‘How beautiful,’ I said.
‘Yes, but without a wife, it’s as empty as a jewel-case. So don’t leave it too late, Charlie.’
In the South we visited several military training camps and saw many glum and bitter faces. The climax of our tour was a final bond drive in New York on Wall Street, outside the sub-Treasury, where Mary, Douglas and I sold more than two million dollars’ worth of bonds.
New York was depressing; the ogre of militarism was every-where. There was no escape from it. America was cast into a matrix of obedience and every thought was secondary to the religion of war. The false buoyancy of military bands along the gloomy canyon of Madison Avenue was also depressing as I heard them from the twelfth-storey window of my hotel, crawling along on their way to the Battery to embark overseas.
In spite of the atmosphere, a little humour occasionally crept in. Seven brass bands were to march through the Ball Park before the Governor of New York. Outside the stadium Wilson Mizner, with a phoney badge of some sort, stopped each band and told them to strike up the National Anthem before passing the Governor’s grandstand. After the Governor and everyone had risen for the fourth time, he thought it necessary to inform the bands ahead to lay off the National Anthem.
*
Before leaving Los Angeles for the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, I had met Marie Doro. She had come to Hollywood to star in Paramount pictures. She was a Chaplin fan, and told Constance Collier that the one person she wanted to meet in Hollywood was Charlie Chaplin – not having the faintest idea that I had played with her in London at the Duke of York’s Theatre.
So I met Marie Doro again. It was like the second act of a romantic play. After Constance had introduced me I said: ‘But we’ve met before. You broke my heart. I was silently in love with you.’ Marie, looking through her lorgnette at me and as beautiful as ever, said: ‘How thrilling.’ Then I explained that I was Billy in Sherlock Holmes. Later we dined in the garden. It was a warm summer’s evening, and in the glow of candle-light I talked about the frustrations of a youth silently in love with her and told her that at the Duke of York’s Theatre I would time the moment that she left her dressing-room so as to meet her on the stairs and gulp ‘good-evening’. We talked of London and Paris; Marie loved Paris, and we talked of the bistros, of the cafés, of Maxim’s and the Champs Élysées…
And now Marie was in New York! And hearing I was staying at the Ritz, she had written a letter inviting me to dine at her apartment. It went as follows:
Charlie dear,
I have an apartment off the Champs Èlysées (Madison Avenue), where we can dine or go to Maxim’s (The Colony). Then afterwards, if you wish it, we can drive through the Bois (Central Park)…
However, we did not do any of those things, but just dined quietly in Marie’s apartment alone.
*
I returned to Los Angeles and again took up my quarters at the Athletic Club, and started to think about work. A Dog’s Life had taken a little longer and cost more than I had anticipated. However, I was not worried because it would all average up by the end of my contract. But I was worried about getting an idea for my second picture. Then the thought came to me: why not a comedy about the war? I told several friends of my intention, but they shook their heads. Said De Mille: ‘It’s dangerous at this time to make fun of the war.’ Dangerous or not, the idea excited me.
Shoulder Arms was originally planned to be five reels. The beginning was to be ‘home life’, the middle ‘the war’ and the end ‘the banqueting’, showing all the crowned heads of Europe celebrating my heroic act of capturing the Kaiser. And, of course, in the end I wake up.
The sequences before and after the war were discarded. The banquet was never photographed, but the beginning was. The comedy was by suggestion, showing Charlot walking home with his family of four children. He leaves them for a moment, then comes back wiping his mouth and belching. He enters the house and immediately a frying pan comes into the picture and hits him on the head. His wife is never seen, but an enormous chemise is hanging on the kitchen line, suggesting her size.
In the next sequence Charlot is examined for induction and made to strip down to the altogether. On a bevelled glass office-door he sees the name ‘Dr Frances’. A shadow appears to open the door, and, thinking it is a woman, he escapes through another door and finds himself in a maze of glass-partitioned offices where lady clerks are engrossed in their work. As one lady looks up he dodges behind a desk, only to expose himself to another, eventually escaping through another door into more glass-partitioned offices, getting further and further away from his base, until he finds himself out on a balcony, nude, over-looking a busy thoroughfare below. This sequence, although photographed, was never used. I thought it better to keep Charlot a nondescript with no background and to discover him already in the army.
Shoulder Arms was made in the middle of a sizzling heatwave. Working inside a camouflaged tree (as I did in one of the sequences) was anything but comfortable. I loathe working outside on location because of its distraction. One’s concentration and inspiration blow away with the wind.
The picture took a long time to make and I was not satisfied with it, and I got everybody in the studio feeling the same way – and now Douglas Fairbanks wanted to see it. He came with a friend and I warned them that I was so discouraged I was thinking of throwing it in the ash-can. The three of us sat in the projection-room alone. From the beginning Fairbanks went into roars of laughter, stopping only for coughing spells. Sweet Douglas, he was my greatest audience. When it was over and we came out into the daylight, his eyes were wet from laughing.
‘You really think it’s that funny?’ I said incredulously.
He turned to his friend. ‘What do you think of him? He wants to throw it in the ash-can!’ was Douglas’s only comment.
Shoulder Arms was a smash hit and a great favourite with the soldiers during the war, but again the film had taken longer than I had anticipated besides costing more than A Dog’s Life. Now I wanted to surpass myself and I thought First National might help me. Since I had joined them they were riding high, signing up producers and other stars and paying them $250,000 a picture and fifty per cent interest in the profits. Their films cost less and were easier to make than my comedies – and certainly grossed less at the box office.
When I spoke to Mr J. D. Williams, the president of First National about it, he said that he would put the matter before his directors. I did not want much, only enough to compensate for the extra cost, which would not have amounted to more than an additional ten or fifteen thousand dollars a picture. He said they would be meeting in Los Angeles within a week, and that I might talk to them myself.
Exhibitors were rugged merchants in those days and to them films were merchandise costing so much a yard. I thought I spoke well and sincerely in pleading my cause to them. I said that I needed a little extra because I was spending more than anticipated, but I might as well have been a lone factory worker asking General Motors for a raise. When I had finished talking there was a silence, then their spokesman stirred. ‘Well, Charlie, this is business,’ he said. ‘You’ve signed a contract and we expect you to live up to it.’
Said I laconically: ‘I could deliver the six pictures in a couple of months, if you want those kind of pictures.’
‘That’s up to you, Charlie,’ said the calm voice.
I continued: ‘I’m asking for an increase to keep up the standard of my work. Your indifference shows your lack of psychology and foresight. You’re not dealing with sausages, you know, but with individual enthusiasm.’ But nothing would move them. I could not understand their attitude, as I was considered the biggest drawing card in the country.
‘I believe it has something to do with this motion picture convention,’ said my brother Sydney. ‘There are rumours that all the producing companies are merging.’
A day later Sydney saw Douglas and Mary. They, too, were perturbed because their contracts were expiring and Paramount had done nothing about it.
Like Sydney, Douglas thought it had to do with this film merger. ‘It would be a good idea to put a detective on their track just to know what’s going on.’
We all agreed to hire a detective. We engaged a very clever girl, smart and attractive-looking. Soon she had made a date with an executive of an important producing company. Her report stated that she had passed the subject in the lobby of the Alexandria Hotel and had smiled at him, then made the excuse that she had mistaken him for an old friend. That evening he had asked her to have dinner with him. From her report we gathered that the subject was a glib braggart in an esurient state of libido. For three nights she went out with him, staving him off with promises and excuses. In the meantime she got a complete story of what was going on in the film industry. He and his associates were forming a forty-million-dollar merger of all the producing companies and were sewing up every exhibitor in the United States with a five-year contract. He told her they intended putting the industry on a proper business basis, instead of having it run by a bunch of crazy actors getting astronomical salaries. That was the gist of her story, and it was sufficient for our purposes. The four of us showed the report to D. W. Griffith and Bill Hart, and they had the same reaction as we did.
Sydney told us that we could defeat their merger if we announced to the exhibitors that we were forming our own production company and that we intended to sell our productions on the open market and remain independent. At the time we represented the top-drawer attraction of the industry. It was not our intention to go through with this project, however. Our objective was only to stop exhibitors from signing a five-year contract with this proposed merger, for without the stars it would, be worthless We decided that the night before their convention we would appear together in the main dining-room of the Alexandria Hotel for dinner, and then make an announcement to the Press.
On that night Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, W. S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks and myself sat at a table in the main dining-room. The effect was electric. J. D. Williams unsuspectingly came in for dinner first, saw us, then hurried out again. One after another the producers came to the entrance, took a look, then hurried out, while we sat talking big business and marking the table-cloth with astronomical figures. Whenever one of the producers appeared in the dining-room, Douglas would suddenly talk a lot of nonsense. ‘The cabbages on the peanuts and the groceries on the pork carry a great deal of weight these days,’ he would say. Griffith and Bill Hart thought he had gone mad.
Very soon half a dozen members of the Press were sitting at our table taking notes as we issued our statement that we were forming a company of United Artists to protect our independence and to combat the forthcoming big merger. The story received front-page coverage.
The next day the heads of several production companies offered to resign their posts and become our president for a small salary and an interest in the new company. After such a reaction we decided to go through with our project. Thus the United Artists Corporation was formed.
*
We arranged a meeting at Mary Pickford’s house. Each of us turned up with a lawyer and manager. It was such a regal gathering that what we had to say was like public oratory. In fact, every time I spoke it made me quite nervous. But I was astonished at the legal and business acumen of Mary. She knew all its nomenclature: the amortizations and the deferred stocks, etc. She understood all the articles of incorporation, the legal discrepancy on page 7, paragraph A, article 27, and coolly referred to the overlap and contradiction in paragraph D, article 24. On these occasions she saddened me more than amazed me, for this was an aspect of ‘America’s sweetheart’ that I did not know. One phrase I have never forgotten. While solemnly haranguing our representative she came out with: ‘It behoves us, gentlemen– ’ I broke into laughter and kept repeating: ‘It behoves us! It behoves us!’
In spite of Mary’s beauty in those days, she had the reputation of being quite astute in business. I remember Mabel Normand, who first introduced me to her, saying: ‘This is Hetty Green * alias Mary Pickford.’
My participation at those business meetings was nil. Fortunately my brother was as shrewed in business as Mary; and Douglas, who assumed a debonair nonchalance, was more astute than any of us. While our lawyers haggled out legal technicalities, he would cut capers like a schoolboy – but when reading the articles of incorporation he never missed a comma.
Amongst the producers who were willing to resign and join our company was Adolph Zukor, president and founder of Paramount. He was a vivid personality, a sweet little man who looked like Napoleon and was just as intense. When talking business, he was compelling and dramatic. ‘You,’ he said in his Hungarian accent, ‘you have every right to get the full benefits of your efforts because you are artists! You create! It is you that the people come to see.’ We were modestly in accord. ‘You,’ he continued, ‘have come to form what I consider the most formidable company in the business, if–if,’ he emphasized, ‘it is properly managed. You are creative at one end of the business, I am creative at the other. What could be sweeter?’
He went on in this way, holding us absorbed, telling us of his visions and beliefs; he admitted he had plans to amalgamate both the theatres and the studios, but said he would be willing to give it all up to cast his lot with ours. He spoke in an intense, patriarchal way: ‘You think I am your enemy! But I am your friend – the artist’s friend. Remember, it was I who first had the vision! Who swept out your dirty nickelodeons? Who put in your plush seats? It was I who built your great theatres, who raised prices and made it possible for you to get large grosses for your pictures. Yet you, you are the people who want to crucify me!’
Zukor was both a great actor and business man. He had built up the largest circuit of theatres in the world. However, since he wanted stock in our company, nothing came of our negotiations.
Within six months Mary and Douglas were making pictures for the newly formed company, but I still had six more comedies to complete for First National. Their ruthless attitude had so embittered me that it impeded the progress of my work. I offered to buy up my contract and to give them a hundred thousand dollars’ profit, but they refused.
As Mary and Doug were the only stars distributing their pictures through our company, they were continually complaining to me of the burden imposed upon them as a result of being without my product. They were distributing their pictures at a very low cost of twenty per cent, which ran the company into a deficit of a million dollars. However, with the release of my first film, The Gold Rush, the debt was wiped out, which rather softened Mary and Doug’s grievances, and they never complained again.
*
The war was now grim. Ruthless slaughter and destruction were rife over Europe. In training camps men were taught how to attack with a bayonet – how to yell, rush and stick it in the enemy’s guts, and, if the blade got stuck in his groin, to shoot into his guts to loosen it. Hysteria was excessive. Draft-dodgers were being sentenced to five years and every man was made to carry his registration card. Civilian apparel was a dress of shame, for nearly every young man was in uniform and, if he was not, he was liable to be asked for his registration card, or a woman might present him with a white feather.
Some newspapers criticized my not being in the war. Others came to my defence, proclaiming my comedies were needed more than my soldiering.
The American army, new and fresh when it reached France, wanted immediate action, and against the seasoned advice of the English and French, who had had three years of bloody combat, it plunged into battle with courage and daring, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties. For weeks the news was depressing; long lists were printed of the American dead and wounded. Then came a lull and for months the Americans, like the rest of the Allies, settled down in the trenches to an ennui of mud and blood.
At last the Allies began to move. On the map our flags began edging up. Each day crowds watched those flags with eagerness. Then the break-through came, but at a tremendous sacrifice. Big b
lack headlines followed: THE KAISER ESCAPES TO HOLLAND! Then a full front page with two words: ARMISTICE SIGNED! I was in my room at the Athletic Club when that news broke. In the streets below pandemonium broke loose; automobile horns, factory whistles, trumpets began howling and went on all day and night. The world went mad with joy – singing, dancing, embracing, kissing and loving. Peace at last!
Living without a war was like being suddenly released from prison. We had been so drilled and disciplined that for months afterwards we were afraid to be without our registration cards. Nevertheless, the Allies had won – whatever that meant. But they were not sure that they had won the peace. One thing was sure, that civilization as we had known it would never be the same – that era had gone. Gone, too, were its so-called basic decencies – but, then, decency had never been prodigious in any era.
sixteen
TOM HARRINGTON sort of drifted into my service, but he was to play a part in a dramatic change in my life. He had been dresser and handyman to my friend Bert Clark, an English vaudeville comedian engaged by the Keystone Company. Bert, vague and impractical, an excellent pianist, had once talked me into going into partnership with him in the music-publishing business. We had rented a room three storeys up in a downtown office building and printed two thousand copies of two very bad songs and musical compositions of mine – then we waited for customers. The enterprise was collegiate and quite mad. I think we sold three copies, one to Charles Cadman, the American composer, and two to pedestrians who happened to pass our office on their way downstairs.
Clark had put Harrington in charge of the office, but a month later Clark went back to New York and the office was closed. Tom, however, stayed behind, saying he would like to work for me in the same capacity as he had worked for Clark. To my surprise he told me he had never received a salary from Clark, only his living expenses, which did not amount to more than seven or eight dollars a week; being a vegetarian, he lived only on tea, bread and butter and potatoes. Of course, this information appalled me and I gave him a proper salary for the time he had worked for the music company, and Tom became my handyman, my valet and my secretary.
My Autobiography Page 25