Chaplin: His Life and Art

List of Illustrations

Plates

All photographs unless otherwise specifically acknowledged are the copyright of the Roy Export Company Establishment.

1 Kennington Park Road at the time of Chaplin’s boyhood. (Author’s Collection)

2 Charles Chaplin, father of Charles, aged about twenty.

3 Hannah Chaplin, mother of Charles and Sydney, about 1885.

4 Illustrated cover for Charles Chaplin Senior’s song ‘Pals That Time Cannot Alter!’ c. 1892. (Author’s Collection)

5 Bill for New Empire Palace Theatre of Varieties, Leicester, featuring Charles Chaplin Senior, 1898. (Author’s Collection)

6 Leo Dryden about the time of his liaison with Hannah Chaplin. (Author’s Collection)

7 Cuckoo Schools, Hanwell. (Inman Hunter Collection, British Film Institute)

8 Charles Chaplin (circled) at the Hanwell Schools, 1897. (National Film and Television Archive)

9 Charles Chaplin at the time he was touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads.

10/10a Marceline, ‘The Droll’, in pathetic and manic moods, 1900. (Author’s Collection)

11 Chaplin as Sammy the Newsboy in Jim, A Romance of Cockayne, 1903.

12 Chaplin as Billy the Page in the touring company of Sherlock Holmes, 1903.

13/13a Chaplin’s two Sherlock Holmeses: (a) H. A. Saintsbury (Author’s Collection) (b) William C. Gillette. (Roy Waters Collection)

14 Sydney Chaplin, aged eighteen, c. 1903.

15 Chaplin in Repairs (1906).

16 The Casey’s Circus company, 1906. (Author’s Collection)

17 The real Dr Walford Bodie. (Garrick Club)

18 Chaplin’s impersonation of Dr Walford Bodie, 1906.

19 Fred Karno c. 1920. (Author’s Collection)

20 Chaplin, c. 1909, at the time he joined the Karno companies.

21 Sydney Chaplin as Archibald in Skating, with his wife, Minnie.

22 Charles Chaplin as Archibald in Skating.

23 Hetty Kelly as stage artist. (Mrs Jay Reddaway)

24/24a Two pictures of Hetty Kelly about the time that she became Mrs Alan Horne. (Mrs Jay Reddaway)

25 The Karno company on tour in USA. (Betty Tetrick)

26 On tour with the Karno troupe: about to leave Solano railway depot, Philadelphia.

27 Chaplin in front of poster for A Night in an English Music Hall on Karno tour.

28 Chaplin with posters at Exeter (California) railway depot.

29 The Keystone Studios about 1913 (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

30 Mack Sennett on the set. (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

31 Mabel Normand (Author’s Collection)

32 Making a Living, Chaplin’s first film. (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

33 The Essanay Studio at Niles, California, 1915. (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

34 The Majestic Studio (formerly the Bradbury Mansion). (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

35 Group of picture postcards with scenes from Essanay films, 1915. (Author’s Collection)

36 Panoramic group photograph of Chaplin’s Essanay unit on the set of The Bank, 1915. (Author’s Collection)

37 Chaplin’s first days at the Lone Star Studios.

38 Filming The Vagabond, 1916.

39 Edna Purviance, 1918, photographed by Jack Wilson. (Author’s Collection/ Jack Wilson Archive)

40 Chaplin and Sydney at the site of the projected studio, 1918.

41 The studio in early stages of construction.

42 Chaplin precariously balanced on the skeleton of the part-built studio.

43 Anticipation of Shoulder Arms: ‘advertisement’ for a putative film.

44 Aerial view of the Chaplin Studio taken by Jack Wilson in 1918. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

45 Aerial view of the studio during the shooting of A Woman of Paris, 1922–3.

46 Aerial view of the studio during the shooting of Modern Times, 1935–6.

47 A Dog’s Life (1918).

48 A Dog’s Life (1918). Chaplin with Mut.

49 Chaplin after four days and nights spent editing A Dog’s Life.

50 A rehearsal at the studio, posed for How to Make Movies (1918).

51 Harry Lauder visits the studio, 23 January 1918.

52 Chaplin addressing a Bond rally in Wall Street, New York, 1918.

53 Shoulder Arms (1918): kitchen set for abandoned prologue.

54 Shoulder Arms (1918): banquet set for abandoned epilogue.

55 The Bond (1918): Chaplin and Edna.

56 Shoulder Arms (1918): Chaplin getting into his tree costume.

57 A break during filming of The Bond.

58 An impetuous visitor: Douglas Fairbanks vaults the gate of the Chaplin Studio.

59 The United Artists: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Chaplin and D. W. Griffith with Oscar Price. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

60 Jack Wilson taking the photograph of the United Artists. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

61 Mildred Harris Chaplin, 1918. (Author’s Collection)

62 The grave of Norman Spencer Chaplin, Glendale Cemetery. (Mark Stock)

63 The Kid (1921). Chaplin, with wings, practises flying.

64 The Freak. Victoria Chaplin. (Jean-Baptiste Thierrée)

65 The Professor (1919). Shooting the dosshouse scene. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

66 The Kid (1921). Chaplin with Jackie Coogan, Edith Wilson and her baby. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

67 Chaplin and Clare Sheridan, November 1921.

68 Chaplin with Max Linder, 1921.

69 Chaplin in his cutting room, c. 1920

70 Chaplin and Pola Negri at the press conference to announce their engagement, 28 January 1923. (News Internationaal, Times Picture Archive)

71 A Woman of Paris (1923): two pictures of Chaplin directing Edna Purviance. (Jeffrey Vance)

72 Chaplin rehearsing with Abe Lyman’s orchestra, 1925.

73 The Gold Rush (1925). Lita Grey (Lillita MacMurray) with Chaplin at the signing of her contract.

74 The Gold Rush (1925). Chaplin on set: evidently things are not going quite right.

75 The Gold Rush (1925). The 1896 stereogram which first inspired the film. (Author’s Collection)

76 The Gold Rush (1925). Chaplin’s version of the great trek.

77 The Gold Rush (1925). Lita Grey as leading lady.

78 The Gold Rush (1925). Georgia Hale as leading lady.

79 The Gold Rush (1925). Shooting the original ending.

80 Chaplin, out of costume, performs the Dance of the Rolls.

81 The Gold Rush (1925). Between takes on location: Chaplin as a chicken, with Mack Swain and Kono Toraichi.

82 Chaplin’s first Hollywood home.

83 Chaplin’s house on Summit Drive.

84 The Circus (1928). Merna Kennedy as the circus girl.

85 The Circus (1928). Chaplin succumbs to exhaustion. (Author’s Collection/Jack Wilson Archive)

86 The Lita Grey divorce: Lita takes the oath in court. (Author’s Collection)

87 The aftermath of the studio fire, 28 September 1926.

88 Sea Gulls (A Woman of the Sea): cast and crew on location. (Inman Hunter Collection, British Film Institute)

89 Sea Gulls (A Woman of the Sea). Edna Purviance. (Inman Hunter Collection, British Film Institute)

90 Chaplin and Sergei Eisenstein on the tennis court, 1930 (Author’s Collection).

91 City Lights (1931). Chaplin on set, with Ralph Barton.

92 City Lights (1931). The studio back lot during shooting.

93 City Lights (1931). Chaplin with Virginia Cherrill, as the flower girl.

94 City Lights (1931). Chaplin shows Virginia Cherrill how to play the role.

95 Hannah Chaplin in 1921, while still in the nursing home in Peckham. (Pauline Mason)

96 Hannah, with friends, in her Hollywood home.

97 Chaplin’s sons, Charles Jr and Sydney, c. 1930. (Author’s Collection)

98 City Lights. The première at the Los Angeles Theatre, 30 January 1931.

99 City Lights (1931). Chaplin with Professor and Mrs Albert Einstein at the première.

100 The 1931 world tour. Chaplin at the Majestic Hotel, Nice.

101 The 1931 world tour. Sydney with May Reeves in front of a snowman Charlie at St Moritz.

102 Paulette Goddard, photographed by Hurrell.

103 Modern Times (1936). Chaplin, out of costume, rehearses the automated feeder sequence.

104 Modern Times (1936). Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, as the nun, in the abandoned original ending.

105 Paulette Goddard and Chaplin at the première of Modern Times.

106 Key members of the Chaplin unit at the period of Modern Times.

107 Set design for department store skating sequence in Modern Times.

108 Chaplin as Napoleon at a fancy-dress party given by Marion Davies, 1925. (Bison Archives, Marc Wanamaker Collection)

109 Chaplin as Napoleon, mid-1930s.

110 The Great Dictator (1940).

111a/b/c/d The Great Dictator (1940). Storyboard designs by J. Russell Spencer. (Author’s Collection)

112 The Great Dictator (1940). Chaplin and Roland Totheroh on the camera crane.

113 The last meeting of Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, 15 November 1939.

114 Chaplin at a music recording session for The Great Dictator.

115 Chaplin and Oona in a Hollywood restaurant, 1944.

116 Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Plan for Thelma’s villa, by John Beckman. (Author’s Collection)

117 Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Plan of villa garden, by John Beckman. (Author’s Collection)

118 Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Chaplin and Martha Raye.

119 Chaplin directing Somerset Maugham’s Rain at the Circle Theatre, Hollywood, 1948.

120 Limelight (1952).

121 Limelight (1952). The screen debuts of Michael, Josephine and Geraldine Chaplin.

122 A King in New York (1957). Chaplin with Michael Chaplin and Oliver Johnston.

123 Manoir de Ban, Corsier sur Vevey, Switzerland, Chaplin’s home for the last twenty-four years of his life.

124 Chaplin and Oona in the park at Vevey, late 1960s.

125 Chaplin family group, 1972.

126 Oona as widow and hostess, August 1983.

127 The last official portrait, December 1977.

Line illustrations

Chaplin Family Tree.

The London of Chaplin’s Youth. (Author’s Collection)

Chaplin’s first press notice, The Magnet, 11 May 1889. (British Library)

Marriage certificate of Charles Chaplin Senior and Hannah Hill, 1885. (GLC Archives)

Lillie Harley’s ‘card’, 2 January 1886. (Garrick Club)

Lillie Harley’s ‘card’, 9 January 1886. (Garrick Club)

Handbill for benefit concert at the South London Palace, including ‘Miss Lilly Harley’, 1886.

Illustrated song cover, with portrait of Charles Chaplin Senior, 1893. (Author’s Collection)

Leo Dryden’s ‘card’, 31 October 1891. (Garrick Club)

Leo Dryden’s ‘card’ 28 November 1891. (Garrick Club)

Extracts from minutes of Southwark Board of Guardians (1896). (GLC Archives)

Part of the ‘Order for the Reception of a Pauper Lunatic’ relating to Hannah Chaplin, 9 May 1903. (GLC Archives)

Announcement of ‘Rags to Riches’, The Era, 20 August 1904. (Author’s Collection)

Letter from Sydney Chaplin to his mother, 1904.

Letter from the great pioneer music hall manager Charles Morton, 1904.

Letter from Hannah Chaplin to her sons, written from the Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum, 1905.

Programme for Sherlock Holmes at the Duke of York’s Theatre, 1905. (Author’s Collection)

Advertisement for The Football Match. (Author’s Collection)

Karno advertisement, 1910. (Author’s Collection)

Chaplin in A Night in a London Club, 1911, during US tour.

Cartoon of Chaplin as the Inebriate in A Night in an English Music Hall in USA, 1910.

A Night in an English Music Hall, 1910.

Charles Chaplin’s letter to Sydney, 1913, announcing he is going into films.

The two drafts of Chaplin’s first film contract, 1913.

Chaplin’s first filmography, written by himself in August 1914.

Two British postcards from the First World War: ‘Charlie Chaplin in the Post Office’, 1915. (Author’s Collection)

Music sheet, ‘The Charlie Chaplin Glide’, 1915. (Author’s Collection)

‘Alphabeticature’ self-portrait by Wheeler Dryden.

Daily production reports on A Dog’s Life, at first called I Should Worry, 1918.

Spanish cartoon depicting Chaplin with the Kaiser, 1917.

Letter written by Edna Purviance after seeing Shoulder Arms, 1918.

Record of employment and payment of actors during the seven days of shooting the boat scenes of A Day’s Pleasure, 1919.

Bill from Peckham House for Hannah Chaplin’s clothing, 1920.

The cartoonist David Low’s view of Chaplin’s visit to London, 1921.

The cartoonist Will Owen’s view of Chaplin’s visit to London, 1921.

Programme for first Hollywood run of A Woman of Paris, 1923.

Page from première programme, The Gold Rush, 1925. (Author’s Collection)

A cartoonist’s view of the Chaplin–Grey divorce, 1927.

Shooting record for 7 (out of 17) takes of the final shot of City Lights.

Form of acknowledgement sent to correspondents during Chaplin’s stay in London, 1931. (Author’s Collection)

‘Knighthood proposed for Chaplin (news item)’, 1931.

Ralph Barton, caricatured by Chaplin, 1931.

Caricaturist’s view of the encounter of Chaplin and Gandhi, 1931.

Certificate of destruction of the negative of Sea Gulls, 1933.

Cartoon of Chaplin and Hitler, late 1930s.

Script for Verdoux’s speech from the dock, marked up by the Breen Office, 1946.

Article from the Los Angeles Herald-Express, 1947.

Passage from the first page of Calvero’s story in the ‘novel’ version of Limelight, c. 1946.

Preface to the First Edition

The world is not composed of heroes and villains, but of men and women with all the passions that God has given them.

The ignorant condemn, but the wise pity.

Charles Chaplin, prefatory title to A Woman of Paris, 1923

Those big shoes are buttoned with 50,000,000 eyes.

Gene Morgan, Chicago newsman, 1915

Charles Chaplin’s autobiography appeared in 1964. He was then seventy-five years old. The book ran to more than five hundred pages and represented a prodigious feat of memory, for it was in large part done without reference to documentary sources. At the time, indeed, the feat seemed too prodigious to some reviewers, who were incredulous that anyone could remember in such detail events that had taken place a long lifetime before.

Since Chaplin’s death, I have had the privilege of examining the great mass of his working papers – some of them unseen for more than half a century. In the public archives of London and in old theatrical records I have been able to uncover many long-forgotten traces of the young Chaplin and his family. In addition, a number of people in England and America have generously shared their memories and papers.

Sifting the mass of documentation has only served to heighten regard for the powers of Chaplin’s memory and the honesty of his record. An instance of the kind of detail which is constantly corroborated by the archives is the recollection, from his thirteenth year, that when his brother first went to sea he sent home thirty-five shillings from his pay packet: Sydney Chaplin’s seaman’s papers – which were not available to Chaplin when he wrote – exactly confirm the sum. Even small inaccuracies attest to his memory rather than discredit it. He remembers a childhood ogre, one of his schoolmasters, as ‘Captain Hindrum’, an old vaudeville friend of his mother’s as ‘Dashing Eva Lestocq’ and the friendly stage manager at the Duke of York’s Theatre as ‘Mr Postant’. In fact their names turn out to have been Hindom, Dashing Eva Lester and William Postance. Chaplin probably never saw any of the names written down, and no doubt he recalled them simply as he heard them as a child. In themselves, the slips clearly show that Chaplin’s record is the result of a phenomenal memory rather than the product of post facto research and reconstruction. So regularly is his memory vindicated by other evidence that, where there are discrepancies without proof one way or the other, the benefit of the doubt often seems best given to Chaplin.

The present volume, originally written twenty years after Chaplin’s own account of his life, serves in part to complement My Autobiography. Subsequent research makes it possible to add further documentation and detail to the subject’s sometimes random recollections. In their study Chaplin: Genesis of a Clown, Raoul Sobel and David Francis complained of the lack of hard facts and dates in the early chapters of My Autobiography. ‘To try to keep a running time scale while reading My Autobiography is rather like having to navigate by the stars on an overcast night. By the time one reaches the next break in the clouds, the boat may be miles off course.’ This is true, perhaps: the special charm of those first chapters of My Autobiography is the free range of memory, unrestrained by the cold collaboration of any ghostly researcher. It is hardly to be wondered at if, at six or seven years old, the infant Chaplin was a trifle confused about the order of the workhouses and charity schools into which he was thrust. The importance of the autobiography is that it recorded his feelings in the face of these misadventures. The present volume can, at the risk of pedantry, tidy up the facts and chronology.

While My Autobiography is a strikingly truthful record of things witnessed, Chaplin might sometimes have been misled in the case of things reported to him. Like any mother, Mrs Chaplin must have tried to shield her children from unpleasant facts when she was able to do so. Some critics of the autobiography doubted whether Chaplin’s childhood could really have been as awful as he described. New discoveries suggest that Mrs Chaplin kept the worst from her children. The Chaplin boys seem never to have known, for example, of the sad fate of their maternal grandmother as she declined into alcoholism and vagrancy. Charles always believed that this grandmother was a gypsy, whereas the gypsy blood came with his paternal grandmother. Again, it was a natural misunderstanding for a child. Grandma Chaplin died years before his birth. Told that his grandmother was a gypsy, he could only assume it to mean the grandmother he had known.

Chaplin was an accurate and truthful chronicler of what he had seen. He was not always a comprehensive one. There are large and deliberate areas of omission from the autobiography. His description of friends, acquaintances and affairs was selective. Some relationships are described in the autobiography with great frankness and humour, while other people who, at one time or another, were very close to him are not even mentioned. To an extent, gallantry may have played a part in the selection. Most of the people left out were still living, and Chaplin may have felt that they would have been too easily hurt or offended. As it happened, a lot were offended by being left out.

His reticence about his own work was more disappointing. He discussed very few of his films, and then had little to say about the way he made them. Later in his career, visitors to his sets were discouraged, and he would explain his reluctance to let people into his working secrets by saying, ‘If people know how it’s done, all the magic goes.’ This, though, was probably only a small factor in Chaplin’s secretiveness. It may be that he came to feel more and more that he was unable to unveil the mysteries, simply because the essential part of the mysteries remained veiled for him, too. How could he ever explain, to himself or to anyone else, how it was that he was able, one afternoon in 1914, to walk into the Keystone wardrobe hut, pick out a costume, and on the spot create a character which was so soon to become the most universally recognized representation of a human being in the history of mankind? In later years, Chaplin and his apologists would try to rationalize the appeal of the Tramp; but no one could ever figure why it was he, and that moment, that were chosen for the mystical birth of Charlie.

There were more practical reasons for leaving his work out of the autobiography. Chaplin wrote the book in the spirit of the entertainer that, his whole life, he was. Like most people, he saw no particular glamour in his job: he once told someone that his working life was no more exciting than that of a bank clerk. He probably felt that it would simply be boring to tell people how his films were made. If genius is generally computed at 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration, that 90 per cent should be reckoned much higher in Chaplin’s case. No one was ever more dogged in the pursuit of the best of which he was capable.

Ironically, considering his legendary secrecy during his lifetime, Chaplin has left a more comprehensive record of the processes of his creativity than any other film-maker of his generation (or generations, for Chaplin’s working life spanned eight decades). For this reason alone, it has seemed important to explore these at length in this book. The reader must judge if Chaplin was justified in his fears that the daily work even of a comic genius was too humdrum to be interesting. The worknotes, the studio records and the out-takes and rushes that have survived tell us what Chaplin was reluctant to reveal about his methods and his indefatigable application to the quest for perfection. Much of this book is devoted to reconstructing the way that Chaplin created his comic visions – the long and painful processes of refining and polishing plots and gags; the mechanical problems involving resources, studios, apparatus, sets; the choice of collaborators and working relations with them; the endless repetitions, trials, rehearsals, shooting, reshooting, rejection, revision; and finally the months of editing until the finished product should betray nothing of the labour, but seem as simple and natural (in the phrase of Alistair Cooke) ‘as water running over a pebble’.

This book sets out, above all, to be a portrait of a man – an artist – at work. When I began the portrait, it seemed that the private biography had been recorded more than enough times. At first sight, too, the two elements of his life appeared clearly distinguishable. Chaplin himself described the way he divided his life: when he was at work on a film, his creative concentration left him no time for other pursuits. It quickly appeared, however, that life and creation could not be so cleanly separated. Chaplin’s mind, said one collaborator, was like an attic, in which everything that might one day come in handy was stored away for future use. He might have forgotten about his private life when he was at work; but he never forgot work at the other times. Again and again we can recognize the people and incidents and feelings of his personal life transposed into incidents in the films.

Readers who like biographers to supply post-Freudian interpretations for every action and incident may be frustrated. I have no personal liking for that genre of biography (the guesses so often seem wrong); I am not qualified for psychoanalysis; and finally I think that Chaplin’s singular life story would defy the process. The childhood, for a start, made up of experiences that few people can even comprehend, let alone share, and felt through a sensibility that was already out of the ordinary, had to leave its impression upon his attitudes to people, work, money, wives, families, politics, himself. Then he was an actor, with the actor’s ability to stay ahead, to adapt his personality to suit the occasion and the company. His protean quality was often puzzling. People who knew him well enough to record their impressions have described him as modest, vain, prodigal, mean, generous, shy, show-off, ruthless, timid, kind, patient, impatient … Most likely he was all these things, since he was human. Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of his life, in fact, was to stay fallibly, recognizably human, despite the adulation amounting to apotheosis at the peak of his fame; despite experiencing public revilement as passionate as the affection he had known; despite having lived the most dramatic of all the rags-to-riches stories ever told. It is no wonder if he was a complex creature. For all we can learn about Chaplin’s life and thought, it will still not be easy to explain him. But we can try to understand.

Acknowledgements

My principal thanks remain to the late Lady Chaplin, who gave me full access to Sir Charles’s working papers, without seeking to impose the restraints implied in an ‘authorized’ biography, which this assuredly is not. I am also grateful to her children for their kindness and patience. It was in large part due to the urging of Victoria Chaplin, her husband Jean-Baptiste Thierrée and their friend David Gothard that I first undertook the book. Nor could it have been possible without the wholehearted co-operation of Miss Rachel Ford, who was for many years responsible for ordering and maintaining the Chaplin archives, and her successors Pam Paumier and Kate Guyonvarch, who have become cherished personal friends. I received great courtesy and kindness from the household staff at Vevey in the 1980s – Renato, Gino, Mirella, Fernanda and the late ‘Kay-Kay’ McKenzie – during my stays there.

An important personal link with Chaplin was Jerry Epstein. He had been Chaplin’s producer and assistant, and became my agent. Even more important was his great gift of friendship which, like Chaplin himself, I was privileged to share. He urged me to embark upon this book for several years before I finally found courage to attempt it.

In sharing the mass of material they assembled during the years of research for their incomparable film series Unknown Chaplin, Kevin Brownlow and the late David Gill far exceeded any ordinary calls of friendship or scholarship. Not a week went by without an envelope in the post, addressed in Brownlow’s meticulous hand, containing some new discovery turned up in his monumental files. Al and Candy Reuter were no less generous in searching out rare stills and posters not represented in the Chaplin collection. The late Inman Hunter freely made available the treasures of his own collection, including the personal papers of Edna Purviance, which after his death passed to the British Film Institute.

I am particularly indebted to the pioneer researches of David Clegg and the late Harold Manning, who spent years combing public archives and the volumes of The Era in the Birmingham Public Library. Mr Manning, when I knew him, was a vigorous nonagenarian with a store of vivid theatrical memories that went back to his first Christmas pantomime in 1899. He was, in addition, a scrupulous and indefatigable scholar, whose advice often proved invaluable. David Clegg’s own listings have made a major contribution to the record of Chaplin’s theatrical appearances which appears in the appendices.

Research in the archives of the Greater London Record Office produced much new evidence of Chaplin’s childhood years; and here I owe a particular debt to Mr Alan Neate, the former Record Keeper for the Director-General, who had over the years carefully noted every Chaplin reference that surfaced. Mr Neate also drew my attention to the discovery by Mrs Weston of the record of Hannah Chaplin’s and her father’s adult baptisms.

Others in this country to whom I am especially grateful are Roy Waters, who helped me with research on Sherlock Holmes and has lent or given me rare photographs from his collection; the late Peter Cotes, whose The Little Fellow, written with Thelma Niklaus, remains one of the best appreciations; Colin Sorenson of the Museum of London, who has passed on a note of any Chapliniana that has come under his eye; Tony Barker, for music hall references; John Whitehorn of Francis, Day and Hunter for dating the songs of Charles Chaplin Senior; Peter Jewell and the late Bill Douglas for advice and pictures; John and William Barnes, for their inexhaustible knowledge and unquenchable curiosity; Ken Wlaschin, whose eagle eye has often spotted a reference, a postcard or a music sheet; Miss Kathleen Saintsbury for memories of her father; Mrs Fred Karno Junior for her recollections of the Karno troupes. I am also grateful to the Garrick Club and its former librarian, the late Dr Geoffrey Ashton, for access to their files of The Era, and Pauline Mason (née Chaplin) for her family recollections.

In the United States, my first debt is to Mark Stock, painter and most dedicated of Chaplinians, who gave me every possible help in Hollywood. Marc Wanamaker was also of inestimable assistance in driving me around the wildernesses of California, giving helpful leads and supplying photographs. Betty Tetrick (née Chaplin) and her late husband Ted were generous hosts and wonderful informants about life at the Chaplin studio; they also lent me rare and precious photographs. Moreover, they introduced me to Wyn Evans (née Ritchie), with her precise and fascinating reminiscences of her parents’ days with Karno and her own meetings with Hannah Chaplin.

Of those who worked with Chaplin, I have enjoyed the privilege of talking to David Raksin, to Marilyn Nash, to Dean Riesner (once the Horrid Child in The Pilgrim), to Eric James. I was also able to interview a number of important collaborators who have since died: Hans Koenekamp, who photographed the first film in which Chaplin appeared in the famous costume; Lita Grey Chaplin; Georgia Hale, the exquisite leading lady of The Gold Rush; Eugène Lourié, the great designer who was art director on Limelight; Dan James, with whom I spent a memorable day at his cliff-edge eyrie at Carmel. I spoke by phone to Virginia Cherrill Martini, Chaplin’s leading lady in City Lights, to Tim Durant, and to Nellie Bly Baker, Chaplin’s first studio secretary. An exceptional experience was to meet William James, who, as the child star Billy Jacobs, had worked at Keystone even before Chaplin arrived there. Anthony Coogan talked to me of his father, and Steve and David Totheroh of their grandfather. I had encouragement, and the inspiration of their own work, from Timothy J. Lyons and Jack McCabe.

Since the original edition of this book appeared, a new generation of Chaplin enthusiasts and scholars has matured. Many of them have become good friends as well as advisers and critics. The dogged enthusiasm of Jeffrey Vance has not only kept my nose to the grindstone, but has been instrumental in ensuring that the memoirs of Lita Grey, Eric James and Eleanor Keaton have seen the light of day. The English expert in film comedy, David Wyatt, made it possible for me to call upon the outstanding research of Brent Walker, in collaboration with Phil Posner and Steve Rydzewski, for revision of the Keystone filmography. David Wyatt also expanded the scenario of His Musical Career. Other valued members of the Chaplin community at the start of the twenty-first century include Glenn Mitchell, compiler of the invaluable Chaplin Encyclopaedia, Hooman Mehran, Professor Frank Scheide, Martin Bentham, A. J. Marriott and Paul Marygold.

A special debt of gratitude is due to Charles Mandelstam in New York, for obtaining the FBI files on Chaplin. I would also like to record with particular appreciation the support I have received, in friendship, interest and encouragement, from Alexander Walker; from Mo and Lynn Rothman; from Peter Rose and Albert Gallichan; from my colleagues at the Giornate del Cinema Muto of Pordenone, especially Piera Patat, Paolo Cherchi-Usai and Livio Jacob; from Laurent Mannoni, exemplar of humane scholarship; and above all from my endlessly patient, lifelong friends Roger Few and Harry Ogle.

At Collins, I must thank Christopher MacLehose, Roger Schlesinger and my editor Ariane Goodman, who nursed the original edition of the book along; and at Penguin, Stefan McGrath, Caroline Pretty and Jane Robertson, a truly indefatigable copy editor, who together have made possible this new and, I believe, much improved version of the book; Michael Page and Michael Paul read the proofs and the latter’s unsparing scrutiny discovered errors that had lain undetected for seventeen years; finally, Peter Stratton’s sympathetic design has given a fresh look to the illustrations.

Embleton, Northumberland, June 1984
London, August 1992
Bath, July 2001