Not for a moment does this fact reflect upon the great Farrar. If reflection there be at all, it is upon the small town where, as I have asserted, some obscure little motion-picture actress may have a following which the world’s greatest singer can never hope to enroll. I can not emphasise this point too strongly.
Chapter Thirteen
THE REAL CHAPLIN
Although I had heard much of Charlie Chaplin from various friends we shared in common I did not meet him until after I had been in the industry for two years. That first sight of him surprised me as much as it always does those who know only the familiar comedian of the black moustache and baggy trousers. A slender fellow; smooth-shaven; waves of crisp black hair; dark blue eyes that have that peculiar smoky quality of the Autumn hills—here is the catalogue of his outward self. But of course you can not compress into a catalogue the charm of his face. There is a charm there—even beauty. In this connection, indeed, I remember Chaplin’s telling me laughingly that his mother once protested indignantly at his make-up.
“Why do you want to make yourself look hideous,” said she, “you who are so beautiful?”
But although his contours are satisfactory and his eyes exceedingly handsome, the real interest of Chaplin’s face lies in its perpetual and sensitive absorptions. He seems always listening. Even when he is talking most animatedly he is watching you, wondering about you, quite evidently trying to fit you and your words into some pattern. When you yourself are talking, you get the full force of this vivid listening.
Mack Sennett has often spoken about this characteristic message of his face as it was revealed to him during Chaplin’s first studio days. “He’d sit there for hours,” records Mack, “just staring at people. I couldn’t make out what he was thinking about.”
Since that first meeting of ours acquaintance has developed into a friendship which I certainly count one of the privileges of my life. From that friendship it is hard to detach myself for an objective survey of the gifted pantomimist. Even had I not been so close to him I should find formidable the task of analysis. For Chaplin is a maze of contradictions, and no sooner have you affixed to him any one attribute than lo, the next moment has swept it away!
Chaplin loves power—as no one else whom I have ever met he loves it. Money contributes to this sense. Therefore he sticks out for his large contract and therefore he saves a great deal of his earnings. But it affords him just as much consciousness of power to think that he, Chaplin, can afford to walk away from those assembled actors and stage-hands. Ergo, he does that.
I have often been asked if Chaplin is amusing when away from the screen. He is—thoroughly so. His mimicry is delightful. His dancing is perhaps even more so. To see Chaplin improvising a London street scene with William de Mille; to hear him deliver the speech of a Jewish manufacturer at a banquet where he had been presented with a loving-cup; to watch his imitations of some fashionable rhythmic dancer—at one of these last performances he carried a cuspidor as a Greek vase and concluded by deftly catching it in the crook of his knee—such are the memories of Charlie treasured by those who know him.