Charlie Chaplin

by Peter Ackroyd

  In the first two or three years at Vevey he was working on the proposed film on an exiled king. By the autumn of 1955 the script was nearing completion, and he began filming in the late spring or early summer of the following year. He chose as his leading lady Dawn Addams, whom he greatly admired; he told her at one point that “I won’t make the picture without you.” His one principal piece of advice to her was to keep her head still, telling her to “remember to be definite. Moving your head is indefinite. Only make a move when it means something.” He chose his young son, Michael Chaplin, to play the role of an unhappy victim of America’s “Red Scare” that even then was growing to fresh heights. He was in fact intent upon mocking all aspects of American life, from its television advertisements to its popular dances, from its snobbery to its hypocrisy. Michael Chaplin said later on the new experience of working with his father that “I was happy to have this relationship with him, which I never had before.”

  The filming took place at Shepperton Studios outside London, and the family ensconced itself at the Great Fosters Hotel in Egham. It was a sombre if stately house where the Chaplins made themselves as comfortable as possible; there was only one communal room for television, however, and they had to sit down and watch whatever the majority of guests had chosen.

  The production was to last for nine weeks, with one week for location work. Shepperton Studios was an unfamiliar environment for Chaplin, who had previously worked only in American studios, and his discomfort was compounded by the multitude of English union rules and regulations that governed working practices. “If you want a chair moved,” he was told, “ask a prop person to move it.” Work stopped when the tea-trolley came around at three thirty. A cameraman was fiddling with the lights. “I have to give a performance,” Chaplin shouted, “I don’t give a goddam about your artistic effects!… Besides they’re coming to see Charlie Chaplin, not your goddam lighting!” Oona Chaplin always travelled with him and would sit, working on her embroidery, at the side of the set. Chaplin left England in July, as soon as the film was completed; for tax reasons, he could remain no longer.

  The film was released in England in the early autumn of 1957 to a generally warm welcome. There was no grand premiere for the simple reason that the Chaplins had returned to Vevey. It was his eighty-first film, but there was for him no sense of an ending. He told one friend that “It’s good, it’s my best picture, it’s entertainment, don’t you think?”

  A King in New York concerns the tribulations of an exiled European monarch in that city; it is part farce and part satire, but never seems quite sure in which of those directions it is going. The exiled King Shahdov is clearly a version of Chaplin himself. He is fingerprinted at the airport, with the photographers all around him, just as Chaplin was photographed at his trial thirteen years before. The film is on one level a spirited response to the hatred and humiliation that he had endured in that earlier period. It is sometimes crude, but it is also often lively and vigorous; at its best, it provides charming comedy.

  In the Evening Standard John Osborne wrote that “for such a big, easy target, a great deal of it goes fairly wide. What makes the spectacle of misused energy continually interesting is once again the technique of a unique comic actor”; in The Observer Kenneth Tynan made the similar point that “in every shot Chaplin speaks his mind. It is not a very subtle mind, but its naked outspokenness is something rare.” In those two comments something of the strength, and much of the weakness, of the film can be found.

  When asked about the generally negative presentation of the United States Chaplin replied that “if you give both sides it becomes bloody dull.” When the film had its premiere in Paris, he barred any critics or reporters from the United States. That, however, did not prevent some of them from seeing it. The New Yorker reported that it was “maybe the worst film ever made by a celebrated film artist”; Oona Chaplin promptly cancelled her subscription to the magazine. It was not shown in America for another sixteen years. In later life Chaplin wrote that he was “disappointed” and “a little uneasy” with the film.

  For some of the music of A King in New York he had hired a pianist, Eric James, who eventually became his musical associate. In a memoir, Making Music with Charlie Chaplin, James records their sometimes troubled association. He had to endure “the arguments and bullying that happened so frequently” and that were an aspect of Chaplin’s “fiery temperament”; when James made a suggestion Chaplin might shout, “Don’t tell me what to do!” The pianist soon came to realise that “in other directions he was no better than any other man and probably a good deal worse than some.” He noticed, in particular, his meanness in matters of money.

  Chaplin still made regular journeys to London, where he would revisit the haunts of his youth; he would return to the Three Stags public house, for example, where he had last seen his father alive. On one occasion he went with Oona and a friend to Southend; this was the resort where his mother had taken him and Sydney for an impromptu day out. He bought cockles from a stand, just as he had once done as a child. He was spotted one day staring into a butcher’s shop window off the Old Kent Road; a man walked over to him and stood next to him. “Excuse me. Are you Charlie Chaplin?” “Shush, don’t give me away.” On another occasion he was seen to trip up and fall on the pavement outside Kennington underground station. He loved the Christmas pantomimes in the London theatres. He peered through the windows of restaurants to look at the diners. He would get on a London bus and gaze at the crowds.

  Yet there were times when the crowd looked back at him. He was spotted walking along the Embankment and some people called out “Charlie Chaplin! Charlie Chaplin!” Chaplin became nervous and told his companion, “Let’s get out of here.” A tourist boat was just about to leave its mooring, and Chaplin hopped on with his friend. Just as they reached Greenwich another boat came up. The passengers were lining the deck shouting out “Charlie Chaplin! Charlie Chaplin!” They had followed him from the Embankment pier.

  He also enjoyed holidays elsewhere. He journeyed to Kenya with his family, where he went on a safari. He often visited Ireland in the spring, where he liked to fish. At the beginning of 1960 he and the family ventured upon a world tour which took them from Alaska to Japan, Bali and Hong Kong before returning by way of India and the Middle East. Michael Chaplin recalled that, in the course of the tour, “if we went into a store, it was a production. If we went to a restaurant we were on show like a pack of zoo characters.”

  In June 1962 Chaplin received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, which he gratefully accepted. An Oxford don by the name of Hugh Trevor-Roper objected to the decision on the grounds that “we might as well be honouring a circus clown.” At the ceremony Chaplin delivered a short speech in which he adverted to this controversy. He confessed that he was not a man of letters but he felt himself qualified to speak on matters of beauty rather than knowledge or morality. Beauty could be found in various places, in a garbage can or in a rose. “Or even,” he added, “even in the antics of a clown.” He was greeted with loud applause.

  This was the period in which Chaplin began to write his autobiography. He used to read out passages to his guests at Vevey. One of them, Lillian Ross, recalled that “I sat with him on his terrace as he read parts of his book manuscript to me, the tortoiseshell glasses a bit down on his nose, his reading dramatic to the point of melodrama, his devotion to his subject unselfconscious and complete.” He asked Truman Capote to read the manuscript and, when the American writer suggested changes and additions, Chaplin lost his temper. “Get the fuck out of here,” Capote remembers him saying, “I wanted you to read it. I wanted you to enjoy it. I don’t need your opinion.” He never spoke to Capote again.

  My Autobiography was published in the autumn of 1964, and was soon selling well all over the world. It was of course a self-serving account replete with inaccuracies and evasions. He had never really spoken the truth about his life, and it would have been unwise to expect him to start at the
age of seventy-five. It was perhaps more notable for its omissions than its conclusions; Chaplin’s political record was conveniently sanitised, and he failed to mention many people who had been instrumental in his success. He never really discussed his work in film, except as a matter of profit and loss, while the last third of the book often resembles a social diary rather than a considered self-appraisement.

  Nevertheless it does have passages of genuine power and pathos, particularly in Chaplin’s evocation of his London childhood. It received a mixed response. Some critics believed that Chaplin had concealed “his vociferous left-wing politics”; his marriages and affairs “are passed over, almost pushed aside.” Yet no man needs to become witness for his own prosecution. Another reviewer remarked, in Chaplin’s defence, that “the persecution of Chaplin in the name of American patriotism is a scandal this era is saddled with forever.”

  There was to be one last film, his eighty-second. At a press conference in London, on 1 November 1965, he announced that he was about to begin production of A Countess from Hong Kong that would include in its cast Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. A journalist present on the occasion described him as “bright-eyed, clear-voiced, quick-talking, he is, if not exactly youthful, fairly ageless.”

  The filming, begun at the start of the following year at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, encountered problems. Chaplin had never before directed established stars, and in particular found it difficult to deal with Brando; Chaplin as director was also Chaplin as dictator, as we have seen, and the actor did not take kindly to Chaplin’s desire to control his performance. An observer on the set wrote that “the action did not proceed smoothly. Brando, sullen, kept saying ‘All right, all right.’ He did not seem to be listening as Chaplin instructed him again.” The actor went through the prearranged movements without any real enthusiasm. An actress from the days of silent cinema, Gloria Swanson, visited the set where she confided that “you can see why actors find him difficult. This is a simple scene, and he’s making much ado about nothing.” Sophia Loren, however, willingly accepted his close tuition.

  Brando wrote later in a memoir that “Chaplin was a fearsomely cruel man … probably the most sadistic man I’d ever met.” He was also an “egotistical tyrant” and a “penny-pincher” who “harassed people who were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster.” Immediately after the filming was over, in the spring of 1966, Chaplin told a reporter that “it’s all such fun, every minute I’m proving something to myself. I don’t know what it is … but I’m proving that I can do it. I’ve always been enthusiastic about work. Sometimes I’ve been more enthusiastic than the work deserved, I suppose.”

  In the autumn of that year he slipped on the pavement outside Pinewood Studios and broke his ankle. For the next seven weeks he was obliged to hobble around in a cast, with the aid of a crutch, or to use a wheelchair; this was not designed to raise his spirits, and indeed he became morose. He carried on working but, when the cast came off at the end of November, he never had as much energy or mobility as before. He may also have suffered a minor stroke. It was the first sign of frailty and, as a result, his wife’s care became ever more insistent.

  A Countess from Hong Kong opened at the beginning of 1967 to generally cool or hostile reviews. It was considered to be slow and old-fashioned. It concerned a countess, apparently doomed to become an expensive prostitute, who stows away in the cabin of a millionaire on his way back to New York. The consequences are predictable enough, with love at the end of the story, but romantic comedies of the light and gentle type had gone out of style. It is charming, with Chaplinesque touches, but charm on this occasion was not enough. The film was not helped by Brando’s performance that was generally regarded as “wooden”; he had perhaps been too much out of sympathy with his director to overexert himself in the role. He is vaguely menacing, and laboured, throughout the film. Yet compensation can be found in the smaller roles of Patrick Cargill and Margaret Rutherford who deployed their English manner to great effect.

  Chaplin told one journalist that “what shocked me about the English reviews of the Countess was the fact that they were unanimous. And they seemed so personal, an attack upon me. All they were interested in was ‘Chaplin has a flop.’ ” Brando telephoned Loren to say that “the critics just destroyed all of us.” The American reviewers were no kinder. Bosley Crowther, in the New York Times, lamented “this fiasco, which is one of the most humiliating and unnecessary I have ever known to happen in films.” When Crowther’s words were read out to him by an assistant, Chaplin “listened stoically with his arms folded across his chest—his expression never changed. He made no comment. When I finished, he left the room.”

  The shades of death were now reaching closer to him. Sydney Chaplin, his older brother, had died on 16 April 1965, which was of course Chaplin’s birthday. His principal cameraman for many years, Rollie Totheroh, died in the summer of 1967. Then, in the following year, his oldest child died; Charles suffered from a fatal thrombosis, possibly induced by alcoholism. In these circumstances Chaplin was comforted by his devoted wife. He could not bear her to be away from his side, not even for a moment. Ian Fleming, after a visit to Vevey, remarked that it was “wonderful to see two people bask unaffectedly in each other’s love.” They had a delight in one another’s company that seemed sometimes to be at the cost of excluding their children. They held hands constantly; she might stroke his hair, or pet him.

  Yet there is another aspect to this story of marital bliss. Some people observed a certain nervousness, or tension, within Oona that she began to assuage with drink. Chaplin’s business manager, Rachel Ford, explained that “she always drank secretly. Charlie knew. She tried to shut herself away when they had a row—locked herself in for days at a time and drank … I used to come in to sort out some business and he was in a terrible rage and she’d run into her room and lock the door. And he’d try to get her out, and it was all hell.”

  He said in 1967 that “at my age I don’t want to wish days away. I want to live every minute.” In this, his seventy-eighth year, he attacked his birthday cake in mock ferocity; there is a photograph of him bearing down on the cake with a large knife. He still worked on and, in this year, he began preparations for another film.

  He was working on a script he called The Freak. It was the story of a winged girl who in Chile is worshipped, as an angel descended from heaven, but who is then kidnapped and sent to London where she suffers many misadventures. He had designed the part of the girl for his daughter, Victoria, but the idea came to nothing. Some tests were done at Shepperton Studios, and some storyboards were created, but nothing more. Victoria Chaplin said that “I was dying to do The Freak, but I could feel this holding back about the film. I remember my mother telling me at Christmas, in 1969, privately in the pantry of the house, ‘Well, actually, I don’t want him to do it. If he goes through the ordeal it will kill him … I can have him alive or have him die making the film.’ ” So the project was cancelled. Chaplin did not notice, or was not told; he continued intermittently working on the idea for another five years.

  Yet his putative heroine had left him. Victoria Chaplin eloped to Paris with a young French actor, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée, and in 1971 they created their own circus that became known as Le Cirque Imaginaire. Chaplin complained to his musical adviser, Eric James, that “I loved her as I do all my other children and I gave her everything she wanted. Why should she repay me in this way?” James suggested that he might try to help her in a difficult period. In response “Charlie jumped to his feet and, literally quivering with rage, shouted ‘Help her! Help her! She will never, and I mean never, set foot in this house again!’ ”

  Eric James was at Vevey to help Chaplin prepare a new score for the reissue of The Circus. Chaplin had been responsible, over the course of his career, for more than eighty musical compositions. Yet his strain of inventiveness was beginning to fail and, in his memoir, James recalled that “I was able to suggest melodies and ideas t
hat were agreeable to him.” James remembered other details of life at Vevey. He recollected how Chaplin “felt the cold very much” and demanded a log fire in any room he was using; how he often talked of his early life and expressed a deep fear of returning to the same penury; how he began taking short naps after lunch; how he liked simple food at home but in restaurants preferred more exotic fare such as caviar and roast partridge; how he would like to hear James play the music-hall songs of his childhood; how on occasions he would even perform those songs in the manner of Vesta Tilley or Marie Lloyd; how he hated Christmas.

  In the early spring of 1972 Chaplin was rewarded with a five-pointed terrazzo and brass star as part of the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, yet this was only a prelude to a much grander reunion. He was coming back to Hollywood after an absence of twenty years. It was not simply a sentimental journey. He had just signed a munificent distribution deal, for the release of some of his earlier pictures, and it was believed that journeys to New York and Los Angeles would be the best kind of publicity tour.

  He arrived in New York on 3 April 1972, but he had been tense during the flight, aware that hostility towards him might still emerge among the journalists who were waiting for him at the airport. He seems even to have feared being shot and he vowed that, if he saw any pickets against him, he would return at once to Switzerland. Yet the welcome was spontaneous and friendly. Time seemed to have healed the breach as well as the subsequent resentment and suspicion.