by Craig Brown
But she has never been one to take things lying down. She has always been prone to rage, and her progress around the world has been marked by the splinters of hotel furniture. Sensing an eruption, one of her pigeons seeks to calm her down. Isadora picks up a lobster covered in mayonnaise and throws it at him.
Alas, she is a poor shot, and the lobster lands in the lap of Lady MacCarthy, showering her frilly green dress with mayonnaise. Lady MacCarthy is furious, and leaps from her chair, ready to launch herself at Isadora. At this point, Cocteau intervenes, restraining Lady MacCarthy from behind as her little fists pummel the air. A general affray ensues, with French and American sailors randomly taking sides. ‘Mother remained indifferent and behaved as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening,’ remarks Sir Francis several years later.
Eventually, peace returns to the Hôtel Welcome. The lobster is restored to the table, the mayonnaise renewed, and the guests all return to their seats, ready to tuck in. Only Captain Williams is missing. He is later discovered spreadeagled on the balcony, covered in blood, a whisky bottle at his side.
JEAN COCTEAU
OVERWHELMS
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
The Karoa, South China Sea
February 1936
Jean Cocteau is riding high. Buoyed up by the success of his new film, Le Sang d’un poète, he plans to retrace the voyage of Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days. Craftily, he has managed to persuade Paris-Soir to subsidise the trip; in return, he will send them a series of travel articles. Accompanied by his Moroccan boyfriend Marcel Khill, who he rechristens ‘Passepartout’, he travels from Rome to Brindisi to Athens to Cairo, from there to Aden and Bombay and Calcutta, and then on to Rangoon, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong.
As he travels across the South China Sea from Singapore on an old Japanese freighter, the Karoa, Cocteau takes his usual peek at the passenger list. A fervent name-dropper, he is delighted to discover perhaps the most droppable name in the whole wide world: Charlie Chaplin, who is on a trip to the Orient with his wife, the actress Paulette Goddard, to celebrate the success of his own film, Modern Times.
Cocteau is cock-a-hoop. ‘He amassed names chiefly to drop them,’ writes his biographer, ‘dropping them so familiarly, however, as to give the impression that there existed between him and various celebrities a kind of crazed empathy.’ He loses no time in instructing his steward to take a note to Chaplin, inviting him to his cabin for an aperitif before dinner. At first, Chaplin does not know whether to reply, as he suspects a hoax. But having checked with the purser’s office that Jean Cocteau is indeed aboard, he and Paulette Goddard pop their heads around the door of Cocteau’s cabin at the suggested hour. Cocteau’s own account of their encounter, which he shares with his readers in Paris-Soir, has a mystical, almost fairy-tale quality about it.
‘Two poets follow the straight line of their destiny,’ he marvels. ‘Suddenly it comes to pass that these two lines transect and the meeting forms a cross or, if you prefer, a star ... So many people planned that meeting and tried to be its organisers. Each time an obstacle arose, and chance – which has another name in the language of poets – throws us aboard an old Japanese freighter carrying merchandise on the China Sea between Hong Kong and Shanghai.’
He makes no mention of the nudge he has given destiny with his note to the steward.
‘You cannot imagine the purity, the violence, the freshness of our extraordinary rendezvous, which we owed solely to our horoscopes,’ he continues. ‘I was touching the flesh and bone of a myth ... As for Chaplin, he shook his white locks, removed his spectacles, put them on again, grasped me by the shoulder, burst out laughing, turned towards his companion, and said again and again, “Is it not marvellous? Is it not marvellous?”’
In Cocteau’s account, the two men – both, aged forty-six – hit it off immediately. ‘I don’t speak English. Chaplin doesn’t speak French. And we spoke without the slightest effort. What happened? What language was it? The language of life, more alive than any other, the language born from the desire to communicate at any cost, the language of mimes, of poets, of the heart.’
The two exchange all sorts of intimacies, according to Cocteau: Chaplin confesses to an inferiority complex, fills him in on all the details about his films and tells him about all his future projects. Their conversation goes on deep into the night. Over the next few weeks, so Cocteau says, they become inseparable. ‘My meeting with Chaplin,’ he assures his readers, ‘remains the delightful miracle of this voyage.’
But Chaplin’s version of the very same meeting is rather different, and, as far as one is able to judge, it has more of the ring of truth about it. According to him, ‘the language of mimes, of poets, of the heart’ in fact proved insufficient. All their communication took place through the faltering and haphazard translations of Marcel Khill: ‘Meester Cocteau ... he say ... you are a poet ... of ze sunshine ... and he is a poet of ze ... night.’
Chaplin agrees, however, that their initial meeting is a success, with the two men experiencing an immediate rapport, carrying on chatting into the early hours, and then agreeing to meet for lunch.
But they go too far, too soon. Upon waking, Chaplin feels he can’t face any more of Cocteau at lunchtime, and sends him a note of apology. Over the next few days, Cocteau attempts to arrange another rendezvous, but each time they make an appointment, Chaplin contrives to miss it. From then on, he dines with Paulette, and Cocteau dines with Marcel. Before long, the two men have grown too embarrassed even to exchange glances. If one sees the other coming, he ducks into corridors and darts behind the nearest doors. Separately, the two of them grow familiar with parts of the ship they had never known existed.
‘We had had more than a glut of each other,’ Chaplin concludes in his autobiography. ‘In the various stopping-off places we rarely saw each other, unless for a brief how-do-you-do or farewell. But when news broke that we were both sailing on the President Coolidge going back to the States, we became resigned, making no further attempts at enthusiasm.’ Instead, Chaplin gets stuck into a new script; by the time the ship reaches California, he has written 10,000 words.
It is all a question of appetite. Cocteau’s hunger for celebrities is insatiable, but Chaplin’s is only fitful, and can fast turn to revulsion. On meeting Arnold Schoenberg or Albert Einstein or Thomas Mann, he feels an instant bond, but then retreats back into privacy. He has always possessed a remarkable ability to extract whatever he wants from a stranger in a very short time, but then feels replete. Strangers misinterpret this rapacity; what they take to be a firm bond invariably proves to be no more than a passing acquaintance: the prospect of a lifelong friendship suddenly reduced, as if by magic, to the memory of a chance encounter.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
PLAYS STRAIGHT MAN TO
GROUCHO MARX
Beverly Hills Tennis Club, Los Angeles
July 14th 1937
Tennis has become the most fashionable sport in Hollywood: Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Carole Lombard, David Niven, Norma Shearer and Katharine Hepburn all play. This prompts Fred Perry – the world no. 1 player for the past five years191 – to turn professional and move to Los Angeles with his film-star wife Helen Vinson.
Perry buys the Beverly Hills Tennis Club with the American champion Ellsworth Vines. To mark its opening, the two of them play in one of the very first pro-celebrity tournaments: Perry partners Charlie Chaplin and Vines partners Groucho Marx.
Charlie Chaplin (b.1889) is just a year older than Groucho Marx (b.1890), but the gap seems infinitely wider: the two men are separated by sound. Chaplin is the king of silent comedy, Marx the king of the fast-talking wise-crack. Chaplin spends a lot of time fretting that he belongs to the past; at lunch before the game, he shares these fears with his opponent.
‘Charlie turned around to me and said, “Gee, I envy you,”’ recalls Groucho, a quarter of a century on, ‘and I said, “You envy me? Why?” He said, “I wish I cou
ld talk on the screen the way you do.” I found this such an ironical statement. Here was the greatest comedian that there’s ever been, there’s never been anyone like him, and he’s sitting there envying me because I can talk.’
It is not hard to detect an undertow of triumph beneath this outward show of sympathy. Groucho has always been a very competitive man, and Chaplin is known as the world champion in their shared field of comedy. But by the time Groucho looks back on this conversation, silent comedy has come to seem as out-of-date and quaint as the penny-farthing.
The two vexed comedians compare notes. ‘There we were, two neurotics sitting, and talking, completely terrified about life and their careers. You would think that by this time Chaplin would be more or less convinced that he had a remarkable talent. But no! He was just as frightened as he had been when he first came to me and asked my advice.’
That first meeting took place sixteen years ago, when the Marx Brothers were travelling from Minneapolis to Edmonton. With three hours to kill between trains in Winnipeg, Groucho walked up the main street to the Empress Theatre, where Chaplin happened to be playing. He heard great gusts of laughter coming from inside. ‘I’ve never heard an audience laugh so forcefully in my life.’ He went backstage, introduced himself to Chaplin and invited him to come and see the Marx Brothers perform.
Chaplin accepted. As a prank, he chose to sit in the front row, reading a newspaper all the way through the show. The Marx Brothers said nothing about it at the time, but when Chaplin invited them to see his show, they switched places in their box with four Orthodox rabbis, all extravagantly bearded. Assuming that the rabbis were the Marx Brothers in disguise, Chaplin picked on them, whereupon all four rabbis stormed out in protest.
When their paths crossed again in Salt Lake City, the Marx Brothers persuaded Chaplin to visit a brothel with them, but he proved too sheepish to take an active role, preferring to chat to the madam and play with her dog. Afterwards, he told the brothers that he had just refused an offer of $500 a week from Hollywood. ‘No comedian is worth five hundred a week,’ he explained. ‘If I sign up with them and don’t make good, they’ll fire me.’
They didn’t run into Charlie Chaplin again for another five years, by which time he had become a major Hollywood star, well known for his many lovers, some of them very young. When the brothers came to dinner at his mansion, uniformed butlers stood behind each of their chairs.
For the rest of their lives, Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin maintain an edgy relationship, their admiration tempered by competitiveness.192 Like Chaplin, Groucho is forever looking over his shoulder for fear of being overtaken. When Monkey Business and City Lights come out at the same time, he notes ruefully that while City Lights is acclaimed an instant classic, Monkey Business is seen as ‘the usual Marx Madhouse ...’
On this summer’s day in 1937, it is as though the edgy competition between the two most famous comedians in the world has been formalised. Chaplin Chaplin prides himself on his tennis: as well as being a member of the Beverly Hills Club, he has his own court at his home, where he throws tennis parties for fellow stars like Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. When newsreel photographers turn up, he always plays that little bit harder. Groucho is much less proficient with a racket. Unable to compete in tennis, and incapable of being seen in public without playing his buffoonish on-screen character, he decides to compete for laughs. He turns up with a huge suitcase and a dozen tennis rackets, curls up in a sleeping bag, then brandishes a ping-pong bat.
Chaplin and Perry win the first game with ease, and the second game too. At this point, Groucho tells the crowd that he is going to have a lunch break (‘Vines can do all my playing for me!’). He dips into his suitcase and produces a tablecloth and a range of sandwiches, which he proceeds to spread on the ground. ‘Will you join me for a spot of tea?’ he shouts to Chaplin, playing to the crowd.
Charlie Chaplin feigns laughter, but is quietly seething: he wants to get on with the match. ‘I didn’t come here to be your straight man,’ he hisses into Groucho’s ear.
Groucho omits this comment from his memoirs. In newsreel footage, Chaplin can be seen smiling at Groucho’s shenanigans, but this is only for the cameras. Years later, he has still not forgiven Groucho for casting himself in the role of funny guy. After all, given the choice, who wants to play stooge?
GROUCHO MARX
WANTS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY
T.S. ELIOT
3 Kensington Court Gardens, London W8
June 1964
Early in 1961, T.S. Eliot and his young wife are disembarking from a glass-bottomed boat in Jamaica when, much to their delight, they spot Groucho Marx and his wife preparing to embark.
Prompted by this coincidence, Eliot sends a letter to Groucho a few weeks later. In it, he says how much he admires him and asks for a signed photograph.
Groucho is pleasantly surprised; like many comedians, he is an intellectual manqué. Accordingly, he posts Eliot a studio portrait of himself looking serious, without his cigar and his comedy moustache. Eliot thanks him, promises him that it ‘will soon appear in its frame on my wall with other famous friends such as W.B. Yeats and Paul Valéry’, and sends a photograph of himself.
‘I had no idea you were so handsome,’ replies Groucho. ‘Why you haven’t been offered the lead in some sexy movies I can only attribute to the stupidity of the casting directors.’
The pair embark on a correspondence based on mutual admiration. In a letter written in February 1963, Eliot mentions that Groucho’s portrait is now framed on his office mantelpiece, ‘but I have to point you out to my visitors as nobody recognises you without the cigar and rolling eyes. I shall try to provide a cigar worthy of you.’
To clear up the problem, Groucho sends Eliot another photograph, this one of himself in full comic attire. Eliot now has two photographs. ‘I like them both very much and I cannot make up my mind which one to take home and which one to put on my office wall. The new one would impress visitors more, especially those I want to impress, as it is unmistakably Groucho. The only solution may be to carry them both with me every day.’
Their correspondence rumbles on, with its slightly effortful jocularity, but the two men are prevented by illness from meeting. First Eliot is in hospital, then Groucho. In June 1963, Groucho writes to say that ‘by next May or thereabouts, I hope to be well enough to eat that free meal you’ve been promising me for the past two years’. But his letter includes a small note of hurt: he mentions that, in a tribute to T.S. Eliot by Stephen Spender in the New York Times Book Review, there is a long list of the many portraits on the wall of his study, but ‘one name was conspicuous by its absence’.
Eliot writes a somewhat defensive letter in response. ‘I think that Stephen Spender was only attempting to enumerate oil and water colour pictures and no photographs – I trust so,’ he says. He is looking forward to their meeting in the spring. ‘If you do not turn up I am afraid that all of the people to whom I have boasted of knowing you (and of being on first name terms at that) will take me for a four flusher.’
Recently, he adds, he and his wife went to The Marx Brothers Go West, which they had never seen before. ‘It was certainly worth it,’ he adds.
Groucho finally arrives in London in June 1964, to host a TV panel show called The Celebrity Game.193 Dinner is duly arranged. Eliot writes to confirm that he has ordered a taxi to take Groucho and his wife from the Savoy, where they are staying, to the Eliots’ flat in Kensington Court Gardens. ‘The picture of you in the newspapers saying that, amongst other reasons, you have come to London to see me has greatly enhanced my credit in the neighbourhood, and particularly with the greengrocer across the street. Obviously I am now someone of importance.’
Groucho revises hard before the dinner with the man he refers to as ‘my celebrated pen pal’. He reads Murder in the Cathedral twice, The Waste Land three times, and ‘just in case of a conversational bottleneck’ he also brushes up on King Lear.
Over cockt
ails before dinner, there is a momentary lull of the kind that is, recalls Groucho, ‘more or less inevitable when strangers meet for the first time’. To fill the gap, Groucho tosses in a quotation from The Waste Land. ‘That, I thought, will show him I’ve read a thing or two besides my press notices from Vaudeville.’
Eliot smiles faintly, ‘as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn’t need me to recite them’. So Groucho tactfully steers the conversation onto King Lear. ‘I said the king was an incredibly foolish old man, which God knows he was; and that if he’d been my father I would have run away from home at the age of eight – instead of waiting until I was ten.’
But this conversational ploy also fails to catch fire: Eliot clearly wants to talk about comedy, not literature. ‘He seemed more interested in discussing Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera. He quoted a joke – one of mine – that I had long since forgotten. Now it was my turn to smile faintly. I said I was not going to let anyone – not even the British poet from St Louis – spoil my Literary Evening.’
So Groucho doggedly continues with his condemnation of King Lear. He refers to the disowning of Cordelia as ‘the height of idiocy’. The Eliots listen politely. Mrs Eliot defends Shakespeare, and Mrs Marx takes her side. But Eliot remains determined to switch the subject back to comedy. ‘He asked if I remembered the courtroom scene in Duck Soup. Fortunately, I’d forgotten every word. It was obviously the end of the Literary Evening, but very pleasant none the less.’194
