They fall by the wayside, these others. The advent of talking pictures silences them.
In the years that follow, the ignorant will claim that careers were lost because of voices, because the images on the screen were incompatible with the sounds that emerged from their mouths.
And the ignorant, as always, will be wrong.
Mary Pickford, no longer able to play the neophyte, accepts her Oscar and retires to become an alcoholic and a recluse, communicating with the world only by telephone.
Clara Bow’s nerves are shot, and the rumor spreads that she has venereal disease.
Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings return to Europe.
Pola Negri and Mae Murray make bad marriages.
William Haines, a fairy, refuses to make any marriage at all.
Karl Dane is dropped by MGM and ends up selling hot dogs outside the studio, then kills himself.
Colleen Moore’s career dies with the flappers.
John Gilbert’s dies with the melodrama.
Lon Chaney just dies.
Douglas Fairbanks just dies.
Renée Adorée just dies.
So their voices, he knows, have nothing to do with their failure to make it in talking pictures. Except for Raymond Griffith, the Silk Hat Comedian, who, at his best, is as good as Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd.
But not Chaplin.
Raymond Griffith can’t get a job in talking pictures because Raymond Griffith has no voice. Raymond Griffith is incapable of speaking above a whisper, and is therefore the perfect silent comedian. Eventually, Raymond Griffith chokes to death over dinner at the Masquers Club because he fails to chew his food properly.
But these ones do not concern him, or not as much as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
Not as much as Chaplin.
Buster Keaton signs to MGM and regrets it. Buster Keaton drinks so much that Buster Keaton marries a woman who doesn’t even remember his name.
Harold Lloyd gets old, and loses the hunger to create. Harold Lloyd will live off his investments and go on to take thousands of nudie photographs of women known and unknown.
Chaplin tries to ignore sound, and makes City Lights. It is a brilliant mistake. But Chaplin is Chaplin, and the same rules do not apply.
And he and Babe watch Hal Roach chew an entire hive of wasps as the studio invests in new sound equipment, and when Hal Roach is ready to record their voices, he and Babe will speak, and movement will be matched to dialogue, and dialogue will be matched to voices, and voices will be matched to faces, and the characters will not change because the characters cannot change, because they are fixed, and have always been fixed, and will always be fixed.
This he understands. This is the pact he has made.