My Autobiography

by Charles Chaplin

  Karno could be cynical and cruel to anyone he disliked. Because he liked me I had never seen that side of him, but he could indeed be most crushing in a vulgar way. During a performance of one of his comedies, if he did not like a comedian, he would stand in the wings and hold his nose and give an audible raspberry. But he did this once too often and the comedian left the stage and lunged at him; that was the last time he resorted to such vulgar measures. And now I stood confronting him about a new contract.

  ‘Well,’ he said, smiling cynically, ‘you want a raise and the theatre circuits want a cut.’ He shrugged. ‘Since the fiasco at the Oxford Music Hall, we’ve had nothing but complaints. They say the company’s not up to the mark – a scratch crowd.’*

  ‘Well, they can hardly blame me for that,’ I said.

  ‘But they do,’ he answered, pinning me with a steady gaze.

  ‘What do they complain about?’ I asked.

  He cleared his throat and looked at the floor. ‘They say you’re not competent.’

  Although the remark hit me in the pit of the stomach, it also infuriated me, but I replied calmly: ‘Well, other people don’t think so, and they’re willing to give me more than I’m getting here.’ This was not true – I had no other offer.

  ‘They say the show is awful and the comedian’s no good. Here,’ he said, picking up the phone, ‘I’ll call up the Star, Bermondsey, and you can hear for yourself… I understand you did poor business last week,’ he said over the phone.

  ‘Lousy!’ came a voice.

  Karno grinned. ‘How do you account for it?’

  ‘A dud show!’

  ‘What about Chaplin, the principal comedian? Wasn’t he any good?’

  ‘He stinks!’ said the voice.

  Karno offered me the phone and grinned. ‘Listen for yourself.’

  I took the phone. ‘Maybe he stinks, but not half as much as your stink-pot theatre!’ I said.

  Karno’s attempt to cut me down was not a success. I told him that if he also felt that way there was no need to renew my contract. Karno in many ways was a shrewd man, but he was not a psychologist. Even if I did stink it wasn’t good business of Karno to have a man at the other end of the phone tell me so. I was getting five pounds and, although my confidence was low, I demanded six. To my surprise Karno gave it to me, and again I entered his good graces.

  *

  Alf Reeves, the manager of Karno’s American company, returned to England and rumour had it that he was looking for a principal comedian to take back with him to the States.

  Since my major setback at the Oxford Music Hall, I was full of the idea of going to America, not alone for the thrill and adventure of it, but because it would mean renewed hope, a new beginning in a new world. Fortunately Skating, one of our new sketches in which I was the leading comedian, was going over with great success in Birmingham and when Mr Reeves joined our company there I pinned on as much charm as I could; with the result that Reeves wired Karno that he had found his comedian for the States. But Karno had other plans for me. This sickening fact left me in doubt for several weeks until he became interested in a sketch called The Wow-wows. It was a burlesque on initiating a member into a secret society. Reeves and I thought the show silly, fatuous and without merit. But Karno was obsessed with the idea and insisted that America was full of secret societies and that a burlesque on them would be a great success there, so to my happy relief and excitement, Karno chose me to play the principal part in The Wow-wows for America.

  This chance to go to the United States was what I needed. In England I felt I had reached the limit of my prospects; besides, my opportunities there were circumscribed. With scant educational background, if I failed as a music-hall comedian I would have little chance but to do menial work. In the States the prospects were brighter.

  The night before sailing, I walked about the West End of London, pausing at Leicester Square, Coventry Street, the Mall and Piccadilly, with the wistful feeling that it would be the last time I would see London, for I had made up my mind to settle permanently in America. I walked until two in the morning, wallowing in the poetry of deserted streets and my own sadness.

  I loathed saying good-bye. Whatever one feels about parting from relations and friends, to be seen off by them only rubs it in. I was up at six in the morning. Therefore, I did not bother to wake Sydney, but left a note on the table stating: ‘Off to America. Will keep you posted. Love, Charlie.’

  eight

  WE were twelve days on the high seas in terrible weather, bound for Quebec. For three days we lay to with a broken rudder. Nevertheless, my heart was light and gay at the thought of going to another land. We travelled via Canada on a cattle boat, and although there were no cattle aboard there were plenty of rats and they perched arrogantly at the foot of my bunk until I threw a shoe at them.

  It was the beginning of September and we passed Newfoundland in a fog. At last we sighted the mainland. It was a drizzling day, and the banks of the St Lawrence River looked desolate. Quebec from the boat looked like the ramparts where Hamlet’s ghost might have walked, and I began to wonder about the States.

  But as we travelled on to Toronto, the country became increasingly beautiful in autumnal colours and I became more hopeful. In Toronto we changed trains and went through the American Immigration. At ten o’clock on a Sunday morning we at last arrived in New York. When we got off the street-car at Times Square, it was somewhat of a let-down. Newspapers were blowing about the road and pavement, and Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed. On almost every street corner there were elevated chairs with shoe-lasts sticking up and people sitting comfortably in shirt-sleeves getting their shoes shined. They gave one the impression of finishing their toilet on the street. Many looked like strangers, standing aimlessly about the sidewalks as if they had just left the railroad station and were filling in time between trains.

  However, this was New York, adventurous, bewildering, a little frightening. Paris, on the other hand, had been friendlier. Even though I could not speak the language, Paris had welcomed me on every street corner with its bistros and outside cafés. But New York was essentially a place of big business. The tall skyscrapers seemed ruthlessly arrogant and to care little for the convenience of ordinary people; even the saloon bars had no place for the customers to sit, only a long brass rail to rest a foot on, and the popular eating places, though clean and done in white marble, looked cold and clinical.

  I took a back room in one of the brownstone houses off Forty-third Street, where the Times building now stands. It was dismal and dirty and made me homesick for London and our little flat. In the basement was a cleaning and pressing establishment and during the week the fetid odour of clothes being pressed and steamed wafted up and added to my discomfort.

  That first day I felt quite inadequate. It was an ordeal to go into a restaurant and order something because of my English accent – and the fact that I spoke slowly. So many spoke in a rapid, clipped way that I felt uncomfortable for fear I might stutter and waste their time.

  I was alien to this slick tempo. In New York even the owner of the smallest enterprise acts with alacrity. The shoe-black flips his polishing rag with alacrity, the bartender serves a beer with alacrity, sliding it up to you along the polished surface of the bar. The soda clerk, when serving an egg malted milk, performs like a hopped-up juggler. In a fury of speed he snatches up a glass, attacking everything he puts into it, vanilla flavour, blob of ice-cream, two spoonfuls of malt, a raw egg which he deposits with one crack, then adding milk, all of which he shakes in a container and delivers in less than a minute.

  On the Avenue that first day many looked as I felt, lone and isolated; others swaggered along as though they owned the place. The behaviour of many people seemed dour and metallic as if to be agreeable or polite would prove a weakness. But in the evening as I walked along Broadway with the crowd dressed in their summer clothes, I became reassured. We had left England in the middle of a bitter cold
September and arrived in New York in an Indian summer with a temperature of eighty degrees; and as I walked along Broadway it began to light up with myriads of coloured electric bulbs and sparkled like a brilliant jewel. And in the warm night my attitude changed and the meaning of America came to me: the tall skyscrapers, the brilliant, gay lights, the thrilling display of advertisements stirred me with hope and a sense of adventure. ‘That is it!’ I said to myself. ‘This is where I belong!’

  Everyone on Broadway seemed to be in show business; actors, vaudevillians, circus performers and entertainers were everywhere, on the street, in restaurants, hotels and department stores, all talking shop. One heard names of theatre-owners, Lee Shubert, Martin Beck, William Morris, Percy Williams, Klaw and Erlanger, Frohman, Sullivan and Considine, Pantages. Whether charwoman, elevator boy, waiter, street-car conductor, barman, milkman or baker, they all talked like showmen. One heard snatches of conversation in the streets, motherly old women, looking like farmers’ wives, saying: ‘He’s just finished three a day out West for Pantages.* With the right material that boy should make big-time vaudeville.’ ‘Did you catch Al Jolson at the Winter Garden?’ says a janitor. ‘He certainly saved the show for Jake.’

  Newspapers each day devoted a whole page to theatre, got up like a racing chart, indicating vaudeville acts coming in first, second and third in popularity and applause, like race-horses. We had not entered the race yet and I was anxious to know in what position we would finish on the chart. We were to play the Percy Williams circuit for six weeks only. After that we had no further bookings. On the result of that engagement depended the length of our stay in America. If we failed, we would return to England.

  We took a rehearsal room and had a week of rehearsing The Wow-wows. In the cast was old Whimsical Walker, the famous Drury Lane clown. He was over seventy, with a deep, resonant voice, but had no diction, as we discovered at rehearsals, and he had the major part of explaining the plot. Such a line as ‘The fun will be furious, ad libitum’, he could not say and never did. The first night he spluttered: ‘Ablib-blum’, and eventually it became ‘ablibum’, but never the correct word.

  In America, Karno had a great reputation. We were, therefore, the headline attraction over a programme of excellent artists. And although I hated the sketch, I naturally tried to make the best of it. I was hopeful that it might be what Karno called ‘the very thing for America’.

  I will not describe the nerves, agony and suspense that preceded my entrance the first night, or my embarrassment as the American artists stood in the wings watching us. My first joke was considered a big laugh in England and a barometer for how the rest of the comedy would go over. It was a camping scene. I entered from a tent with a tea-cup.

  ARCHIE (me): Good morning, Hudson. Do you mind giving me a little water?

  HUDSON: Certainly. What do you want it for?

  ARCHIE: I want to take a bath. (A faint snicker, then cold silence from the audience.)

  HUDSON: How did you sleep last night, Archie?

  ARCHIE: Oh, terribly. I dreamt I was being chased by a caterpillar.

  Still deadly silence. And so we droned on, with the faces of the Americans in the wings growing longer and longer. But they were gone before we had finished our act.

  It was a silly, dull sketch and I had advised Karno not to open with it. We had other much funnier sketches in our repertoire, such as Skating, The Dandy Thieves, The Post Office and Mr Perkins, M.P., which would have been amusing to an American audience. But Karno was stubborn.

  To say the least, failure in a foreign country is distressing. Appearing each night before a cold and silent audience as they listened to our effusive, jovial English comedy was a grim affair. We entered and exited from the theatre like fugitives. For six weeks we endured this ignominy. The other performers quarantined us as if we had the plague. When we gathered in the wings to go on, crushed and humiliated, it was as though we were about to be lined up and shot.

  Although I felt lonely and rejected, I was thankful to be living alone. At least I had not to share my humiliation with others. During the day I walked interminably through long avenues that seemed to lead to nowhere, interesting myself in visiting zoos, parks, aquariums and museums. Since our failure, New York now seemed too formidable, its buildings too high, its competitive atmosphere overpowering. Those magnificent houses on Fifth Avenue were not homes but monuments of success. Its opulent towering buildings and fashionable shops seemed a ruthless reminder of how inadequate I was.

  I took long walks across the city towards the slum district, passing through the park in Madison Square, where derelict old gargoyles sat on benches in a despairing stupor, staring at theirfeet. Then I moved on to Third and Second Avenues. Here poverty was callous, bitter and cynical, a sprawling, yelling, laughing, crying poverty piling around doorways, on fire escapes and spewing about the streets. It was all very depressing and made me want to hurry back to Broadway.

  The American is an optimist preoccupied with hustling dreams, an indefatigable tryer. He hopes to make a quick ‘killing’. Hit the jackpot! Get out from under! Sell out! Make the dough and run! Get into another racket! Yet this immoderate attitude began to brighten my spirit. Paradoxically enough, as a result of our failure I began to feel light and unhampered. There were many other opportunities in America. Why should I stick to show business? I was not dedicated to art. Get into another racket! I began to regain confidence. Whatever happened I was determined to stay in America.

  As a distraction from failure I wanted to improve my mind and educate myself; so I began browsing around the second-hand bookshops. I bought several text-books – Kellogg’s Rhetoric, an English grammar and a Latin-English dictionary – with a determination to study them. But my resolutions went awry. No sooner had I looked at them than I packed them in the bottom of my trunk and forgot them – and not until our second visit to the States did I look at them again.

  On the bill the first week in New York was an act called Gus Edwards’s School Days, composed of children. In this troupe was a rather attractive scallywag who looked small for his sophisticated manner. He had a mania for gambling with cigarette coupons, which could be exchanged at the United Cigar Stores for items from a nickel-plated coffee-pot up to a grand piano; he was ready to shoot dice for them with stage-hands or anyone. He was an extraordinarily fast talker, by the name of Walter Winchell and though he never lost his rapid-fire talk, in later years his accuracy in reporting the truth often misfired.

  Although our show was a failure, I personally got very good notices. Sime Silverman of Variety said of me: ‘There was at least one funny Englishman in the troupe and he will do for America.’

  By now we had resigned ourselves to pack up and return to England after six weeks. But the third week we played at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, to an audience composed largely of English butlers and valets. To my surprise on the opening Monday night we went over with a bang. They laughed at every joke. Everyone in the company was surprised including myself, for I had expected the usual indifferent reception. In giving a perfunctory performance, I suppose I was relaxed. Consequently I could do no wrong.

  During the week an agent saw us and booked us for a twenty-week tour out West on the Sullivan and Considine circuit. It was cheap vaudeville and we had to give three shows a day.

  Although on that Sullivan and Considine first tour we were not a roaring success, we passed muster by comparison with the other acts. In those days the Middle West had charm. The tempo was slower, and the atmosphere was romantic; every drug-store and saloon had a dice-throwing desk in the entrance where one gambled for whatever products they sold. On Sunday morning Main Street was a continual hollow sound of rattling dice, which was pleasant and friendly; and many a time I won a dollar’s worth of goods for ten cents.

  Living was cheap. At a small hotel one could get a room and board for seven dollars a week, with three meals a day. Food was remarkably cheap. The saloon free-lunch counter was the mainstay of our troupe.
For a nickel one could get a glass of beer and the pick of a whole delicatessen counter. There were pigs’ knuckles, sliced ham, potato salad, sardines, macaroni cheese, a variety of sliced sausages, liverwurst, salami and hot dogs. Some of our members took advantage of this and piled up their plates until the barman would intervene: ‘Hey! Where the hell are you tracking with that load – to the Klondike?’

  There were fifteen or more in our troupe and yet every member saved at least half of his wages, even after paying his own sleeping berth on the train. My salary was seventy-five dollars a week and fifty of it went regularly and resolutely into the Bank of Manhattan.

  The tour took us to the Coast. Travelling with us out West on the same vaudeville bill was a handsome young Texan, a trapeze performer who could not make up his mind whether to continue with his partner on the trapeze or become a prize-fighter. Every morning I would put on the gloves with him, and, although he was taller and heavier than I was, I could hit him at will. We became very good friends, and after a boxing bout we would lunch together. His folks, he told me, were simple Texan farmers, and he would talk about life on the farm. Very soon we were talking ourselves into leaving show business and going into partnership, raising hogs.

  Between us we had two thousand dollars and a dream of making a fortune; we planned to buy land for fifty cents an acre in Arkansas, two thousand acres to start with, and spend the rest buying hogs and improving the land. If all went well, we had it figured out that with the compound birth of hogs, averaging a litter of five a year, we could in five years make a hundred thousand dollars apiece.

  Travelling on the train, we would look out of the window and see hog farms and go into paroxysms of excitement. We ate, slept and dreamed hogs. But for buying a book on scientific hog-raising I might have given up show business and become a hog-farmer, but that book, which graphically described the technique of castrating hogs, cooled my ardour and I soon forgot the enterprise.