He was a gentle soul, ageless-looking, with an enigmatic manner, the benign, ascetic face of St Francis, thin-lipped, with an elevated brow and eyes that looked upon the world with a sad objectivity. He was of Irish descent, a bohemian and a bit of a mystery, who came from the East Side of New York but seemed more fitted for a monastery than for living on the froth of show business.
He would call in the morning at the Athletic Club with my mail and the newspapers and order my breakfast. Occasionally without comment he would leave books by my bedside – Lafcadio Hearn and Frank Harris, authors I had never heard of. Because of Tom I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson – ‘that’s something to put you to sleep at night,’ he giggled. He never spoke unless spoken to and had the gift of effacing himself while I had breakfast. Tom became the sine qua non of my existence. I would just tell him to do something and he would nod and it was done.
*
Had not the telephone rung just as I was leaving the Athletic Club, the course of my life might have been different. The call came from Sam Goldwyn. Would I come down to his beach-house for a swim? It was the latter part of 1917.
It was a gay, innocuous afternoon. I remember that the beautiful Olive Thomas and many other pretty girls were there. As the day wore on a girl by the name of Mildred Harris arrived. She came with an escort, a Mr Ham. She was pretty, I thought. Someone remarked that she had a crush on Elliott Dexter, who was also present, and I noticed her ogling him the whole afternoon. But he paid little attention to her. I thought no more about her until I was ready to leave and she asked me if I would drop her on the way into town, explaining that she had quarrelled with her friend and that he had already left.
In the car I remarked flippantly that perhaps her friend was jealous of Elliott Dexter. She confessed that she thought Elliott was quite wonderful.
I felt that her naïve banter was an intuitive feminine trick to create interest about herself. ‘He’s a very lucky man,’ I said superciliously. It was all chit-chat to make conversation as we drove along. She told me she worked for Lois Weber and was now being starred in a Paramount picture. I dropped her off at her apartment, however, with the impression that she was a very silly young girl, and I returned to the Athletic Club with a sense of relief, for I was glad to be alone. But I was not more than five minutes in the room when the telephone rang. It was Miss Harris. ‘I just wanted to know what you were doing,’ she said naïvely.
I was surprised at her attitude, as though we had been cosy sweethearts for a long time. I told her I was going to have dinner in my room, then go straight to bed and read a book.
‘Oh!’ she said mournfully and wanted to know what kind of a book, and what kind of a room I had. She could just picture me all alone, snugly tucked up in bed.
This fatuous conversation was catching, and I fell in with her wooing and cooing.
‘When am I going to see you again?’ she asked. And I found myself jokingly chiding her for betraying Elliott, and listening to her reassurance that she did not really care for him, which swept away my resolutions for the evening, and I invited her out for dinner.
Although she was pretty and pleasant that evening; I lacked the zest and enthusiasm that the presence of a pretty girl usually inspires. The only possible interest she had for me was sex; and to make a romantic approach to it, which I felt would be expected of me, was too much of an effort.
I did not think of her again until the middle of the week, when Harrington said she had telephoned. Had he not made a passing remark I might not have bothered to see her again, but he happened to mention that the chauffeur had told him that I had come away from Sam Goldwyn’s house with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. This absurd remark appealed to my vanity – and that was the beginning. There were dinners, dances, moonlit nights and ocean drives, and the inevitable happened – Mildred began to worry.
Whatever Tom Harrington thought he kept to himself. When one morning, after he brought in my breakfast, I announced casually that I wanted to get married, he never batted an eye. ‘On what day?’ he asked calmly.
‘What day is this?’
‘This is Tuesday.’
‘Make it Friday,’ I said, without looking up from my newspaper.
‘I suppose it’s Miss Harris.’
‘Yes.’
He nodded matter-of-factly. ‘Have you a ring?’
‘No, you’d better get one and make all the preliminary arrangements – but have it done quietly.’
He nodded again and there was no further mention of it until the day of the wedding. He arranged that we should be married at eight O’clock, Friday evening.
On that day I worked late at the studio. At seven-thirty Tom came quietly on the set and whispered: ‘Don’t forget you have an appointment at eight.’ With a sinking feeling I took off my make-up and dressed, Harrington helping me. Not a word passed between us until we were in the car. Then he explained that I was to meet Miss Harris at the house of Mr Sparks, the local registrar.
When we arrived there Mildred was seated in the hall. She smiled wistfully as we entered and I felt a little sorry for her. She was dressed in a simple dark grey suit and looked very pretty. Harrington quickly fumbled a ring into my hand as a tall, lean man appeared, warm and congenial, and ushered us into another room. It was Mr Sparks. ‘Well, Charlie,‘ he said,’you certainly have a remarkable secretary. I didn’t know it was to be you until half an hour ago.’
The service was terribly simple and resolute. The ring Harrington had fumbled into my hand I placed on her finger. Now we were married. The ceremony was over. As we were about to leave, the voice of Mr Sparks said: ‘Don’t forget to kiss your bride, Charlie.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ I smiled.
My emotions were mixed. I felt I had been caught in the mesh of a foolish circumstance which had been wanton and unnecessary – a union that had no vital basis. Yet I had always wanted a wife, and Mildred was young and pretty, not quite nineteen, and, though I was ten years older, perhaps it would work out all right.
The next morning I went to the studio with a heavy heart. Edna Purviance was there; she had read the morning papers, and as I passed her dressing-room she appeared at the door. ‘Congratulations,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you,’ I replied, and went on my way to my dressing-room. Edna made me feel embarrassed.
To Doug I confided that Mildred was no mental heavy-weight; I had no desire to marry an encyclopedia – I could get all my intellectual stimulus from a library. But this optimistic theory rested upon an underlying anxiety: would marriage interfere with my work? Although Mildred was young and pretty, was I to be always in close proximity to her? Did I want that? I was in a dilemma. Although I was not in love, now that I was married I wanted to be and wanted the marriage to be a success.
But to Mildred marriage was an adventure as thrilling as winning a beauty contest. It was something she had read about in story-books. She had no sense of reality. I would try to talk seriously to her about our plans, but nothing penetrated. She was in a continual state of dazzlement.
The second day after our marriage, Louis B. Mayer of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Company began negotiating a contract offering Mildred $50,000 a year to make six pictures. I tried to persuade her not to sign. ‘If you want to continue your film work, I can get you fifty thousand dollars for one picture.’
With a Mona Lisa smile she nodded to everything I said, but afterwards she signed the contract.
It was this acquiescing and nodding, then doing completely the opposite, that was frustrating. I was annoyed both with her and with Mayer, for he had pounced on her with a contract before the ink on our marriage licence had time to dry.
A month or so later she got into difficulties with the company and wanted me to meet Mayer to straighten out the matter. I told her that under no circumstances would I meet him. But she had already invited him to dinner, telling me only a few moments before his arrival. I was outraged and indignant. ‘If you bring him here I shall insult him.’
I had no sooner said this than the front-door bell rang. Like a rabbit I jumped into the conservatory adjoining the living-room, a glassed-in affair from which there was no way out.
For what seemed an interminable time I hid there while Mildred and Mayer sat in the living-room a few feet away, talking business. I had a feeling he knew I was hiding there, for his conversation seemed edited and paternal. After a moment of silence I was alluded to, and Mildred mentioned that perhaps I would not be home, whereupon I heard them stir and was horrified they might come into the conservatory and find me there. I pretended to be asleep. However, Mayer made some excuse and left without staying for dinner.
*
After we were married Mildred’s pregnancy turned out to be a false alarm. Several months had passed and I had completed only a three-reel comedy, Sunnyside, and that had been like pulling teeth. Without question marriage was having an effect on my creative faculties. After Sunnyside I was at my wits’ end for an idea.
It was a relief in this state of despair to go to the Orpheum for distraction, and in this state of mind I saw an eccentric dancer – nothing extraordinary, but at the finish of his act he brought on his little boy, an infant of four, to take a bow with him. After bowing with his father he suddenly broke into a few amusing steps, then looked knowingly at the audience, waved to them and ran off. The audience went into an uproar, so that the child was made to come on again, this time doing quite a different dance. It could have been obnoxious in another child. But Jackie Coogan was charming and the audience thoroughly enjoyed it. Whatever he did, the little fellow had an engaging personality.
I didn’t think of him again until a week later when I sat on the open stage with our stock company, still struggling to get an idea for the next picture. In those days I would often sit before them, because their presence and reactions were a stimulus. That day I was bogged down and listless and in spite of their polite smiles I knew my efforts were tame. My mind wandered, and I talked about the acts I had seen playing at the Orpheum and about the little boy, Jackie Coogan, who came on and bowed with his father.
Someone said that he had read in the morning paper that Jackie Coogan had been signed up by Roscoe Arbuckle for a film. The news struck me like fork-lightning. ‘My God! Why didn’t I think of that?’ Of course he would be marvellous in films! Then I went on to enumerate his possibilities, the gags and the stories I could do with him.
Ideas flew at me. ‘Can you imagine the tramp a window-mender, and the little kid going around the streets breaking windows, and the tramp coming by and mending them? The charm of the kid and the tramp living together, having all sorts of adventures!’
I sat and wasted a whole day elaborating on the story, describing one scene after another, while the cast looked askance, wondering why I was waxing so enthusiastic over a lost cause. For hours I went on inventing business and situations. Then I suddenly remembered: ‘But what’s the use? Arbuckle has signed him up and probably has ideas similar to mine. What an idiot I was not to have thought of it before!’
All that afternoon and all that night I could think of nothing but the possibilities of a story with that boy. The next morning, in a state of depression, I called the company for rehearsals – God knows for what reason, for I had nothing to rehearse, so I sat around with the cast on the stage in a state of mental doldrums.
Someone suggested that I should try and find another boy – perhaps a little Negro. But I shook my head dubiously. It would be hard to find a kid with as much personality as Jackie.
About eleven-thirty, Carlisle Robinson, our publicity man, came hurrying on to the stage, breathless and excited. ‘It’s not Jackie Coogan that Arbuckle’s signed up, it’s the father, Jack Coogan!’
I leaped out of my chair. ‘Quick! Get the father on the phone and tell him to come here at once; it’s very important!’
The news electrified us all. Some of the cast came up and slapped me on the back, they were so enthused. When the office staff heard about it, they came on to the stage and congratulated me. But I had not signed Jackie yet; there was still a possibility that Arbuckle might suddenly get the same notion. So I told Robinson to be cautious what he said over the phone, not to mention anything about the kid – ‘not even to the father until he gets here; just tell him it’s very urgent, that we must see him at once within the next half-hour. And if he can’t get away, then go to his studio. But tell him nothing until he gets here.’ They had difficulty finding the father – he was not at the studio – and for two hours I was in excruciating suspense.
At last, surprised and bewildered, Jackie’s father showed up. I grabbed him by the arms. ‘He’ll be a sensation – the greatest thing that ever happened! All he has to make is this one picture!’ I went on raving in this inarticulate way. He must have thought I was insane. ‘This story will give your son the opportunity of his life!’
‘My son!’
‘Yes, your son, if you will let me have him for this one picture.’
‘Why, of course you can have the little punk,’ he said.
They say babies and dogs are the best actors in movies. Put a twelve-month-old baby in a bath-tub with a tablet of soap, and when he tries to pick it up he will create a riot of laughter. All children in some form or another have genius; the trick is to bring it out in them. With Jackie it was easy. There were a few basic rules to learn in pantomime and Jackie very soon mastered them. He could apply emotion to the action and action to the emotion, and could repeat it time and time again without losing the effect of spontaneity.
There is a scene in The Kid where the boy is about to throw a stone at a window. A policeman steals up behind him, and, as he brings his hand back to throw, it touches the policeman’s coat. He looks up at the policeman, then playfully tosses the stone up and catches it, then innocently throws it away and ambles off, suddenly bursting into a sprint.
Having worked out the mechanics of the scene, I told Jackie to watch me, emphasizing the points: ‘You have a stone; then you look at the window; then you prepare to throw the stone; you bring your hand back, but you feel the policeman’s coat; you feel his buttons, then you look up and discover it’s a policeman; you throw the stone playfully in the air, then throw it away, and casually walk off, suddenly bursting into a sprint.’
He rehearsed the scene three or four times. Eventually he was so sure of the mechanics that his emotion came with them. In other words, the mechanics induced the emotion. The scene was one of Jackie’s best, and was one of the high spots in the picture.
Of course, not all the scenes were as easily accomplished. The simpler ones often gave him trouble, as simple scenes do. I once wanted him to swing naturally on a door, but, having nothing else on his mind, he became self-conscious, so we gave it up.
It is difficult to act naturally if no activity is going on in the mind. Listening on the stage is difficult; the amateur is inclined to be over-attentive. As long as Jackie’s mind was at work, he was superb.
Jackie’s father’s contract with Arbuckle soon terminated, so he was able to be at our studio with his son, and later played the pickpocket in the flophouse scene. He was very helpful at times. There was a scene in which we wanted Jackie to actually cry when two workhouse officials take him away from me. I told him all sorts of harrowing stories, but Jackie was in a very gay and mischievous mood. After waiting for an hour, the father said: ‘I’ll make him cry.’
‘Don’t frighten or hurt the boy,’ I said guiltily.
‘Oh no, no,’ said the father.
Jackie was in such a gay mood that I had not the courage to stay and watch what the father would do, so I went to my dressing-room. A few moments later I heard Jackie yelling and crying.
‘He’s all ready,’ said the father.
It was a scene where I rescue the boy from the workhouse officials and while he is weeping I hug and kiss him. When it was over I asked the father: ‘How did you get him to cry?’
‘I just told him that if he didn’t we’d take him a
way from the studio and really send him to the workhouse.’
I turned to Jackie and picked him up in my arms to console him. His cheeks were still wet with tears. ‘They’re not going to take you away,’ I said.
‘I knew it,’ he whispered. ‘Daddy was only fooling.’
Gouverneur Morris, author and short-story writer who had written many scripts for the cinema, often invited me to his house. ‘Guvvy,’ as we called him, was a charming, sympathetic fellow, and when I told him about The Kid and the form it was taking, keying slapstick with sentiment, he said: ‘It won’t work. The form must be pure, either slapstick or drama; you cannot mix them, otherwise one element of your story will fail.’
We had quite a dialectical discussion about it. I said that the transition from slapstick to sentiment was a matter of feeling and discretion in arranging sequences. I argued that form happened after one had created it, that if the artist thought of a world and sincerely believed in it, no matter what the admixture was, it would be convincing. Of course, I had no grounds for this theory other than intuition. There had been satire, farce, realism, naturalism, melodrama and fantasy, but raw slapstick and sentiment, the premise of The Kid, was something of an innovation.
*
During the cutting of The Kid, Samuel Reshevsky, aged seven, the boy champion chess-player of the world, visited the studio. He was to give an exhibition at the Athletic Club, playing chess with twenty men at the same time, among them Dr Griffiths, the champion of California. He had a thin, pale, intense little face with large eyes that stared belligerently when he met people. I had been warned that he was temperamental and that he seldom shook hands with anybody.
After his manager had introduced us and spoken a few words, the boy stood staring at me in silence. I went on with my cutting, looking at strips of film.
My Autobiography Page 26
