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

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