his childhood.” It was clear that his earliest theatrical memories helped him to reimagine the dressing rooms, the agents’ offices, the “digs” and landladies of the Edwardian world. He also took evident pleasure in recreating the gas-lit atmosphere of the music hall that he had experienced as a child; the strident songs and the insinuating glances, the patter and the double entendre, the mock-heroic monologue and the over-colourful costume, are all part of Limelight. Yet Hannah Chaplin was never far away. When choosing costumes for Claire Bloom’s film tests, Chaplin would point out that his mother wore such a dress or preferred such a shawl.

  By this time he had become a much lonelier figure. In restaurants some customers would make loud and unfavourable comments about his perceived politics. Many old acquaintances no longer dared to visit him for fear of guilt by association, and he was shunned or rejected by many erstwhile friends. At a New Year’s Eve party one of the guests spat in his face.

  Once she had been given the part, and had flown out to Hollywood in September 1951, Claire Bloom was immediately placed under a strict routine to prepare herself for the role; she began with a workout at the gymnasium before attending five hours of rehearsals, followed by a ballet class. The shooting of the film began in November. As always, Chaplin was thoroughly in earnest over every detail of the production. He was the first on set, before nine o’clock, and the last to leave after six in the evening.

  He told his sons that he expected Limelight to be his last, and greatest, film. That is perhaps why he decided to include the members of his family which had grown since his marriage to Oona. They lived comfortably and happily in Beverly Hills where she took on the role of mother and housewife with apparent gracefulness. The children came quickly; Geraldine was born in the summer of 1944, Michael in the spring of 1946, and Josephine in the spring of 1949. A fourth child, Victoria, was born just a few months before the filming of Limelight itself.

  Geraldine, Michael and Josephine in fact appeared in its opening scene. Wheeler Dryden, his half-brother and Hannah Chaplin’s illegitimate son,
was given the two parts of clown and doctor. Oona Chaplin herself “doubled” as Terry in two brief shots. His two older sons were also part of the cast. Sydney played the romantic hero, while Charles was given a minor role. Charles recalled that he and Sydney became the targets of their father’s “drive for perfection.” He bullied them relentlessly.

  Sydney Chaplin noticed his father’s excitement and extreme sensitivity while on the set. Chaplin’s remarks to various members of the cast have been recorded. “Come on, Syd, what the hell is the matter with you!… Jesus Christ, just act like a human being!… You’re working for Charlie Chaplin now. No Shakespeare, please!” This last retort was directed at Claire Bloom.

  He would become furious if any of the crew seemed tired or bored. On seeing one technician watching him with an uninterested expression he called out “Quick, get that man’s face out of here.” He also suffered from a certain amount of paranoia; if a problem occurred with a negative he was prone to blame it on a conspiracy among his “enemies.” He believed one technician to be wearing an American Legion ring, symbol of an organisation opposed to him, but it turned out to be a college ring. Rollie Totheroh was still relegated to the role of assistant cameraman but, on the set, he showed no sign of resentment. He would sometimes go over to Chaplin and tell him to “Keep your head up, sweetheart. Too many chins showing.”