Evening Star Newspaper, October 11, 1931, Page 85

1931. THE .SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, OCTOBER 11, NOBODY KNOWS CHARLIE CHAPLIN AS this the face (cried Faustus at the vision of Helen)—was this the face that launched a thousand ships? And is this (one asks on studying Charles Chaplin)—is this the man who has brought the whole civil- 1zed and uncivilized world together in laughter? Yes, it is; and a moment's thought should rid us of our surprise. For the Muses, when they seek their instruments, scek blindly. They do not choose; they take the first avail- able instrument and endow it with the powers that shall serve their purpos2, and they care nothing whether it is fashioned of lead or of gold, of oak or of cardboard; whether it is the rough Johnson or the tender Goldsmnith. It is thercfore in the natural order of things that the man who has delivered a genial current through the veins of the whole world, charm- ing us, cheering us and ccmpelling us to rec- ognize in his creation the epitome of forlorn, lovable, undefeatable humanity, should be very much like that other genius whose place in literature he holds on the screen—Charles Dickens; a man of cold and querulous outlook, self-centered, moody and vaguely dissatisfied with life. That is the kind of man he is. Or nearly. For to “get at” him is not easy. At no stage can one make a firm sketch, and say: “This is Charles Chaplin”; for by the time it is done the model has moved:” One can oniy say: “This is Charles Chaplin, wasn't it?” He's like a brilliant, flashing now from this facet and now from that—blue, green, yellow and crimson, by turns. A brilliant is the apt simile—he’s as hard and bright as that, and his leisure is as erratic. And if you split him, you would find, as with the brilliant and as with Dickens, that there was no personal source of those changing lights: they were the scintillations of genius. T is almost impossible to locate him. I doubt if he can locate himself. He is first and last an actor, possessed by this, that, and the other. He lives only in a role, and without it he is lost. If he cannot find the inner Chaplin, there is nothing ror him, in lonely or painful moments, to retire into; he is com- pelled to merge himself, or be merged, in an imagined and superimposed iife. When he was in England 10 years ago, he was, with every conviction, the sad, remote, Byronic figure—the friend of unseen millions and the loneliest man in the world. On his recent vicit to England he had got over this, and his role was that of the playboy, the Tyll Eulenspiegel of today. This also he played in- tensely, and Tyll Eulenspiegel himself never achieved so superb a prank as Charles did . when he set all Mayfair to struggling for invi- - tations to his supper party and giving him all - the amusement that his films had given them. - To the onlookers it was a perfect stroke of comedy. But I think he is already tiring of the play-boy role. Great artist that he is, it is not an easy role for him to support. Bright and radiating he may be, all sparkle and mestle; but catch him in repcse and you will catch a drawn, weary mouth and those eyes of steel which somebodv noted in Dickens. Absorbing him as he has sat in my room or moved about it (I never study people by look- ing at them; I can do it better by turning my eyes away and absorbing them). I have been aware more than once of a touch of that dark, troubled quality which some people found in those whcse message was most clean—in Mo- zart and Shelley and Blake; and in those who were most charming—De Quincey, Voltaire, Leonardo. There is the warm face and the soft gray hair. There are the tiniest hands I have ever seen on a man., There are the clear eyes and the full-lipped. mobile mouth. The hands are forever fluttering, the smile is for- ever flashing, and the gentle voice forever serding out nervous, staccato sentences. These characteristics, crystallized by his electric per- sonality (which almost makes a room vibrate) could. and do, win the friendship even of those few who think they dislike him. He is interesting enougzh to listen to—he is not only a copious but a stimulating talker—but he is still more interestirg to watch and absorb. His movements are as piquant and precise as a ballerina’s. He is as slim as a faun and as graceful; so slim and light that he seems scarcely human; and it is on recognizing this that cne is aware of that touch of the bizarre. Warm as his fascination is, and sweet as he can be, you perceive that he is withdrawn from life. He is rot really interested in people, either individually or as humanity. The spectacle of life amuses or disturbs him, as an artist, but its constituents are of no account to him. There is nothing, I think, that he deeply cares about. But he fears death, as all vital people do. When we first met, 10 years ag>, it was at his approach. He had read my first book, “Nights in Town,” and in its author he recog- nized a duplicate of some part of himself. He didn't then know, nor did I, that when he was young and I was young we were walking the same side streets of Kensington, living a similar shabby, makeshift kind of life, and loathing it with equal intensity. He was mixed up with red-nosed, third-rate c:medians of the minor music halls; I was mixed up with futile clerks. But our backgrounds were much the same. On our first meeting, which made me forever afterward his captive, this came out, and he understood then why he had got from ‘“Nights in Town” something that he had not got from any other book. Some time later I wrote “The Wind and the Rain,” and with that book, though we were 6,000 miles apart, our friendship was "cemented. In that book he found very much of himself; it might have been written by his twin. In writing about my own little pilgrimage I had also, unconsciously, written about his. And I still remember the cab'e I received from him about it. INCE then we have been sympathetic, and when this year he revisited his Kensington streets and his old orphan school and began Generous, Cold, Capricious, Tender, He Is Unknowable, Says This Writer, Who Doubts That Charlic Knows Himself. - Personality Sketch of the Comedian. Wide World Pheto. . At a recent luncheon in London. Left to right: Miss Amy Johnson, English eviatrix; Charlie Chaplin, Lady Astor and George Bernard Shaw. BY THOMAS BURKE Author of “Lémechouse Nights,” “Wind and the Rain” and other books. telling me what emotions had been touched, and in what manner, I was able to take the words before he spoke them and tell it for him. The one static thing about him is that he is rather the spoilt child. One cause of this is that his ambition, contrary to most ambitions, has grasped more than it reached for. He was telling me about his first leap from poverty to affluence—when he got a job with a vaudeville troupe at £2 a week—and I asked: “And what was the dream then? With each achievement the new dream begins. What was the un- attainable peak that you saw before you then?” “Top of the bill in a West End music hall. That was all I wanted. That was the limit— the maddest dream—the most hopeless goal. ‘To be a Chirgwin or Robey or Albert Chevalier.” And in that position I believe he would have been happy. But life seldom gives us just what we want; it gives us less or more, usually less. In his case it has given him a thousand times more. He is the first man in the history of the world of whom it can be truly and literally said that he is world famous. And it has left him as malcontent as if he were still walking the streets of Kensington in boots that let water. He has as sound—or unsound—a griev- ance against fate as the utter failure. Only the utter failure is usually armored with a philosophy. For the rest, he is all this and that. He is often as tender as an angel could be, and often inconsiderate. He shrinks from the limelight, but misses it if it isn’t turned upon him. He is intensely shy, yet loves to be the center of attention. A born solitary, he knows the fasci- nation of the crowd. He is really and truly modest, yet well aware that there is nobody quite like Charles Chaplin. Life hampers him; he wants wings. He wants to eat his cake and have it. When he was in London in 1921 I took him for a midnight walk. It was a hot night in September, and, late as it was, the children of Bethnal Green were not yet in bed. Because of the heat they were sitting on their door- steps. As we passed one delightful, grubby group, I said: “Oh, Charles, do stop and dis- close yourself to these children. 1It'll be the event of their young lives—bigger than Father Christmas—your appearing to them at mid- night out of nowhere, like this.” “Oh, I can't bother now.” “No, but it only means. o “Oh, well, if I must—" Yet, at other times, I have seen him posi- tively worshipping children and being a perfect angel of a playmate. Like Bernard Shaw, he affects to laugh at those who admire him while enjcying the ad- miration. He takes himself seriously, but he has a sharp sense of humor about himself and his doings, and a genuine humility toward the po- sition that he holds—though, like most other humble artists, he dcesn't always like you to take the humility as justified. Essentially he is What Type of Man Is W oman’s Ideal? Continued from Ninth Page thing about herself. Gathering common sense as she goes along, she grows mo:e livable and more far-seeing as wife later. WOMEN are quick and intuitive; they learn a lot in a short time. And it helps them greatly in future companionship with a hus- band. Only then are they really ready to be man’s pal. And as everybody knows, there are no lovers’ quarrels between pals. It is the pal feeling that makes love reasonable and sensible in its demands. Both sexes may learn much from each other through the present frankness between them and the present business and professional con- tacts. They go a long way toward making mar- ried life happler, easier and more congenial. In the right kind of man the right kind of woman discovers his bigger way of doing things; his scorn for lack of frankness and under- handed methods of attaining what he wants. He learns from her a finer gentleness, a devoted loyalty, a sympathy and fuller human kindness, for the world without women would in a few years go savage. These ideas that I have set down are given modestly, but, at any rate, I have told things as I have seen them. Until I am proved wrong and convinced of it, I shall continue to believe them true. (Copyright, 1931.) still a cockney, but he 1s no longer English—if he ever was. In moments of strong excitement the cockney arpears, at sll other times he is, in manners, speech and behavior, American. His money has wrought little change in his tastes. He likes plain, bourg-ois foods and, although he has a large wardrobe, he prefers old clothes and no fuss. Hls life ate home is not the regal life that some people imagine it to be. He told me that he leads as humdrum a life as a London clerk. He is not overpopular in that lunatic asylum—one could hardly expect Hollywood to know wh:t to make of a poet—and they leave him pretly much to himself. The only thrill that he now gets out cf life is winning a set of tennis. Arart from that, there is the violin and th: orgzn, and the evening is filled by the company of some of the staff. Sometimes he is #0 we:zry that he stays in bed for two or three days. One day is only ancther day, so what's the point in getting up to face #t? His mind is extraordinarily quick and recep- tive; retentiv:, too. With a few elementary facts upon a highly technical subject, his mind can so work upon them that he can talk with an expert on that subject in such a way as to make the expert think. He has little interest in people, yet h2 has a swifter and acuter eye than any novelist I know fcr their oddities and their carefully hiddcn sccrets. It is useless to pose before Chaplin; he can call your bluff in the moment cf being introduced. Wh'n he is sitting at your fireside you have to make a deliberate effort to convince yourself that this man is also “Charlie.” You have to tell yourself that this chubby, well fed, keen- eved face is the thin, hollow, bewildered face you saw a day or so back in “City Lights” and have scen in “The Gold Rush” and “The Cir- *us” end “The Skating Rink.” And the thought comes to a full stop. For at no point does the metallic artist sitting in your armchair con- nect with trat forlorn, tousled, futile fool, “Chailic.” At my flat one evening he began to talk about the society people he had been meeting. He was not imitating them, but as he mention=d each name h- unconsciously assumed that per- sonality, and went on describing the person in the person’s own tone. Before my eyes his whole esppearance changed. One moment he was Chaplin, in a double-breasted lounge suit; next moment Chaplin and lounge suit, though they were still there, were invisible. You couid see and hear only Lady X throwing off her wrap, or th: Hon. B—— F—— snorting and complaining ¢f the traffic block. In desp2ir of observing with serenity the cruelty of life and the stupidity of people, he ;m.s turned to that hollow substitute for joy— un. “I feel now,” he told me, “that fun's the only thing in life. If I don’t have fun I might as ;:ll get cut. To keep going I've got to have " That is the attitude of your ordinary society youth; one expects nothing else from that type. But Charles is not a society youth. In addi- tion to his genius, he is a man of great brain, but, unhappily, not quite the right brain for this world. He can see so far, but no farther, He can penetrate to the recesses and secret motives of human nature, but he cannot for= give human nature. Most people—the comfort- able people—cannot s2e at all. The truly happy people can see everything. Charles falls into the middle way; the custard pie of life has taken him right over the heart. He sees only a section, and turns away in disgust of that section, when a maintained view would give him the blessed peace which he lacks and which is so much better than fun. Because life is not a paradise, he wants to throw things at it. IS own fame helps to intensify this disgust. The fact that when he travels he is pure sued and cheered by affectionate crowds gives a wry twist to his mouth and a brooding lght to his eyves. But whatever he is, generous, cold, capriclous he calls out all my affection as a man and all my admiration as an artist. Ten years ago, when we first met, I felt that he had depths and I wanted to sound them. I thought then that he was an interesting young man of su- preme talent. I know now that the depths cannot be sounded; they have no ground, and that he is not an interesting young man of supreme talent. He is a man of genius, and the depths are the hollow vessels in which his genius transmutes whatever passes through them. And he is more than a man of genius. At each study I find him the most curious being of all the curious beings I have encoun« tered. He fascinates me and he exasperates me—because I can't get at him. I have tried to do so before, but he has escaped me. Perhaps, however, I may call for help, and perhaps another man may retrieve him for me, A year or so ago I had a long talk with a member of his staff. I said: “I know Charles fairly well, but our acquaintance, though it's been intimate, has been just a matter of hours here and there. You've had years of him, From my flashes of him I've formed my own view of him. What's your view—based on day« to-day contact?” This was the answer, given with slow eme phasis: “If ever there was a blank-blank-blank on the face of this earth, I'd say it was Charles, And if Charles lost tomorrow everything he’s got—money and position—and wanted my last $5, I'd tramp a hundred miles to give # to In those two sentences you have, I think, the perpetual yes-and-no of Charles Chaplin. Ane they are sentences that only a man pos- sess¢d by something of genuine greatness could haw inspired.