THE CHAPLIN STORY 8: His
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1952.
““Great:\Dotater”5
And
THE GREAT PAULETTE
MYSTERY!
By COLIN FRAME
news steadily arrived about it, make
"Modern, Times."
"I And Chaplin, like medieval
It was to be called "Street Walf," over-developed the branches," jesters before him, came in for
It was to be called "The Masses," he said, "and every time I shook a whipping.
It was to deal with the problem the tree they broke with all their Among the lashers i was of peace. It was to mutluse splendid fruit."-
Goebbels in Gormany. Chaplin, Hollywood. Charlie was 10
bo yelled, was a Red und his Charlie was #peak.
not to
films were banned. speak-but the rest of the east would. And so on.
These parings of his creation denled the will probably be world for all time, but who can say what brillianty tes in the dusty reels now entonibed in his studio library?
.:
A Quick Reply
This attack on him from
Production No. 5 WER the official title in the studio where IVE years wont by return of that boyiah delight even Chaplin technicians, used at world in impromptu fooling at Holly- to his methods, were appalled To make "Modern Times" he Hitlerite Germany, the growing before the
the delays and alterations, the shot 219,000 feet of film. The horror with which he heard of ideas used and then discarded, 41m the public the apparent waste of time and 9,000 feet. money.
laughed again at a new Chaplin film. One of the reasons for the delay was a slim pretty girl of nineteen who was Mrs Charles Chaplin the Third for nine years and who is still a star after sixteen years Miss Paulette God- dard.
"He is very much in love at "the moment." said his friend Sam Goldwyn in March 1933, explaining why there was no Chaplin m on the stocks "When he cools off a bit he will be ready for another picture."
She Was Dynamic
Miss Goddard first met Chaplin, in the autumn of 1932 when he wat 43. She recaptured for him the youthfulness and zest for life which he was beginning to feel he had lost.
With her it was not merely a question as it had been so often before of a pretty face. She
had wit as well as beauty. She
whs and still is dynamic, Ively, ambitious.
wood parties. "We have never seen Charlie so happy," said his friends in those years.
Both took an Impish delight too in refusing to say whether they were married, and although Chaplin often referred to her as my wife" he kept Hollywood guessing. It leaked out even- tually that they were married at
sea in the summer of 1933.
The First News
They took long
holidays together, cruising the Tactile in the yacht Panacea. In 1938 when they visited - Shanghal and Singapore in her it was still rumoured that they were about to be married, and they still re-
fused to clarify their position.
In fact, the first offelal in- umation that there had been a marriago was in June, 1942, when Paulette Goddard flew to Mexico and oblained a divorce.
For nine years Chaplin, who had lived most of his private fe before a blaze of publielty, had the amused satisfaction of aving, kept Hollywood speculat- Ing. It was his tunorthodox form of revenge for the wronigs he felt publicity had done to him.
- Chaplin, lonely in his great Hollywood home with its books It was during this protracted and paintings, found her an honeymoon Ideal companion.
Goddardi that Chaplin, made "Modern Times."
Like Virginia Cherrill, Paulette Goddard had well-to- do parents. But she was bored with ordinary society life and - set nut to make a stage career.
with
Strange Words
in Chaplin would work
and nights on frenzy for days end-then abruptly go on holiday with Paulette. He would rush back full of new ideas then scrap them a week later.
But as usual he paid cast and athff even thought they were idle, and £4,000 of his own money ticked away each week....
Sometimes delays were minor but typical of the mán.
Chaplin, self-taught as
WC
know, has always had an engag ing habit of remembering a word strange to him and looking it up in a dictionary at the first op portunity.
His staff traded on this. When things became too heclic someone would use a long and unusual word and, sure enough, a halt would soon be called to the shooting and Chaplin would disappear to his office in search of the dictionary.
On one occasion, the story gods, one of the cameramen in Paulette an argument said, "The trouble with you, Charlie, is that you're a quidnune."
Common Problem
Into this, the last of his silent alms-it was a "soundle" but not a talkie" he poured the genius of his ideas, the satirical wit of
who hated the
Ants Stop. Work
saw was only Nazi
Is not this, too, a significant facet of Chaplin's artistry that he has not only the genfus to send Ideas blossoming towards the light but also a ruthless self- discipline which is prepared 10
and
time The story
porsccution natural championship: of the underdog inspired: him to make that most"-brilliantly · Blazing reply reply-The Great Dictator."
It was made-for Chaplin-in double-quick was ready a year before the war broke
and released in time to blossom on to the rubbish heap? make life a little mare tolerable Even when the m was in the days when Hitler's bombs fished he turned,
hla mind first thundered on London.
For bubbling with theines, to the
subby, maliciously, problem of composing the music cunningly, Chaplin blew for it. And this he did sitting gigantic facade of dictatorship by plane hour after hour as wide open in a gale of laughter. the film was run through with "I hate dictatoralilp," he said,. an arranger beside him to take a explaining his motives for the note of the melodies he played. Alm. "I don't like the idea of any individual or aystem kicking
prune and back and throw such pleted The film was com→
The Endless Belt
the
lot of inofensive people around.
"The funniest thing in the world is the ridicule of stuffed So Modern Times" was shirts in high places and the handed to a patiently waiting bigger the phoney the funnier world, and even those who falled the picture you can make." to see in it an underlying attack Adolf Hitler's absurd likeness on the machine's inhumanity to to the character Chaplin, had man laughed until they cried at created 25 years earlier helped their same old Charlie Chaplin towards this classic piece of being fed with increasing ridicule. repidity by an endless belt of snacks as he did his factory Job of turning endless belt.
a
nut on another
He made even the inevitable nervous breakdown funny.
Dictator Hynkel
Chaplin made himself, a little Jew who was the double of dictator Hynkel. He made Paulette Goddard-the 'only girl There was bittemess too as since Edna Purylance to star in well as immense humour in the two of his flimsa Jewess. He way he landed himself in prison. called in Jack Oakte to be an on went Chaplin to the He rescued a danger flag that unmistakable Mussolini. And he studio dictionary to fund the had fallen from a steam-roller flung to the winds all his word had been underlined and and was arrested
as a Com- reservations
about talking. the comment added, "We knew munist leader.
Microphones bent gracefully you'd look it up."
Then, because he and his backward before the wind and street-dancer friend, played by fury of his speeches as
Hynkel, Paulette Goddard, thought prison and the free world listened to preferable to the civilised world his gentle Vaice as the little Jew of Individuality and, to pour ol machine and its strangulation.
of bullying men, and machines, Why ended the film with a great There was another hold-up they tried their atmost to get piece of Chaplin prose which to incorporate on the seething waters of a of "Modern Times" while for sent back by committing petty might be sold
much ΟΙ Chaplin's own machine age, the good-humour an hour with his east looking crime--but without success.
philosophy. of a man in love,
on and precious money seeping
This im, while delighting "I don't want to be a Dictator. away Chapin Iny on his stomach He began work on it in 1933. on the studio floor watching again all his old. niends, made. I don't want to rule or conquer would like to help "It deals with one problem com- excitedly a small army of ants Chaplin some new enemies. Seme anyone. I
all the countries I
to their Kings of Big Business who were everyone, carrying spilt sugar man
prepared to tolerate
a jester Gentile, black or white." visited on my world tour" was
admitted Chaplin later his only hint at that time.
to throwing custard pies drew the Jean Cocteau line at a jester throwing a But between then and carly French author was a
1936 when the film was finished that he took far too long to spanner into their works.
Her face and figure got her into George White's "Scandala" in New York. Then in Holly- wood she was one of the chorus in "The Kid From Spain"-all legs and smile beneath platinum blonde curls.
סתם
soulless
Never So Happy
First sign of the Chaplin in- fluence, so they sald Ini Hally wood, that she stopped
underground nest. WILS dyeing her hair. First sign of her Influence
on him
new lightness in his step and a
Sorry, Comrade-But It's True!
Berlin.
H
[AVE you ever wonder-
ed just what it means
Says Antony Terry
To be perfectly honest I Curtain you are on. used to wonder the same
Being British you would
torturers, giving him another in the face to help his
blow
If possible, Jew,
'Hate Will Pass'
"More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness, WO need kindness and gentleness....Do not despair, The misery that has come upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who tear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the
return to the people... will.
SVET throw
"memdry.
Interrogations were repeated to live in a Commun- out of the train as It stopped at howl that this story, dic,
but it isn't. every day for the first month, isl country? When you the platform and started roughly Sorry, Comrades,
then became fewer and Tewor.
Some said the final speech read those reports of condi- to search your luggage and your You see, it happened to me..
pockets and the luggage of the tions
But "behind the Iron
Something else happened in
Herbert's gnolets had spoilt the film. But how could people on the platform;
Berlin recently which shows to other methods for breaking you spoil a film which contained. Cartnin" have you perhaps
as the Dictator's thought "it's all a lot of What would you do? It all anyone who is interested the their victim's spirit. One of such scenes
to bring the day's train refusing to pull up exactly depends on one small but vital difference that tile Iron Cur- them wat propaganda?"
fron tain cam make in people's every "food" half a pint of watery at the red carpet: Hynkel strip- thing-which side of the
day lives,
coup and put it on the Abor in ghing medala off a subordinate front of Herbert's cell..
down to his trouser battens; two It happened to Herbort, n
Dictators
quarrelling -25-year-old West Berlin metal
Then the gaolers' dog was in frontiers
they until thing when I came to Ber- naturally refuse indignantly to worker who up to recently vited to have a drink out of custard ples; and Hynkel bubble-- lin just three years ago, I allow anyone to each you. And earned his living operating a bowl before it was kicked dancing with the world itself
that is exactly what the
factory in the Soviet roughly into his cell. "Just to secretly thought "what a lot liners to whom this happened sector of the city.
show you that the dog is worth until it burst in his face and bu when i heard recently did. They told the six of bosh"
Men killed the trilt of dies lurid stories from travellers shouting bullies where they got Herbert, all unsuspecting, was a lot more than you. of life in Soviet-dominated off and called for a radio police travelling to work lone morning
Finally, Herbert fell danger tatorship with their guns. Chaplin car which took them into last August on the tube. At the ously ill and was taken to the led the idea of dictatorship. East Germany.
custody.
first station Inside the Soviet
His Torturers with his ridicule and sector border three armed Com prison hospital. But that was because the munist People's Policemen had lost interest in him and laughter that surged round his often drowned the longer cared alm по ba entered his compartment, seized apparently sector Herbert and dragged him off to whether he was an "hgeht bit cannonade. -
the secret police HQ in the the British imperialists" or not. centre of the Soviet half of the city. Not a 100 yards away is
Frankly, I didn't believe hulf of them.
I have learnt a thing or two since then.
From personal observa- tion I have discovered what happens when you put
passengers happened to standing in the British when the incident occurred.
sector? Uniess
the spot where the Gestapo used to be.
One morning he was released What would have happened power over life and death- If you had chanced to be just
Thrown into a cell he was left and told to go home. He had into the hands of secret one station up the line and there for sereral days without become a physical wreck in the police and political fanatics in the Soviet
you wanted to be hauled off any explanation. Then Herbert space of two months.
was taken away to an interroga- Isaluted case? Don't you bee and abolish the rule of into a gaol, beaten, Interrogated tion centre where he stood in levo it. It is just the sort of and starved for angthing up to front of bright lights and was thing that happens every day three months you would have alternately beaten and ques- held your tongue and allowed toned for days on end by Jack terrified of the long arm of the a world where everyone is the indignity of being roughly booted toughs...
and
rough- searched, mauled
taw.
a dif-
secret
police, Imprisonment without trial and all the other things that are done in the name of the "freedom of the
In Soviet zone prisons are housed by an alloged "ometal." thousands of people serving BYT- tonces up to 25 yatro X It Just shows what
The first questión: was - "primas", which in Britain are not· ferense one tube station up or even offences at all,
down the line can make in a are you? Herbert started to people.ZAS
"Herbert" when
Who
D
of
A-Wast Berlin motorist who It just makes all the difference City on the border of the Iron answer Curtain.
something hit him and he went was stopped at the border of on which side of the line you are, }
spitming across the rooth the Soviet Rector recently was Which is what Berliners whol The ""Transport Police" who happen to be lucky enough to were summarily handed over "You dirty swine, while you not quick enough Jaraping out.
and standing live in the British, U.B. and to the West Berlin authorities are here you are
Just Wumber of his car French sector of the c
city are
more word Communist toughs ein- 40-net Herbert anything he attention when the Communist
guarda pimply-foood boy pro-Allied than any other
ther Gar ployed by the East German Communist shouted at him.
10-shouted at Kim... Result... mans. You don't hear any of that Ministry of Interior to harass
It was not until Herbert had a dine og kald on the spot. frumbling about, Qué British and and bully passengers on the
been beaten, up for over, -an,
Even Betliners, have every tubes in the Soviet Sector., Americans which you.
hour that He discovered, what. But In The West rest of Germany: They had missed their stallon, the German accret poldo via their laughs in the city where "two worlds, meat, They had Neats in WEST Berlin and cer- tored the British sector, where
no real and by mistake they had en clals had against him.”
one the other day wiren the noised that the Waspected of somebody tainly no Communists. The only people can sull, object to such
Adion In the Boviot Naxis are the occret Retelah methods and get the day to "gabbieger because ploom Hobel
sector proudly calmed sponsored ones, and gall dr
of machinery he had worked on the Comminutusta back them up.A ONAK
at slatted factory had Supposing you lived in Berlin in Britain many people scarte. been found multy a}}},
Andit In Ted luxuryhotsie mad, went to work - every day ly bellevo sitch Wings happen-
inya.... Boulet sector: EWEDSDOT
bar table man van this side of. Moscow-sauvarligd
by kundengrotand. Claw knoring and certamiy the thousands of 11 "You, vererijptfined ); By the When you went to the afationcredulous British Cobirumamicia: British
a dopen toughs who called then, who believe that life under their sabotage. The live-year plall handcart, must solver. "Transport Police? jumped, favourite system is all honey will admit
shouted Herbork's not too vreaky."--
burst into tears.
the
NEXT SATURDAY: Charlie marries Qonu D'Halli, his present wife, few days after Joan'
Q
Barry claimed that he was her child's father.
Gevaert
FILM
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