My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

took refuge in the United States. Mrs Einstein tells an interesting story of the Professor’s ignorance of money matters. Princeton University wanted him to join their faculty and wrote about terms; the Professor submitted such a modest figure that the heads of Princeton replied that the terms he asked would not be adequate for living in the United States, and that he would require at least three times the amount.

When the Einsteins came again to California in 1937, they visited me. He embraced me affectionately and warned me that he was bringing three musicians. ‘We are going to play for you after dinner.’ That evening Einstein was one of a Mozart quartet. Although his bowing was not too assured and his technique a little stiff, nevertheless he played rapturously, closing his eyes and swaying. The three musicians, who did not show too much enthusiasm for the Professor’s participation, discreetly suggested giving him a rest and playing something on their own. He acquiesced and sat with the rest of us and listened. But after they had played several pieces, he turned and whispered to me: ‘When do I play again?’ When the musicians left, Mrs Einstein, slightly indignant, assured her husband: ‘You played better than all of them!’

A few nights later the Einsteins came again for dinner and I invited Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Marion Davies, W. R. Hearst, and one or two others. Marion Davies sat next to Einstein, and Mrs Einstein sat on my right next to Hearst. Before dinner everything seemed to be going pretty well; Hearst was amiable and Einstein polite. But as dinner progressed I could feel a slow freeze-up until neither one of them exchanged a word. I did my best to enliven conversation, but nothing would make them talk. The dining-room became charged with an ominous silence and I saw Hearst looking mournfully into his dessert plate and the Professor smiling, calmly engrossed in thought.

Marion in her flippant way had been making quips and asides to everyone at the table but Einstein. Suddenly she turned to the Professor and said elfishly: ‘Hallo!’ then twiddled her middle fingers over his head, saying: ‘Why don’t you get your hair cut?’

Einstein smiled and I though it time to disperse for coffee in the drawing-room.

*

Eisenstein, the Russian film director, came to Hollywood with his staff, including Grigor Alexandrov and also a young Englishman named Ivor Montagu, a friend of Eisenstein. I saw a lot of them. They used to play very bad tennis on my court – at least Alexandrov did.

Eisenstein was to make a picture for the Paramount Company. He came with the fame of Potemkin and Ten Days That Shook the World; Paramount had thought it good business to engage him to direct and write his own script. He wrote a very fine one, Sutter’s Gold, taken from an interesting document about California’s early days. There was no propaganda in it, but because Eisenstein was from Russia Paramount later grew fearful, and nothing came of it.

Discussing Communism with him one day, I asked if he thought that the educated proletarian was mentally equal to the aristocrat with his generations of cultural background. I think he was surprised at my ignorance. Eisenstein, who came from a Russian middle-class family of engineers, said: ‘If educated, the cerebral strength of the masses is like rich new soil.’

His film Ivan the Terrible, which I saw after the Second World War, was the acme of all historical pictures. He dealt with history poetically – an excellent way of dealing with it. When I realize how distorted even recent events have become, history as such only arouses my scepticism. Whereas a poetic interpretation achieves a general effect of the period. After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.

twenty-One

WHILE I was in New York, a friend told me that he had witnessed the synchronization of sound in films and predicted that it would shortly revolutionize the whole film industry.

I did not think of it again until months later when the Warner Brothers produced their first talking sequence. It was a costume picture, showing a very lovely actress – who shall be nameless – emoting silently over some great sorrow, her big, soulful eyes imparting anguish beyond the eloquence of Shakespeare. Then suddenly a new element entered the film – the noise that one hears when putting a sea-shell to one’s ear. Then the lovely princess spoke as if talking through sand: ‘I shall marry Gregory, even at the cost of giving up the throne.’ It was a terrible shock, for until then the princess had enthralled us. As the picture progressed the dialogue became funnier, but not as funny as the sound effects. When the handle of the boudoir door turned I thought someone had cranked up a farm tractor, and when the door closed it sounded like the collision of two lumber trucks. At the beginning they knew nothing about controlling sound: a knight-errant in armour clanged like the noise in a steel factory, a simple family dinner sounded like the rush hour in a cheap restaurant, and the pouring of water into a glass made a peculiar tone that ran up the scale to high C. I came away from the theatre believing the days of sound were numbered.

But a month later M.G.M. produced The Broadway Melody, a full-length sound musical, and a cheap dull affair it was, but a stupendous box-office success. That started it; overnight every theatre began wiring for sound. That was the twilight of silent films. It was a pity, for they were beginning to improve. Murnau, the German director, had used the medium effectively, and some of our American directors were beginning to do the same. A good silent picture had universal appeal both to the intellectual and the rank and file. Now it was all to be lost.

But I was determined to continue making silent films, for I believed there was room for