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

many divorce cases. Nevertheless, if I were young again I’d marry; it’s lonely being a bachelor. However, I believe in divorce. I suppose I’m the most criticized judge in Georgia. If people don’t want to live together, I won’t make them.’

After a while Rob looked at his watch. ‘If the meeting starts at eight-thirty,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to hurry.’

The Judge was leisurely nibbling at his piece of celery. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said. ‘Just dally with me. I like to dally.’

On the way to the meeting we passed through a small park. It must have had twenty or more statues of senators looking absurdly pompous, some with a hand behind the back and the other resting on the pelvis, holding a scroll. Jokingly I commented that they were the perfect foil for that comedy kick in the pants he had talked about.

‘Yes,’ he said airily, ‘they do look full of piss and high purpose.’

He invited us to his home, a beautiful old Georgian house that Washington had ‘actually slept’ in, furnished with eighteenth-century American antiques.

‘How beautiful,’ I said.

‘Yes, but without a wife, it’s as empty as a jewel-case. So don’t leave it too late, Charlie.’

In the South we visited several military training camps and saw many glum and bitter faces. The climax of our tour was a final bond drive in New York on Wall Street, outside the sub-Treasury, where Mary, Douglas and I sold more than two million dollars’ worth of bonds.

New York was depressing; the ogre of militarism was every-where. There was no escape from it. America was cast into a matrix of obedience and every thought was secondary to the religion of war. The false buoyancy of military bands along the gloomy canyon of Madison Avenue was also depressing as I heard them from the twelfth-storey window of my hotel, crawling along on their way to the Battery to embark overseas.

In spite of the atmosphere, a little humour occasionally crept in. Seven brass bands were to march through the Ball Park before the Governor of New York. Outside the stadium Wilson Mizner, with a phoney badge of some sort, stopped each band and told them to strike up the National Anthem before passing the Governor’s grandstand. After the Governor and everyone had risen for the fourth time, he thought it necessary to inform the bands ahead to lay off the National Anthem.

*

Before leaving Los Angeles for the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, I had met Marie Doro. She had come to Hollywood to star in Paramount pictures. She was a Chaplin fan, and told Constance Collier that the one person she wanted to meet in Hollywood was Charlie Chaplin – not having the faintest idea that I had played with her in London at the Duke of York’s Theatre.

So I met Marie Doro again. It was like the second act of a romantic play. After Constance had introduced me I said: ‘But we’ve met before. You broke my heart. I was silently in love with you.’ Marie, looking through her lorgnette at me and as beautiful as ever, said: ‘How thrilling.’ Then I explained that I was Billy in Sherlock Holmes. Later we dined in the garden. It was a warm summer’s evening, and in the glow of candle-light I talked about the frustrations of a youth silently in love with her and told her that at the Duke of York’s Theatre I would time the moment that she left her dressing-room so as to meet her on the stairs and gulp ‘good-evening’. We talked of London and Paris; Marie loved Paris, and we talked of the bistros, of the cafés, of Maxim’s and the Champs Élysées…

And now Marie was in New York! And hearing I was staying at the Ritz, she had written a letter inviting me to dine at her apartment. It went as follows:

Charlie dear,

I have an apartment off the Champs Èlysées (Madison Avenue), where we can dine or go to Maxim’s (The Colony). Then afterwards, if you wish it, we can drive through the Bois (Central Park)…

However, we did not do any of those things, but just dined quietly in Marie’s apartment alone.

*

I returned to Los Angeles and again took up my quarters at the Athletic Club, and started to think about work. A Dog’s Life had taken a little longer and cost more than I had anticipated. However, I was not worried because it would all average up by the end of my contract. But I was worried about getting an idea for my second picture. Then the thought came to me: why not a comedy about the war? I told several friends of my intention, but they shook their heads. Said De Mille: ‘It’s dangerous at this time to make fun of the war.’ Dangerous or not, the idea excited me.

Shoulder Arms was originally planned to be five reels. The beginning was to be ‘home life’, the middle ‘the war’ and the end ‘the banqueting’, showing all the crowned heads of Europe celebrating my heroic act of capturing the Kaiser. And, of course, in the end I wake up.

The sequences before and after the war were discarded. The banquet was never photographed, but the beginning was. The comedy was by suggestion, showing Charlot walking home with his family of four children. He leaves them for a moment, then comes back wiping his mouth and belching. He enters the house and immediately a frying pan comes into the picture and hits him on the head. His wife is never seen, but an enormous chemise is hanging on the kitchen line, suggesting her size.

In the next sequence Charlot is examined for induction and made to strip down to the altogether. On a bevelled glass office-door he sees the name ‘Dr Frances’. A shadow appears to open the door, and, thinking it is a woman, he escapes through another door and finds himself in a maze of glass-partitioned offices where lady clerks are engrossed in their work. As one lady looks up he