1 Some 40,000 Huguenots are estimated to have arrived in Britain in the years following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
2 Suffolk parish registers, passim.
3 1851 Census return.
4 Will of Shadrach Chaplin at Principal Probate Office, Somerset House.
5 Marriage certificate in General Registry Office.
6 Death certificate in General Registry Office.
7 Birth certificate in General Registry Office. Spencer (1855–99) was to follow his father’s trade as publican: among the pubs he owned were the Feathers, Deptford (1890–1) and the Queen’s Head, Broad Street, Lambeth (1891–9). His widow Louise ran the Queen’s Head from 1901 to 1904.
8 Birth certificate in General Registry Office.
9 The book, rebound but with the prize label intact, is now in the Chaplin family archive.
10 Marriage certificate in General Registry Office.
11 Marriage certificate in General Registry Office.
12 Marriage certificate in General Registry Office.
13 Death certificate in General Registry Office.
14 Birth certificate in General Registry Office.
15 Birth certificate in General Registry Office.
16 1871 Census: Parish of St Mary Newington, Schedule 321.
17 The correct spelling of the name of the elder Chaplin brother cannot be resolved. He was baptized ‘Sidney’, but the records of the local authorities and institutions generally spell the name as ‘Sydney’. During his days with Karno, the forms Sidney, Sydney, Sid and Syd all occur. As an adult Sydney-Sidney himself used the ‘y’ form, but Charles consistently used the ‘i’ in writing his brother’s name. (Chaplin told his last wife, Oona, that he and Lita Grey disagreed over the spelling of the name of their son, Sydney Earl Chaplin, because Chaplin thought the ‘y’ was pretentious. The present Chaplin family consider that uncle and nephew are differentiated as, respectively, ‘Sidney’ and ‘Sydney’.) The solution adopted for this book is to adopt the ‘y’ form in the main text, but to retain whatever form is adopted by the writers in quoted texts.
18 Birth certificate in General Registry Office.
19 Death certificate in General Registry Office.
20 Marriage certificate in General Registry Office.
21 Listings in the Entr’acte, traced by Barry Anthony and recorded in Glenn Mitchell, 1997, The Chaplin Encyclopaedia. The tiny Bijou at 58 Blackfriars Road, Southwark, was one of the first London venues to carry the name ‘music hall’. Built in 1790 as an exhibition room called the Rotunda, it changed its name to Rotunda Music Hall in 1838, later becoming the Bijou and finally the Britannia. It closed in 1886, when its licence was refused on account of cock-fighting having taken place there.
22 Handbill in Bermondsey Public Library, local music hall collection, traced by Frank Scheide and recorded by Glenn Mitchell, ibid.
23 Programme in Bermondsey Public Library, local music hall collection.
24 Harold Manning, in his 1983 article ‘Charlie Chaplin’s Early life: Fact and Fiction’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, cites an Era reference that records both Chaplins appearing on the same bill, at the Folly Variety Theatre, Manchester, in the week of 20 June 1887.
25 The Era, 18 June 1887.
26 Programme in collection of Professor E. J. Dawes.
27 Years of fruitless speculation have failed to establish a house number. An energetic correspondence in The Standard in 1963, initiated by the music hall historian Ellis Ashton, showed that the favourite choices in local mythology were 91 and 191 – both demolished long ago. The general belief was that Chaplin was born in the dwelling of his shoe-maker grandfather, Charles Hill. Taking into account the frequent moves of the Hills, it is probably irrelevant that on 17 February 1893, when Grandma Hill was admitted to the infirmary, Charles Hill was living at 97 East Street.
28 The Era, August 1890.
29 Letter in Sydney Chaplin’s papers, now in Chaplin family archive.
30 Interview from The Era, date not ascertained.
31 Glenn Mitchell, op. cit., cites an intriguing ‘personal ad’ in The Entr’acte of 29 January 1887: ‘To Charles Chaplin – send address to “L. H.”, 56 Darwin Street, Old Kent Road, Very ill.’ If ‘L. H.’ was Hannah, it may be that the irregularities of the Chaplin marriage had begun before the birth of Charles junior.
32 The census references were discovered by Tony Fletcher.
33 Letter from Wheeler Dryden to Edna Purviance, see pp. 226–9.
34 That is unless we discount a curious passage in an article attributed to Sydney Chaplin which appeared in The Bioscope, 11 March 1915, and purported to describe his own earliest appearance on stage. Sydney claims that he was held in his mother’s arms as she stood in the wings of the theatre, singing the chorus of a song performed on stage by his ‘father’ – ‘a descriptive miner’s song, in which he tells the audience that he is leaving the gold fields of Australia and returning to England to marry the dearest and the sweetest little girl in all the world’. Though this song sounds very like ‘The Miner’s Dream of Home’, by the time Dryden was performing it, Sydney, going on seven, was hardly a babe in arms. The anecdote is made more intriguing by the ambiguity of the words ‘at the time’ in Sydney’s phrase, ‘My father at the time was singing a descriptive song …’
35 Lambeth Board of Guardians, Lunacy Examinations Book, 1893, p. 196, GLC Archives.
36 St Saviour Union (Southwark). Order for Reception of a Pauper Lunatic, GLC Archives.
37 American Magazine, November 1918.
38 Renfrew Road (Lambeth) Workhouse Register, GLC Archives.
39 Ibid.
40 School Register in GLC Archives.
41 Southwark Workhouse Register, GLC Archives.
42 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography. Chaplin remembered the name as ‘Hindrum’, though correspondence of St Saviour’s Board of Guardians and Norwood Schools (GLC Archives) establishes the name as ‘Hindom’.
43 Pearson’s Weekly, 21 September 1921.
44 Letter in Chaplin family archive.
45 Walter Monington and Frederick J. Lampard, 1898, Our London Poor Law Schools.
46 Ibid.
47 Strand Magazine, vol. 7, no.12, pp. 88–95.
48 Letter from Dr Shepherd to Charles Chaplin, 1916, in Chaplin family archives.
49 Ibid.
50 Will of Spencer Chaplin, dated 18 May 1897, at Principal Probate Office.
51 St Saviour (Southwark) Board of Guardians minutes, GLC Archives.
52 Correspondence of St Saviour (Southwark) Board of Guardians, GLC Archives.
53 Report in South London Chronicle, 22 January 1898, discovered by Tony Fletcher.
54 Renfrew Road (Lambeth) Workhouse Register, GLC Archives.
55 This account is based on Chaplin’s version of the event. Sydney’s recollection of it, related to an interviewer in the 1920s, did not materially differ, although he suggests that the idea had originated with the boys rather than with Hannah:
Finally we hit upon a plan. I had made ninepence doing odd jobs and had carefully hoarded it. I got word to our mother and we all checked out of the institution. They gave us back our clothes all wrinkled up from having been packed away. Hand in hand, we went out. I spent the ninepence for some cakes and cherries and we sat all day together in the park When night came, we all went back to the workhouse and went thru all the formalities of entering again – greatly to the disgust of the officials.
56 Lambeth Board of Guardians, Lunacy Examinations Book, 12 September 1898, GLC Archives.
57 This is the address in the records of the Board of Guardians. Chaplin, whose memory was generally reliable, thought it was 287, not 289, and a commemorative plaque placed there in 1980 marks No. 287.
58 Renfrew Road (Lambeth) Workhouse Register, GLC Archives.
59 Kennington Road Schools Register, GLC Archives.
60 Glasgow Weekly Herald, 9 October 1921.
61 The Magnet, 14 July 1900.
62 Armitage School Register. The school registers have now disappeared, but the entry was illustrated in a Manchester newspaper (unidentified cutting in Chaplin family archive) in 1921.
63 Alfred Jackson interviewed in the Star, 3 September 1921.
64 Charles Douglas Stuart and A. J. Park, 1895, The Variety Stage.
65 Alfred Jackson, loc. cit.
66 W. McQueen-Pope, n.d., The Melodies Linger On, London.
67 Ibid.
68 The Tatler, No. 75, 3 December 1902, London.
69 Winnipeg Tribune, 29 November 1912.
70 Sydney Hill – Continuous Certificate of Discharge, in Chaplin family archive.
71 Sydney Hill – Seaman’s Allotment Note, in Chaplin family archive.
72 On more than one occasion Hannah’s name appeared thus as ‘Anna’ or ‘Annie’ in official documents, presumably because of weak Hs. In the London Star of 3 September 1921, a childhood acquaintance of Charlie’s recalled: ‘Charlie’s mother always struck me as being very refined, quiet and sad. He always said her name was Lily, so I don’t know how “Annie” got in the school register.’ (A school register which the newspaper had traced but which has since disappeared.)
73 The cause of death is given on the death certificate as ‘cirrhosis of the liver’, but both the younger Chaplin, in his autobiography, and The Era speak only of dropsy. At this time the cause of ‘hob-nail liver’ was too familiar, and perhaps cirrhosis was not considered a polite disease to acknowledge.
74 Sydney Hill – Continuous Certificate of Discharge, in Chaplin private archives.
75 Manchester Daily Chronicle, 14 September 1921.
76 Post Office Directories, passim.
77 Newspaper cutting, source unidentified.
78 May Reeves, 1935, Charlie Chaplin intime. Souvenirs receuillis par Claire Goll.
79 Lambeth Board of Guardians, Lunacy Reception Order, 9 May 1903, GLC Archives.
80 Charles Chaplin Jr., 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
1 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
2 Letter to Sydney Chaplin, August 1913. See p. 102.
3 Bert Herbert interviewed in the Star, 3 September 1921.
4 Licensing Records, GLC Archives.
5 A Newcastle magazine, Northern Gossip, noted: ‘Other characters are in very capable hands, but a special word of praise is due to Master C. Chaplin, for his wonderfully clever acting as Billy.’ (5 August 1903)
6 Edith Scales quoted in Empire News, 8 March 1931.
7 Ibid.
8 Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter, 21 November 1903.
9 Edith Scales, loc. cit.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Interview with the author.
14 Sydney Hill – Continuous Certificate of Discharge, in Chaplin family archive.
15 George Mozart (1864–1947) was a popular English character comedian.
16 Original letter in Chaplin family archive.
17 Lambeth Board of Guardians, Lunatic Reception Order, 18 March 1905.
18 The Era.
19 A. J. Marriott suggests that ‘W.G.’ might be William Gillette, but it is hard to make the chronology fit.
20 Original letter in Chaplin family archive.
21 The Era Annual, 1906.
22 Will Murray, interviewed in Glasgow Weekly Herald, 10 September 1921.
23 Ibid.
24 Dan Lipton quoted in Daily Graphic, 1 September 1921.
25 Will Murray, loc. cit.
26 Fred Goodwins, article in Pearson’s Weekly, date unidentified.
27 Unpublished extract from tape-recorded interview with Richard Meryman, 1968.
28 Communication to the author.
29 The manuscript describes the setting as the retiring room of the Jury, and the character list consists of ‘Mr Guinness (A Drunk), Mr Levinsky (A Jew), Mr Wright (Straight Man), Archibald (A Dude), Pongo (Deaf and Dumb), Bill Slaughter (A Coster) and six supers’. The manuscript is discussed in David Robinson, ‘Revealed!’ in Chaplin Courier, issue 3, Spring 2000.
30 The Era, 3 June 1909.
1 Syndicated newspaper interview, 1917.
2 In 1892 a compromise between the legitimate and the variety managements authorized the use of dialogue in sketches produced in music halls, with conditions relating to the number of sketches presented in any programme, their lengths, subjects and the number of speaking parts. Litigation over breaches of these conditions continued sporadically until 1912, when theatres and music halls alike came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain.
3 The Theatre, London, April 1880.
4 At the start of the twenty-first century the building, with the high extension designed for painting canvases still prominent, was doing service as a complex of artists’ studios.
5 Stan Laurel, quoted in John McCabe’s Charlie Chaplin, 1978.
6 Fred Goodwins, article in Pearson’s Weekly.
7 Letter in Chaplin family archive. Most of the documentary material relating to their Karno days had been preserved by Sydney, and was given by his widow Gypsy to Oona Chaplin in the early 1980s after the deaths of both brothers.
8 Letter in Chaplin family archive. Martin Bentham possesses the amiable reply to Walton’s letter, dated 7 April 1919 and written by Sydney, since Charlie was ‘so tightly tied up with work on his present production’ (presumably Sunnyside). In this, Sydney shares further enigmatic reminiscences of life on Karno tours.
9 Stan Laurel, loc. cit.
10 Since the original edition of this book, I have been able to correct Hetty Kelly’s birth date and family details thanks to a birth certificate and information from Dr Joan Thirsk, CBE, FBA, who writes: ‘Hetty’s mother was Matilda Davis, née Frayer, and the Frayers all lived in the parish of St Anne’s Soho and thereabouts. The first Frayer was an immigrant from Le Havre, Leopold Cevola Francis Frayer, marrying in Westminster at St James’s church in the 1820s. He is described in the 1841 and 1851 censuses as a piano maker and harp maker, and I have discovered that St Anne’s Soho was noted for its manufacture of musical instruments. So Hetty’s grandmother was Jane Frayer, daughter of Leopold, and I am descended from a son of Leopold called Edwin.
‘Hetty is variously shown in the records as Florence Etty (birth certificate), Florence H., in the index to marriages, and Henriette F. in the death and wills indexes. Her father, Arthur Kelly, was a casement maker at his marriage, living at 2 Marshall Street in Westminster, and Matilda Susannah was a waistcoat maker, living at 22 Ganton Street, also in Westminster.’
11 Charles Chaplin, My Trip Abroad, 1922.
12 Charles Chaplin, A Comedian Sees the World, 1932.
13 Manuscript scenario in Chaplin family archive.
14 Newspaper cutting, source unidentified. Most of these early reviews from the Karno years are preserved in Chaplin’s first cuttings book, but have been pasted in without reference to date or source.
15 Stan Laurel, loc. cit.
16 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
17 Stan Laurel, loc. cit.
18 In January 1911, in the course of the US tour, Reeves and Amy slipped off to the Cupid Bureau of New York City Hall to marry. Amy was at the time playing the Saucy Soubrette in Mumming Birds.
19 Interview with Alf Reeves, Photoplay, August 1934. Preserved in Reeves’s own cuttings book, formerly in the possession of Betty Tetrick; whereabouts now unknown.
20 Alf Reeves, loc. cit.
21 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
22 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
23 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
24 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
25 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
26 Stan Laurel, loc. cit.
27 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
28 Letter in Chaplin family archive.
29 Newspaper cuttings in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
30 ‘Whimsical’ Walker, 1922, From Sawdust to Windsor Castle.
31 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
32 In 1985, Denis W. Hayes of Winnipeg discovered that the La Claire Hotel was still standing and operating, though now under the name of the Windsor Hotel. He visited the hotel and inspected one of the rooms, concluding that it still retained much of the same character as in 1913 when Chaplin stayed there: ‘It was about 9' × 14' and furnished with a cot, a table and a chair. In a corner was a sink with faucets that still disgorged hot and cold running water, as boasted by the proprietors of the La Claire Hotel on their letterhead.’
33 Letter from Charles Chaplin to Sydney Chaplin in Chaplin family archive.
34 Stan Laurel, loc. cit.
35 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
1 Mack Sennett, as told to Cameron Shipp, 1954, King of Comedy.
2 Letter in Kevin Brownlow collection.
3 This version is quoted, without source, in John McCabe’s Charlie Chaplin.
4 Original contract and draft in the Chaplin family archive.
5 Walter Kerr, 1975, The Silent Clowns.
6 Unattributed cutting in Chaplin’s Karno cuttings book, Chaplin family archive.
7 Walter Kerr, op. cit.
8 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
9 Interview with the author, December 1983.
10 Ibid.
11 Walter Kerr, op. cit.
12 Marcus Loew (1870–1927). American exhibition magnate and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was long controlled by Loews Inc.
13 Letter in Chaplin family archive.
1 Roland Totheroh interviewed by Timothy J. Lyons in Film Culture, Spring 1972.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Fred Goodwins in Pearson’s Weekly.
5 Ibid.
6 Lambeth Board of Guardians, Settlement Examination Book, GLC Archives.
7 Correspondence preserved in Chaplin archive.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Communications of Jerome Epstein to the author and Lita Grey to Jeffrey Vance, 1998, cited in Lita Grey, Wife of the Life of the Party..
11 A copy formerly preserved by Ivor Montagu is now presumed to be with the Montagu papers in the British Film Institute, London.
1 Syndicated news report, preserved in a scrapbook in Chaplin archive.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Letter in Chaplin family archive.
8 Roland Totheroh, interviewed by Timothy J. Lyons in Film Culture, Spring 1972.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Terry Ramsaye, ‘Chaplin and How He Does It’, Photoplay, September 1917.
13 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
14 Roland Totheroh, loc. cit.
15 Edward Sutherland in interview with Robert Franklin.
16 New York Tribune.
17 This and the subsequently cited correspondence relating to Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story is preserved in the Chaplin family archive.
18 Langford Reed, 1917, The Chronicles of Charlie Chaplin.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Kevin Brownlow, 1968, The Parade’s Gone By.
22 Roland Totheroh, loc. cit.
23 Constance Collier, 1929, Harlequinade, The Story of My Life.
24 Gerith von Ulm, 1940, Charles Chaplin, King of Tragedy.
25 Walter Kerr, 1975, The Silent Clowns.
26 Mutual press release dated 1 February 1917.
27 Reel Life (Mutual publicity magazine), February 1917.
28 Mutual press release, February 1917.
29 Cited in Unknown Chaplin television series.
30 Syndicated newspaper interview by Karl Kitchen.
31 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
32 Carlyle T. Robinson, 1935, La Vérité sur Charles Chaplin, Sa vie, ses amours, ses déboires.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 ‘What People Laugh At’ by Charlie Chaplin, in American Magazine 86, November 1918.
38 Campbell was the subject of a 1996 documentary film, Chaplin’s Goliath, written and directed by Kevin MacDonald. Though meticulously researched and providing valuable detail on Campbell’s theatrical career, the film, evidently out of deference to its Scottish television producers, perpetuates the myth that Campbell was born in Scotland. In fact his birthplace was Birmingham.
39 This is the only indication that Chaplin had several cars at this time. In spring 1917, however, Sydney bought a car for his wife, Minnie – a Mitchell sedan ‘which didnothavealotofcomplicateddevicesunknownandhardtooperatebyawoman’.
40 This is a surprising statement, since Chaplin was throughout his life a reluctant letter-writer, and very few letters in his hand have survived. However, some rough drafts, apparently for letters to be subsequently worked up by a secretary, exist; this may have been the nature of his evening work on correspondence.
41 Cutting preserved in scrapbook in Chaplin archive.
42 Cincinnati Star, 8 February 1917.
43 NYC Mail, 23 December 1918.
44 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
45 Correspondence in possession of Mrs Wyn Ray Evans, Ritchie’s daughter, in 1982. The date of 1887 appears far-fetched, but since Ritchie claimed it, it suggests that the birthdate of 1874 is more likely than those of 1877 and 1879, sometimes given, which would make him respectively only ten or eight years old at the time he claimed to have originated the tramp costume.
46 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
47 Letter in the Edna Purviance papers in the Inman Hunter Collection. After Inman Hunter’s death, the collection was acquired by the British Film Institute.
48 Edna Purviance married John Patrick Leo Squire.
1 Interview in Exhibitors’ Trade Review, 28 April 1917.
2 ‘Faction’ was a word that came into use at the Chaplin and Harold Lloyd studios – and possibly among other comedy companies – to indicate a complete story episode.
3 Letter from Sydney to Charles Chaplin in Chaplin family archive.
4 The actual cost of the freehold was $34,000, according to documents in the Chaplin Studio archive.
5 The Harry Lauder Million Pound Fund For Maimed Men, Scottish Soldiers and Sailors, launched 17–18 September 1917. In April 1919, Lauder was knighted by George V for his fund-raising activities.
6 Syndicated news column, preserved in scrapbook in Chaplin archive.
7 Interview in The Cleveland Leader, c. 1918.
8 Syndicated newspaper story, 9 April 1918.
9 Catalina Island – properly, Santa Catalina – was a favourite resort for Chaplin throughout much of his Hollywood residence. Situated 24 miles SSW of Los Angeles Harbour, with its pleasant climate, fine beaches, boating, mountain scenery and abundant marine life, it has subsequently become a major tourist centre.
10 Much of the detail of Chaplin’s relationship with Jackie Coogan is derived from Lillian Coogan’s recollections, as passed on to her grandson, Jackie’s son Anthony, and recorded by the author in 1982.
11 Lita Grey Chaplin, 1966, My Life with Chaplin.
12 Roland Totheroh interviewed by Timothy J. Lyons in Film Culture, Spring 1972.
13 Frank Harris, in Contemporary Portraits, 1924.
14 The private detective’s report survives in the Chaplin archives.
15 Documents in the Chaplin archive, identified by Jeffrey Vance. Wyn Evans confirms that in the 1920s this part of the San Fernando valley was somewhat desolate.
16 Edward Sutherland in interview with Robert Franklin.
17 Wyn Evans in interview with the author, December 1983.
1 In his own account of the 1921 trip, My Trip Abroad, Chaplin says that he stopped work one day and left for New York the next. This was dramatic licence.
2 Charles Chaplin, 1922, My Trip Abroad (English edition, My Wonderful Visit). All subsequent quotations from Chaplin in this chapter are from the same source, unless otherwise referenced.
3 Carbon copy in Chaplin family archive.
4 Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom was originally produced in Budapest in 1909. The production which Chaplin saw, presented by the Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre, New York, was the first English version of the play. Years later it was adapted as the musical, Carousel.
5 P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, 1953, Bring on the Girls! The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy with Pictures to Prove It, New York, Simon and Schuster.
6 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
7 Newspaper cutting in scrapbook in Chaplin family archive, source unidentified.
8 Charlie Chaplin, 1966, My Autobiography.
9 Unidentified newspaper cutting in Chaplin archive.
10 Thomas Burke, ‘A Comedian,’ in City of Encounters, 1932.
11 Clare Sheridan, 1922, My American Diary.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Working notes in Chaplin archive.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Dean Riesner, interviewed by the author in spring 2000.
22 Chaplin archive.
23 Ibid.
1 Working notes in Chaplin archive.
2 Edward Sutherland, unpublished interview with Robert Franklin, Oral History Department, University of Columbia.
3 Adolphe Menjou, 1952, It Took Nine Tailors.
4 Beggars of Life was filmed by William A. Wellman in 1928, with Louise Brooks as its star. Tully himself acted in Way for a Sailor (1930).
5 Edward Sutherland, loc. cit.
6 Ibid.
7 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit..
8 Edward Sutherland, loc. cit. Sutherland’s memory of the shooting period is faulty.
9 Unidentified cutting in scrapbook, Chaplin archive.
10 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit.
11 Ibid.
12 Edward Sutherland, loc. cit.
13 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit.
14 Work notes preserved in Chaplin Studio archive.
15 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit.
16 Edward Sutherland, loc. cit.
17 Roland Totheroh, interviewed by Timothy J. Lyons in Film Culture, Spring 1972.
18 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit.
19 Ibid.
20 From souvenir programme of première.
21 Single printed sheet inserted in première souvenir programme (copy in Chaplin archive).
22 Adolphe Menjou, op. cit.
23 Detroit Free Press, 16 October 1923.
24 Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), former Chicago journalist, best known for his unsparingly realist novels, Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
25 Boston Globe, 23 March 1923.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Los Angeles Times, 29 January 1923.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Boston Globe, 23 March 1923.
36 Rodney Ackland and Elspeth Grant, 1954, The Celluloid Mistress.
37 Charles Chaplin Jr. 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
1 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
2 Josef von Sternberg, 1965, Fun in a Chinese Laundry.
3 The original edition of this book gave a slightly different chronology of events, placing the screen test some days after the Saturday meeting with Chaplin. This version is based on Lita Grey’s own later account in Wife of the Life of the Party, 1998.
4 Syndicated press article, June 1924.
5 Syndicated press column. Cutting in Chaplin archive.
6 In the original pressbook for the film the article appears as ‘On the Set with Charlie’, with authorship attributed to Sid Grauman – the Hollywood showman who built Grauman’s Chinese and Grauman’s Egyptian Theatres. A typescript of the article in the Chaplin studio archive, however, bears a manuscript note, evidently written in the press department, discussing who might be the most suitable person to whom to attribute authorship.
7 The continuity reports show that Mack Swain actually spoke these words on the set. In the original version of the film they appeared as an inter-title. When Chaplin made a version with synchronized soundtrack, he retained them in his own commentary.
8 All the continuity reports, production notes and other studio working documents quoted in this book are preserved in the Chaplin archive.
9 ‘On the Set with Charlie’ in original publicity brochure for The Gold Rush.
10 Lita Grey, 1998, Wife of the Life of the Party.
11 Ibid. Lita Grey’s account here is generally corroborated by uncontested passages of the original divorce complaint.
12 Fred Lawrence Guiles, 1972, Marion Davies: a Biography.
13 Ibid.
14 In fact, only about ten weeks. Lita appears to have discovered she was pregnant about the middle of September 1924.
15 Lita Grey, op. cit.
16 Ibid.
17 Los Angeles Daily News, 28 November 1924.
18 Lita Grey, op. cit.
19 Sydney Chaplin, Foreword to Lita Grey’s Wife of the Life of the Party, 1998.
20 Georgia Hale in interview with author, December 1983.
21 Alla Nazimova (1879–1945), after training with Stanislavsky, emigrated to America in 1905 and rapidly became a star on Broadway. Between 1916 and 1925 she made a number of films, establishing a reputation for her personal exoticism and for the avant-garde, stylized character of several pictures to which she made a major organizational and creative contribution.
22 Georgia Hale, loc. cit.
23 Ibid.
24 Not to be confused with the later and more famous Hollywood String Quartet, founded in 1947 and led by Felix Slatkin.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Letter in Chaplin archive.
28 The Star, 25 September 1925.
29 The Star, 28 December 1925.
30 Communication (1984) to author by Dr Hans Feld, who in 1925 was critic on Filmkurier, Berlin. There is some anecdotal evidence of similar encores for the ‘Dance of the Rolls’ in theatres elsewhere.
1 Louise Brooks, ‘Charlie Chaplin Remembered’, in Film Culture, Spring 1966.
2 Louise Brooks, quoted in Barry Paris, 1989, Louise Brooks.
3 Interview with Henry Bergman; newspaper cutting from unidentified source in Chaplin Studio archive.
4 James Agee, ‘Comedy’s Greatest Era’, in Life magazine, 5 September 1949.
5 Harry Crocker, ‘Charlie Chaplin: Man and Mime’, unpublished typescript, c. 1955, now in the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
6 Edward Sutherland in unpublished interview with Robert Franklin, Oral History Department, University of Columbia.
7 Pressbook for The Circus.
8 Lita Grey, 1998, Wife of the Life of the Party.
9 Robert Florey, 1927, Charlie Chaplin, Ses débuts, ses films, ses aventures.
10 In 1921 Chaplin’s old Keystone colleague Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle was charged with the manslaughter of a starlet who had died after attending a party given by Arbuckle in a hotel suite in San Francisco. (There was another Keystone connection: the dead girl, Virginia Rappe, was the fiancée of Chaplin’s first director, Henry ‘Pathé’ Lehrman.) Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials, but his film career was ended by the scandal. In 1922, the actor-director William Desmond Taylor was shot dead in his Hollywood home. The inquest revealed his involvement with a number of women stars, among them Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter, both of whom had visited him on the fatal night. Neither was a suspect, but the scandal ruined their careers. The two incidents led to pressure to clean up Hollywood’s tarnished image, which resulted in the creation of the ‘Hays Office’ as a self-regulatory organization responsible for film censorship and general moral supervision.
11 Robert Florey, op. cit.
12 Letter in Chaplin archives.
13 Ibid.
14 Cited in Lita Grey, 1998, op. cit.
15 Ibid.
16 Unattributed newspaper cutting in Chaplin studio archive.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Syndicated newspaper column. Cutting in Chaplin archive.
20 Josef von Sternberg, 1965, Fun in a Chinese Laundry.
21 The last inter-title in the film runs: ‘And the sea – made of all the useless tears that have ever been shed – grows neither less nor more.’ Compared with Chaplin’s films, Sea Gulls made excessive use of inter-titles – more than 160 of them in seven reels.
22 Interviewed by the author in December 1982.
23 The shooting records give no indication that there was a stills photographer on the production; and no stills of Sea Gulls were known until several photographs turned up in Edna Purviance’s private archive. These are now in the Inman Hunter Collection at the British Film Institute.
1 Letter preserved in Chaplin archive.
2 Harry Crocker in unpublished interview, c. 1955.
3 Jean Cocteau, 1958, My Journey Round the World.
4 In 1968, Chaplin granted an extensive interview to the journalist Richard Meryman. A copy of the complete transcript, from which this and later citations come, is preserved in the Chaplin archive.
5 Telephone conversation with the author, December 1983.
6 Interview with Richard Meryman, 1968.
7 Letter in Chaplin archive.
8 Carlyle T. Robinson, 1935, La vérité sur Charles Chaplin, Sa vie, ses amours, ses déboires.
9 Interview with Richard Meryman, 1968.
10 Georgia Hale in interview with the author, December 1983.
11 Ibid.
12 Robert Parrish, 1976, Growing Up in Hollywood.
13 Interview with Richard Meryman, 1968.
14 James Agee, ‘Comedy’s Greatest Era’, in Life magazine, 5 September 1949.
15 Article published posthumously in Pearson’s Weekly, 21 September 1921.
16 Charles Chaplin, 1922, My Trip Abroad.
17 Henry Bergman, interview in the Boston Globe, 22 February 1931.
18 Interview with Richard Meryman, 1968.
19 Ivor Montagu, 1967, With Eisenstein in Hollywood.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Luis Buñuel, 1983, My Last Breath.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Georgia Hale in interview with the author, December 1983.
28 Luis Buñuel, op. cit.
29 In 1992, on the occasion of a performance of City Lights in Madrid with live orchestra conducted by Carl Davis, the Padilla estate was still wrangling over rights.
1 Charles Chaplin, 1933, A Comedian Sees the World.
2 Thomas Burke, 1932, ‘A Comedian’, in City of Encounters.
3 Charles Chaplin, op. cit.
4 Strangely, in My Autobiography, Chaplin says that the ship was the Olympic, on which he had made his 1921 trip to Britain.
5 Daily Express.
6 Thomas Burke, op. cit.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Syndicated newspaper column. Cutting in Chaplin archive.
11 Ibid.
12 Manuscript letter from Sigmund Freud to Dr Schiller, dated 3 December 1931, in Harry Crocker collection, Library of Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, California.
13 Letter in Chaplin archive.
14 Letter in Chaplin archive.
15 Carbon copy of letter in Chaplin archive.
16 Letter in Chaplin archive.
17 Thomas Burke, op. cit.
18 Ibid.
1 Georgia Hale, interview with author, December 1983.
2 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
3 Screenland, October 1932.
4 Chicago American, 29 September 1932.
5 Charles Chaplin Jr, 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
6 Budgepost Post, 26 September 1932.
7 Boston Globe, 4 September 1932.
8 Lita Grey Chaplin (with Morton Cooper), 1966, My Life With Chaplin, An Intimate Memoir.
9. Letter from Charles to Sydney Chaplin, in Chaplin family archive.
10 Letter in Chaplin archives.
11 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
12 Ibid.
13 Letter from Alf Reeves to Sydney Chaplin in Chaplin family archive.
14 Letter in Chaplin archive.
15 Thomas Burke, 1932, ‘A Comedian’, in City of Encounters.
16 Ibid.
17 Memorandum in Chaplin Studio archive.
18 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
19 Letter from Alf Reeves to Sydney Chaplin, in Chaplin family archive.
20 Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Summer 1983.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
24 Cf. Joyce Milton, 1997, Tramp.
25 Telegram in Chaplin archive. Many of Sydney’s personal papers, variously cited throughout this book and including this, were given by his widow Gypsy to Oona Chaplin around 1980.
26 Letter in Chaplin archive.
27 Alistair Cooke, 1976, Six Men.
28 Jean Cocteau, 1958, My Voyage Round the World.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 This was also rediscovered among the Chaplin out-takes and is included in Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s documentary, Unknown Chaplin.
32 Jean Cocteau, op. cit.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Memorandum in Chaplin Studio archive.
1 On the appearance of the first edition of this book in 1985, the daughters of Konrad Bercovici, Rada and Mirel, were incensed at the ‘bland’ assertion that their father had merely ‘proposed’ the idea of The Great Dictator. Mirel gave a sworn statement that ‘I myself (in the absence of my father’s secretary who was on her honeymoon) typed the original manuscript of The Great Dictator from his hand-written pages which he then, accompanied by Melvyn Douglas, brought to Pebble Beach … I would have witnessed this on the stand had the trial not been aborted …’ Rada insisted that the trial represented a moral victory for Bercovici, who had told his lawyer, Louis Nizer, on abandoning the suit, ‘To hell with all this, Lou. I’m sixty-five now, and hurting. And outside there’s a whole world to repair.’
2 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
3 The story is published in English translation in Peter Cotes and Thelma Niklaus, 1951, The Little Fellow. Chaplin’s original English text has not been traced.
4 In Chaplin Studio archive.
5 Tim Durant, in interview with Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, 1980.
6 All quotations from Dan James in this chapter are from an interview with the author, December 1983.
7 The scene was discovered by Professor Frank Scheide while cataloguing the studio out-takes now held in the National Film and Television Archive.
8 The so-called ‘Breen Office’ took its name from that of Joseph Breen, who was at this time responsible for administering the Motion Picture Production Code, the American film industry’s self-regulatory system of censorship.
9 Dan James, loc. cit.
10 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
11 Charles Chaplin Jr (with N. and M. Rau), 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Dan James, loc. cit.
16 Tim Durant, loc. cit.
17 Script of The Great Dictator, in Chaplin archive.
18 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
19 Rudolph Arnheim, Films, 1946.
1 Charles Chaplin Jr, 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
2 From a series of eighteen documents in the Public Records Office, Kew, reported in the Sunday Times, 2 July 2000.
3 Contract reproduced in FBI file no. 31–5301, dated 25 February 1944. The copy of the original studio file and other documents relating to Joan Barry were demanded by FBI agents on 19 November 1943.
4 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
5 FBI file no. 31–5301.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Manuscript notes in Chaplin archive.
11 Syndicated news reports. Cuttings in Chaplin archive.
12 FBI file no. 31–5301.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
16 Jane Scovell, 1998, Oona. Living in the Shadows.
17 It is illustrated in Pam Paumer and David Robinson, 1989, Chaplin, 100 Years, 100 Images, 100 Documents.
18 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
19 Document in FBI files on Chaplin.
20 Jerry Giesler (with Pete Martin), 1960, The Jerry Giesler Story.
21 Cited by Chaplin in My Autobiography, 1964.
22 Quoted in Theodore Huff, 1951, Charlie Chaplin.
23 Roland Totheroh interviewed by Timothy J. Lyons in Film Culture, Spring 1971.
24 Ibid.
25 All quotations from the press conference are from the transcript by George Wallach, published in Film Comment, Winter 1969.
26 Film Comment, Winter 1969.
1 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
2 Charles Chaplin Jr, 1960, My Father, Charlie Chaplin.
3 Syndicated press reports. Cutting in Chaplin archive.
4 Ibid.
5 Interview with Margaret Hinxman.
6 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
7 Letter to Sydney Chaplin in Chaplin family archive.
8 From stenogram of the interview in the FBI Chaplin papers. Extracts are published in Charles J. Maland’s article ‘Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been …’ in Cineaste (New York) Vol. XIV, No. 4, 1986.
9 Document in FBI files on Chaplin.
10 Ibid.
11 Interviews with the author, April 1984.
12 From the typescript Limelight novel, in Chaplin Studio archive. Subsequent passages in italic are quotations or précis of this document.
13 In 1905 the stage manager of the Duke of York’s Theatre, whose kindness to him in his boyhood Chaplin always remembered, was called William Postance.
14 Sydney Chaplin Jr, ‘Father makes a film’, in Everybody’s Weekly, 18 October 1952.
15 Interview in unidentified newspaper cutting in Chaplin family archive. Wheeler had in fact advertised the relationship in The Stage Yearbook as early as 1920.
16 Sydney Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
17 Claire Bloom, 1982, Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
22 Claire Bloom, op. cit.
23 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
24 Claire Bloom, op. cit.
25 Private communication to author.
26 Eugène Lourié in interview with author, December 1983.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Sydney Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
32 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
33 Claire Bloom, op. cit.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Interview with the author, December 1983.
37 Sidney Bernstein, later Lord Bernstein, together with his brother Cecil, built up the British-based Granada entertainment empire. A film enthusiast and a founder member of the original Film Society, he was a lifelong admirer of Chaplin.
38 Katherine Dunham was a well-known African-American dancer, who often appeared in London. She was also emotionally involved with Tim Durant for a long time.
39 Charles Chaplin Jr, op. cit.
40 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
41 Kenneth S. Lynn, 1997, Charlie Chaplin and His Times.
42 Ibid.
43 Documents in FBI files on Chaplin.
1 News Chronicle, 24 September 1952.
2 The Times, 24 September 1952.
3 News Chronicle, 22 September 1952.
4 New York Times, 21 September 1952.
5 Photocopy of original in Chaplin family archive.
6 Charles Chaplin, 1964, My Autobiography.
7 Letter from Robert A. Bunch, Columbia Department Commander, American Legion, to Roth Theatres, 11 December 1952.
8 Cable from Arthur Krim to Chaplin, 8 January 1954; cable from Chaplin to Krim, 12 January 1954.
9 Letter from Bernard Segelin, Chairman of Bedford–Eastern Parkway Chapter American Veterans Committee to Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors, 18 February 1953.
10 Syndicated press reports. Cutting in Chaplin archive.
11 Michael Chaplin, 1966, I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn.
12 Barbara Beale-Cole, letter to author, 1989.
13 Barbara Beale-Cole, ibid.
14 Interview with A1 Reuter by author, June 1984.
15 Michael Chaplin, op. cit.
16 FBI files on Charles Chaplin.
17 Sands was an English journalist working in Switzerland. He ingratiated himself with the Chaplins, who co-operated with him for a while until he published a concocted purported interview with Oona which led her to style him ‘That most revolting sort of reporter’ (see Jane Scovell, 1998, Oona, Living in the Shadows).
18 Daily Herald, 16 April 1959.
19 Sunday Times, 21 August 1964.
20 Michael Chaplin, op. cit.
21 Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 June 1962.
22 Francis Wyndham, Introduction to Charles Chaplin, 1974, My Life in Pictures.
23 Michael Chaplin, op. cit.
24 In a BBC radio programme on 4 February 1989, Larry Adler recalled how Michael Chaplin and his own son were arrested for playing in the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Adler was anxious to see that the boys were legally represented, as a conviction would prejudice his son’s university place. Chaplin said that Michael was worthless and that he would not lift a finger to help him. Oona, however, took Adler aside and asked him to see that the boys were properly represented. She would, she said, split the cost with him. Adler went ahead, but, he claimed, Oona never paid up her half.
25 Sunday Times, 21 August 1964.
26 Lillian Ross, 1980, Moments With Chaplin.
27 Harold Clurman, Esquire, November 1962.
28 Charles Chaplin, op. cit.
29 Francis Wyndham, op. cit.
1 David Robinson, ‘Chaplin Meets the Press’, in Sight and Sound, Winter 1965–6.
2 In 1982, when searching through early Chaplin out-takes for Unknown Chaplin, Brownlow was thrilled to find some shots of Chaplin in precisely the same attitude, taken during the making of The Adventurer just fifty years before A Countess From Hong Kong.
3 Kevin Brownlow, 1968, The Parade’s Gone By.
4 Ibid.
5 Sunday Times.
6 Michael Chaplin, 1966, I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn.
7 Eric James, 2000, Making Music With Charlie Chaplin, An Autobiography.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Life, 23 April 1972.
12 Interview with Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, 1980. The girl cannot have been a ‘granddaughter’.
13 Georgia Hale, interviewed by the author, December 1983.
14 Anthony Coogan, interviewed by the author, December 1983.
15 Candice Bergen, in Life, 21 April 1972.
16 Eric James, op. cit.
17 Eric James, op. cit.
18 Eric James, op. cit.
19 Eric James, op. cit.