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

have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination – music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.

I would say, pick a subject that will stimulate you, elaborate it and involve it, then, if you can’t develop it further, discard it and pick another. Elimination from accumulation is the process of finding what you want.

How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness. One must have a capacity to suffer anguish and sustain enthusiasm over a long period of time. Perhaps it’s easier for some people than others, but I doubt it.

Of course every budding comic goes through philosophical generalizing about comedy. ‘The element of surprise and suspense’ was a phrase dropped every other day on the Keystone lot.

I will not attempt to sound the depths of psycho-analysis to explain human behaviour, which is as inexplicable as life itself. More than sex or infantile aberrations, I believe that most of our ideational compulsions stem from atavistic causes – however, I did not have to read books to know that the theme of life is conflict and pain. Instinctively, all my clowning was based on this. My means of contriving comedy plot was simple. It was the process of getting people in and out of trouble.

But humour is different and more subtle. Max Eastman analysed it in his book A Sense of Humour. He sums it up as being derived from playful pain. He writes that Homo sapiens is masochistic, enjoying pain in many forms and that the audience like to suffer vicariously – as children do when playing Indians; they enjoy being shot and going through the death throes.

With all this I agree. But it is more an analysis of drama than humour, although they are almost the same. But my own concept of humour is slightly different: it is the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears to be normal behaviour. In other words, through humour we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity. Because of humour we are less overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life. It activates our sense of proportion and reveals to us that in an over-statement of seriousness lurks the absurd.

For instance, at a funeral where friends and relatives are gathered in hushed reverence around the bier of the departed, a late arrival enters just as the service is about to begin and hurriedly tiptoes to his seat, where one of the mourners has left his top hat. In his hurry, the late arrival accidentally sits on it, then with a solemn look of mute apology, he hands it crushed to its owner, who takes it with mute annoyance and continues listening to the service. And the solemnity of the moment becomes ridiculous.

fifteen

AT the beginning of the First World War, popular opinion was that it would not last more than four months, that the science of modern warfare would take such a ghastly toll of human life that mankind would demand cessation of such barbarism. But we were mistaken. We were caught in an avalanche of mad destruction and brutal slaughter that went on for four years to the bewilderment of humanity. We had started a haemorrhage of world proportion, and we could not stop it. Hundreds of thousands of human beings were fighting and dying and the people began wanting to know the reason why, and how the war started. Explanations were not too clear. Some said it was due to the assassination of an archduke; but this was hardly a reason for such a world conflagration. People needed a more realistic explanation. Then they said it was a war to make the world safe for democracy. Though some had less to fight for than others, the casualties were grimly democratic. As millions were mowed down the word ‘democracy’ loomed up. Consequently thrones toppled, republics were formed, and the whole face of Europe was changed.

But in 1915 the United States alleged that it was ‘too proud to fight’. This gave the nation its cue for the song I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. This song went down very well with the public, until the Lusitania went down – which was the cue for a different song, Over There, and many other beguiling ditties. Until the sinking of the Lusitania, the burden of the European war had hardly been felt in California. There were no shortages, nothing was rationed. Garden fêtes and parties for the Red Cross were organized and were an excuse for social gatherings. At one gala a lady donated $20,000 to the Red Cross in order to sit next to me at a very posh dinner. But as time went on, the grim reality of war was brought home to everyone.

By 1918 America had already launched two Liberty Bond Drives, and now Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and I were requested to open officially the Third Liberty Bond campaign in Washington.

I had almost completed my first picture, A Dog’s Life, for the First National. And as I had a commitment to release it at the same time as the Bond Drive, I stayed up three days and nights cutting the film. When it was finished I got on the train exhausted and slept for two days. When I came to, the three of us began to write our speeches. Never having made a serious one before, I was nervous about it, so Doug suggested that I should try it on the crowds who waited for us at the railroad stations. We had a stop somewhere and quite a crowd had gathered at the back of the observation car. And from there Doug introduced Mary who made a little speech, then introduced me, but no sooner had I started speaking than the train began to move; and as it