He watches The Wizard of Oz and feels sorry for Larry Semon, and sorry for Babe. He commiserates with Babe when they meet on the lot. Babe is working with Charley Parrott, Jimmy Parrott’s brother, the one who does not have epilepsy, does not drink to excess, and is not addicted to diet pills.
Babe shrugs.
—What can you do?
He sees The Gold Rush, and feels sorry for himself. This, he thinks, is greatness. He wishes he could tell Chaplin in person, but Chaplin now orbits in a higher realm.
Artistically, at least.
Chaplin’s recent marriage to Lita Grey is already collapsing, and it is said that Chaplin is now fucking Georgia Hale, who replaced Lita Grey as the lead in The Gold Rush when Lita Grey’s pregnancy could no longer be disguised. Chaplin is fucking Georgia Hale while Charlie, Jr., his second child—his third, if one counts the boy, Norman, who lives for only three days—is still wet from Lita Grey’s womb. The arithmetic on Charlie, Jr.’s birth is complex. The boy is born on May 5th, 1925. Lita Grey turns seventeen on April 15th. The age of consent in California is eighteen, but Chaplin marries Lita Grey in Mexico when she is sixteen, mostly to avoid going to jail, and only after Chaplin fails to bully her into having an abortion.
Meanwhile, Chaplin is also fucking Mary Pickford.
These details of Chaplin’s life are disturbing.
In order to laugh at Chaplin, one must try to forget them.