Notes

Introduction

1. The Charles Chaplin Film Corporation Minutes Book for 9 December 1936, suggests that Chaplin’s “honeymoon” tour to the Orient following Modern Times was also conducted for publicity purposes.

2. Actually, this strategy was one Chaplin used to great effect in such films as The Bank (1915) and The Vagabond (1916). What was new about it was Chaplin’s foregrounding it in the opening credits (“A comedy with a smile—and perhaps a tear.”) and then making his juxtapositions more explicit throughout the film.

3. Harris’s testimony in William Hamlin’s “The Funniest Thing That Charlie Chaplin Ever Did” included Chaplin’s mistreatment of her during their first Christmas together when Harris had just been released from the hospital after treatment for a nervous condition. Chaplin failed to come home on Christmas Eve, after he had told her “he would be home and have dinner with me and help me trim the Christmas tree” (3). When he did arrive home in the early hours of the morning, he woke Harris up to castigate her for buying so many presents. On Christmas day, he arose very late and continued to yell at her for her overindulgence, stating that “he did not believe in such things” (n.p.). Such pronouncements must have seemed sacrilegious to working-class Americans.

4. The first commercially acceptable feature film to incorporate synchronized music, singing, and limited dialogue was, of course, Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927).

5. Also, and perhaps more compelling, are the Charles Chaplin Film Corporation Minutes for 14 October 1930, in which Chaplin states “that inasmuch as the picture was not a talking motion picture, there was considerable doubt in his mind, as well as in the minds of others engaged in the motion picture business to whom he had talked, as to the reception with which a silent motion picture would be received by the theatre going public.”

6. See Maland 98-105, especially 102, and Robinson, Chaplin: His Life and Art 375-76.

7. The document numbered twenty-three pages and was printed on cheap pulp paper. It was released to the public on 12 January 1927, just two days after the complaint was filed in Los Angeles. Among its more revealing claims is item 3 under part V: “defendant solicited, urged and demanded that plaintiff submit to, perform and commit such acts and things for the gratification of defendant’s said abnormal, unnatural, perverted and degenerate sexual desires, as to be too revolting, indecent and immoral to set forth in detail in this complaint” (4).

8. Interestingly, extracts from the Charlie Chaplin Film Corporation Minutes Book show that Chaplin bought stock in London throughout 1932 (noted purchases are dated 11.1.32, 20.5.32, 17.11.32, and one previous purchase is discussed on 21.3.33) despite this financial turn of events.

9. Chaplin relates in “ACSTW” that “a message from Mahatma Ghandi stated that he would like to meet me, either at the Carlton Hotel or elsewhere” (pt. IV: 22).

10. Several pieces of correspondence in the Charlie Chaplin Archive attest to the wisdom of Chaplin’s economic suggestions for the crisis. One written 14 December 1932, by chemist R. R. Snowden states that “some time ago I read of your plan for financially rehabilitating the world, and am astonished that the world leaders seem to have neglected it up to the present time. It looks to me like the most sensible and practicable plan yet offered. . . .” Another, sent 27 June 1932, by congressional candidate David Horsley, offers a similar approbation: “I have just read your article in the Examiner disclosing the plan you spoke of to the press on your arrival to solve the world’s most pressing problem, i.e. the resumption of international trade. The plan appeals very much as it is both logical and practical.”

11. In his first economic speech, which occurred in the House of Commons on 25 February at a dinner sponsored by Lady Astor, Chaplin said that “the limited amount of gold is not sufficient to serve an increasing population as a medium of exchange, especially with the rapidly decreasing man power in labor. Gold scales are too small. [. . .] Enlarge those scales to silver ones or something else” (pt. I: 88).

12. An extract from the Charles Chaplin Film Corporation Minutes Book, dated 1 January 1931, states that “in order to properly show, exploit and sell the picture CITY LIGHTS it is desirable, necessary, and best business judgment that Mr. Chaplin attend personally, openings at New York, London, Paris, Berlin and other cities.”

13. “It is not difficult to reconstruct the great popularity and enthusiasm around the genius of our great patron ‘Charlie’” (translation mine).

14. As of 3 December 1921, Alf Reeves mentions in a letter to Monta Bell that the book’s chosen title was “The Hour of Success” (Charlie Chaplin Archive).

15. A sampling of newspaper reviews include the (1) Allentown Record of 17 February 1922, which states “Charlie Chaplin’s book, My Trip Abroad, is the best dollar’s worth of light—and not so light at that—reading I have come across for some time. It is a real human document” (n.p.); (2) Cleveland Press, 10 March 1922, which suggests that “few novels published recently contain as much real emotion and such thoughtful, sensitive observation as Charles Chaplin’s account of his trip to Europe” (n.p.); and (3) Indianapolis News, 17 May 1922, a rare negative review that states “Charlie Chaplin [. . .] telling about his journey to Europe last year, does not show the genius he reveals on the screen. The careful reader will discover a side of Charlie that he never suspected. In fact, the careful reader will think the picture rather an unflattering one” (n.p.).

16. Robinson devotes an entire chapter to My Trip Abroad in his book Chaplin: The Mirror of Opinion (52-59). “A Comedian Sees the World,” however, is not mentioned.

17. Monta Bell, 1891-1958. Bell worked as a reporter for the Washington Post and as editor and general manager of the Washington Herald at the time he was chosen to collaborate on MTA. In the same letter quoted above in which Bell indicates his progress on the book, he asks Chaplin for a job and signs a contract on 1 January 1922, and is on the job in time to watch some of the last days of Chaplin’s filming of Pay Day in late February 1922. He was given a bit part in Chaplin’s next film, The Pilgrim, and held the post of literary editor on A Woman of Paris before going off on his own to work as a director, first for Warner Brothers and later for MGM, Fox, and Universal.

18. Bell also received a Chaplin studios contract for his trouble, as supported by a letter from Alf Reeves to Bell, dated 3 December 1921, which mentions that Bell’s contract was signed and sent to lawyer Nathan Burkan and that Bell was expected to begin work in January 1922 (Charlie Chaplin Archive).

19. The Woman’s Home Companion, launched in 1873, was a pioneer in the dissemination of information to women. Allan Nevins wrote in November 1933 that WHC “has led, has counseled, and has encouraged women in their momentous upward climb of six busy decades” (136). This same issue featured stories and articles by no less than Booth Tarkington, Pearl S. Buck, Theodore Dreiser, and Eleanor Roosevelt. In the editorial of this issue, longtime editor-in-chief Gertrude Battles Lane writes that “constantly we strive to reflect the changing world and particularly the broadening concerns of women” (4). A publishing pioneer in her own right, Miss Lane edited WHC from 1912 until her death in 1941, creating such features as “The Better Babies Bureau,” the first magazine feature to present medical and health tips for mothers. At the time of her death, WHC’s circulation had climbed to 3.5 million, a record for a magazine of its type (“Gertrude B. Lane” 23).

20. Miss Willa Roberts, managing editor of WHC at the time of Chaplin’s second overseas tour, is the person with whom Chaplin and his staff had the most contact over the course of the nearly three years of the “ACSTW” experience. An article from the Little River News in Ashtown, Arkansas, dated 24 June 1931, details her experiences defeating a group of male editors in her efforts to sign Chaplin for the book. After Chaplin released the news to the publishing world in early June that he would be writing a book abroad, Roberts made early progress in the race to sign him by being the only editor to use the transatlantic phone lines to begin her negotiations. She then traveled to Berlin and completed business with Chaplin in only four hours. Interviewed at the New York Pier on her return, Roberts noted that “‘In all my experience with authors, I have never met one who was any more business-like than Chaplin’” (n.p.). This good working relationship was to turn sour later on.

21. A letter from Alf Reeves, Chaplin Studios manager, to Syd Chaplin, Charlie’s brother, dated 30 March 1933, provides some indication of the reason why the series was never published in book form: [WHC] expect to have the entire story completed in their magazine before any other publication of it is made either here or abroad. She [Willa Roberts] says this is the publishing practice. If this is so, it will be quite some time before we will be able to publish it either in book form, or as a newspaper or magazine serial anywhere else, for it will run about six months in its serial form, which would thus bring it into next year for general release.”

Part I

1. The only contract that exists for the serialization is entitled “Synopsis for Contract with Woman’s Home Companion March 25, 1931.” It reads:

50,000 word manuscript. Price $50,000. Formal contract to be signed on Charles Chaplin’s return to Hollywood at which time he will receive $10,000, balance to be paid on completion of manuscript. Charles Chaplin’s name not to appear in any other American magazine until after publication of the entire manuscript.

It’s signed by Chaplin at the Hotel Crillon, Paris.

2. One of the illustrators for this installment was Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941). Duncan received his training from the Art Students League in New York and got his first illustrating project in 1903 for The Century. He specialized in pen-and-ink and was known for his careful preliminary studies. He published a scholarly book entitled First Aid in Pictorial Composition in 1939.

3. In a 23 July 1932, article in the Union Star [Schenectady, NY], entitled “Chaplin Finds Writing Art Is Long,” the reporter writes both about Chaplin’s frustrations and Miss Roberts’s details about Chaplin and his project:

Charlie Chaplin, as an author, is so painstaking and meticulous that the book which he started a year ago is still only half finished, and his next motion picture production will have to wait until the book is completed.

The first half of the book, comprising about 25,000 words, has just been submitted by Chaplin to Miss Willa Roberts, managing editor of the magazine, which will publish it in serial form.

“The book is not exactly an autobiography,” Miss Roberts said, “but is a summary of the high lights [sic] of Mr. Chaplin’s career. It is very well written, although the author insists that he is an ‘unlettered man.’” The first half of the book includes some very striking incidents involving such figures as Einstein, Lady Astor, the Prince of Wales, Ramsay MacDonald, Brians the Prince of Monaco, Bernard Shaw, Lloyd George and others. The only motion picture star mentioned in the book is Marlene Dietrich.

Mr. Chaplin has a memory like a filing cabinet. Nothing escapes him. We have had some remarkable evidence of this in connection with the typist’s copy sent to the author. In several cases, he noted the omission of commas or punctuation marks which had been altered. Like Bernard Shaw, he insists on typographical exactitude, and he objects to the slightest alteration of his original text.

Like Gene Tunney, he won’t have any professional help in the writing. “I would rather prefer the text should be completely mine,” he insisted, “even with mistakes in grammar, than to have it written on corrected by somebody else. It wouldn’t be my story if anybody else tampered with it.”

Personally, I find his literary style delightful, and I think he can have a real future as a writer if he wants to do so.

4. Burke, in City of Encounters, explains Karno’s London Comedians and Chaplin’s place in the organization:

In their prime [the music halls] made a special feature of sketch-companies and troupes, and it was in these that Charles gained his early experience. Fred Karno was the principal figure in this business. He had many companies, and in those companies many comedians, who later became stars, were given their first chance. He had The Mumming Birds, in which Charles played the drunken swell in the prompt-side box, opposite Jimmy Russell who played the bun-flinging schoolboy in the o.p. box. He had The Dandy Thieves. He had Fred Karno’s Farm. He had The Football Match. And half a dozen more. Others of these troupes were The Six Brothers Luck, Lew Lake & Company, The Eight Lancashire Lads, The Casey Court Juveniles, Parke’s Eton Boys, Joe Bogan-ny’s Lunatic Bakers, Phil Rees’ Stable Lads, and Haley’s Juveniles. In how many of these troupes Charles worked, I don’t know. By different stories he must have worked in all of them, but, as I have said, he is not interested in the stories that are spread about him, and won’t bother to give the facts which he alone can give. I know that he was a Casey Court boy and a Lancashire Lad and a Fred Karno comedian; and I think that is all.

The humour of these sketches was the monstrous-grotesque humour of the last days of Bartholomew Fair. It went out of fashion when American humour and heavily-anglicized French wit came in, and it only returned to favour when Charles unconsciously replied to the American invasion by taking it to America and infecting the whole world with it. [. . .] (160-61)

5. Chaplin toured London, Paris, and Berlin in September, 1921. The travel narrative My Trip Abroad, published by Harper and Brothers in 1922 and ghostwritten by Monta Bell, resulted from this tour.

6. From Chaplin’s typescript draft (Charlie Chaplin Archive): “This is something new since the advent of the talkies and took three weeks of Lala-la-ing to arrange. After which another two weeks were necessary for recording it. I shall try to give you an idea of how this is done. Of course there are two ways—one, the sound is recorded with the photographing of the picture and the other, a picture is taken silently and the sound put in afterwards. “City Lights” was the latter.

There is a large room about 100’ × 60’. At one end is a screen and the other a padded projection room. The orchestra sits in front of the screen. There are “fishing rods” on wheels but instead of a fish at the end of the line; there is a microphone. These are placed meticulously about the orchestra. On one side there is a small sound-proof room on wheels big enough for a man to sit on. Here the occupant controls the sound which is transmitted to the main recording room where it is actually produced on film and disc. Before recording; the picture is run and music and sound effected are rehearsed. The man in the box tells if you are playing too loud, or whether your noise effects are properly timed with the action of the picture. When everything is perfected, the sound operator signals to the Recording Room and then to the Projection Room: The Projection machine are inter-locked so that they synchronize: then the sound effects are played to suit the action. One reel at a time is completed which is immediately played back for your approval. Something may be out of time. Then you must do it over again. I had a scene where I swallow a whistle. The whistle was very difficult to synchronize. We took the scene some eighteen times. Either the whistle was a little too soon or too late. Shooting a pistol is another difficult action to follow, because it happens so suddenly and the noise of the shot is liable to break the recording needle.”

7. A New York Times article dated 13 February 1931, indicates that Chaplin visited Sing-Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, with City Lights prior to his departure:

More than 1,800 prisoners at Sing Sing prison enjoyed a respite from the dull monotony of their existence this evening when Charlie Chaplin visited the prison as a guest of Warden Lewis E. Lawes and brought with him his latest picture, “City Lights.” The film was shown to the prisoners in the new auditorium, and the Warden, his little daughter, Joan, and the members of Mr. Chaplin’s party sat in a box.

After the showing, Mr. Chaplin made a brief talk to the prisoners in which he expressed happiness at being able to bring a little enjoyment into their lives and told of his pleasure at seeing them respond so appreciatively to his comedy. Warden Lawes described the evening’s entertainment as the “biggest hit we’ve ever had.”(20)

8. Kellner in The Last Dandy, claims that:

[Ralph Barton] had been one of the twenties’ leading bon vivants, elegant in Charvet cravats and dove-gray spats, with the French Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, a cynic’s wit on permanent tap, and a philanderer’s reputation with women. Moreover, as the most popular artist of the decade whose roar had just dwindled to a whimper, he had a fat income. Two books of his own lay behind him; his drawings had appeared in half a dozen others; his illustrations and caricatures ran regularly in fashionable magazines; and apparently he never wanted for commissions. But his matinee idol’s suave charm and effortless art masked persistent bouts of depression that success had only deepened. From the fin de siècle drollery of his first magazine cover, for Judge in 1914, to the grotesque Christmas shoppers on his last one, for The New Yorker in 1930, Barton’s career embraced the same fate that had befallen so many other wits and critics, from Jonathan Swift to H. L. Mencken; a darkening vision, an inability to laugh any longer at the foibles their work reflected. No career in that ridiculous period Carl Van Vechten called “The Splendid Drunken Twenties” was so emblematic of it, save F. Scott Fitzgerald’s perhaps; no life reflected so sadly how the decade fed on its children. Complicated by private demons disguised as insomnia and creative blocks, and finally by an alienating paranoia, both his career and his life outspanned themselves. Five years before his suicide, Ralph Barton was featured in Vanity Fair’s Hall of Fame—a prestigious honor then—but nobody sent flowers to the small chapel at the Campbell Funeral Home in New York. (1)

9. Bartlett reports in “Charlie Chaplin’s No-Man”:

Born in Brooklyn, the son of the present Mrs. Richard K. Fox, owner of the Police Gazette and widow of the man who built up that well-known pink periodical in its palmy days. [. . .] Carl started his journalistic career, after a brief fling at banking, in Brooklyn. He worked on various New York papers, and then felt the urge to travel and went to Los Angeles. After working on the Los Angeles Times for a while, he got a job as press agent with a new moving-picture outfit specializing in animal pictures. [. . .] It was just then that the opportunity to go to work at the Chaplin studios came along, and Robinson has been Chaplin’s man Friday ever since—sixteen years. (78)

Robinson, in fact, may be the one to thank for the “travel narrative as publicity vehicle” idea. According to studio records, he negotiated contracts for both My Trip Abroad and “CSTW.” From an article entitled “Charlie Chaplin Reported Ready to Retire from Films as Actor” in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 27 April 1932, the reporter relates that Robinson was in a venture with cameraman Rollie Totheroh to make a three-reel film of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, including scenic and historic shots in California. Robinson also reported wanting to make a series of three-reelers, highlighting travel in the United States, so it seems clear that he had more than a passing interest in travel generally.

10. Chaplin’s typescript draft (Charlie Chaplin Archive) adds the following:

Donahue and Sir Malcolm Campbell would come to my cabin of an evening and tell anecdotes. Steve especially was a good [end of page 5] story teller. He would relate many experiences of his horse racing. One story I thought was very human and touching about a horse named ______ with which he had won the English Derby. It appeared this horse was most eccentric when running in a race. He had a habit of stopping abruptly, almost throwing his jockey—at other times he would be leading then quit suddenly before the winning post. One day he would look beautifully groomed with his coat nice and shiny—the next day it would look dry and dull in spite of the groom’s care. Then again at a trial canter, he would break the track record, and then the following morning he would hardly be able to move. Nobody knew what was the matter with him, not even the Veterinary. The day before the Derby, Steve went to the stable and found him looking unusually seedy. He thought he would notify the owner and the trainer, and advise them to scratch him for the big race. But later at practice, he broke another record. “So he was a complete enigma to all of us,” said Steve. “At the start of the Derby he looked as though he was going to have another relapse,” Steve said, He was very much worried as nothing could be done if this mood came over him. He was not the kind of a horse on which you could use the whip. Kindness was the only treatment he would respond to and so after two or three affectionate pats, he seemed to come out of his lethargy. We got off at a good start and kept in the middle of the bunch for a while. “Gradually the rest began to drop away from us and there were only four horses ahead, as we came into the stretch. If only he would last,” continued Steve. “We are leading now. As we were half way in the stretch, I felt a change come over him. He commenced slowing up I whispered gently to him and again it had a magical effect. Just as a horse was nosing ahead of us, he leaped forward as if by about six weeks after the Derby, the owner commissioned a painter to do a portrait of him. One morning towards the completion of the picture, the painter went to the stable and found the horse lying in a pool of blood. A veterinary was summoned and discovered the horse had died of a hemorrhage. Upon a postmortem, it was revealed that he had been born with only one lung. This had accounted for all his peculiarities. Just think of the spirit of that animal, winning the Derby with such a handicap. It was the noblest horse he ever rode he concluded. Steve has an instinct for horses. He treats them like human beings. His canny insight into their temperament, and the intelligence he puts into a race, are the chief factors of his success.”

11. A New York Times article, “Chaplin Off to Find His Boyhood London,” dated 14 February 1931, mentions Campbell and his exploits:

“Another passenger was Captain Malcolm Campbell, British racing motorist, who made the world record of 245 miles an hour recently at Daytona Beach, Fla., in his ten-ton automobile, Blue Bird, which has to go five miles to get a start. It was brought to the Cunard pier at the foot of West Fourteenth Street and hoisted on board by a special derrick” (20). It appears that a lot of irony surrounded Chaplin’s meeting of Malcolm Campbell on board the Mauretania. Chaplin mentions that they decided to split their celebrating, with Chaplin deciding to depart at Plymouth and Campbell at Southampton. As Leo Villa and Tony Gray report, after Chaplin departed, “the Mauretania got stuck in the mud, just off the Isle of Wight, and Campbell was taken off by special tender before the line could be refloated, so we didn’t see the moment of his arrival back on English soil” (65). Also, another great irony was contained in the fact that “as soon as he landed in England, Campbell was informed that he was to be knighted” (65). As David Robinson relates, Chaplin expected to be knighted as well during his visit, but this never occurred. A press leak from the prime minister’s office after Chaplin was finally knighted in 1975 showed that the only reason the honor was withheld in 1931 was due to “unfavorable publicity generated by the Northcliff press during the First World War” (427-28).

12. Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Bt (1888-1939), descended from Baghdadi Jews who had made a fortune in India from the opium trade, was one of the best-known and most glamorous figures in Britain. At twenty-three, Sassoon became the youngest member of Parliament, becoming a Unionist MP for Hythe in 1912. He was a patron of the arts, serving as chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery and a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the British School at Rome at various times. He was also considered the most eligible bachelor of the age and possibly the greatest host of his time. Trent House, the Sassoon family estate in Middlesex, came to him at his father’s death in 1912 and soon became the venue for his entertaining.

13. Nancy Langhorne Astor (1879-1964). Born in America, Astor met and married Waldorf Astor, her second husband, in 1906. Early in their marriage, both became involved in feminist politics. They were also much under the influence of David Lloyd George and his 1909 social welfare budget. Astor was a pacifist who championed temperance, women’s rights, and benefits for children. She was the first woman to serve in Parliament, which she did as a Conservative from 1919 to 1945.

14. In an article entitled, “Chaplin Fled from Shaw,” the New York Times reported on 27 February 1931, that

Ten years ago, when the literati were just beginning to discover that Charlie Chaplin was a “genius,” the movie comedian mounted George Bernard Shaw’s doorstep, saw the playwright’s name staring boldly from a glittering brass plate, lost his courage, turned tail and ran.

Today he disclosed that he had confessed that misadventure to Mr. Shaw when they met for the first time, at a luncheon given by Viscountess Astor yesterday.

It was while he waited to ring Mr. Shaw’s doorbell, Mr. Chaplin said, that a boy with an autograph book in his hand followed him up the steps. Mr. Chaplin turned quickly and the boy ran. In a moment Charlie was going after him.

“Why did you run away?” Mr. Shaw demanded.

“Purely a case of follow the leader,” said Mr. Chaplin.

‘”’m nobody to be afraid of,” Mr. Shaw replied, chuckling in his beard. (23

15. Amy Johnson (1903-41) was born in Hull, Humberside, in England and became an aviator in 1929. In 1930 she became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, which she did in her aircraft Jason, winning £10,000 from the London Daily Mail. In 1931 she flew to Japan via Moscow and back. She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary as a pilot in World War II and was lost after baling out of the plane over the Thames estuary.

16. Browne, in his memoir Too Late to Lament, wrote about Chaplin’s visit to the Old Bailey:

Charlie Chaplin visited London. Lord Chief Justice Hewart, an old friend of my mother, and Mr. Justice Roche (as he was then), my father’s favourite pupil, invited Chaplin and me to attend a trial at the Old Bailey and to have lunch with them afterwards in the Judges’ Room. Charming, dapper, warm-voiced, widely-read, Chaplin had a swift intelligence, a passion for social justice and, though he had probably given more pleasure to more people than anyone who had ever lived, no hint of conceit. The case was one of vitriol-throwing. During our lunch our hosts cross-examined us. I had sat in court tormented by horror at the thing’s dreadful decorum, its outer calm and inner agony, the hidden suffering of she who had so bitterly thrown the acid and of he who had so terribly received it in his face. Chaplin, a truer artist, had been interested primarily in the courtroom ritual; he shared his fellow-guest’s pity for the human emotion behind the impersonal pageant but his pity was healed by the stage-values of the play. (314)

17. Ramsey MacDonald (1866-1937), a Scotsman, joined the Independent Labour Party in 1894, taking the post as leader of that party from 1911 to 1914 and from 1922 to 1931. He became the first Labour Party prime minister in 1924, holding the post from January to November in that year. In 1929 he became prime minister again until the 1931 elections and then continued to lead his “National government” until 1935, when he retired.

18. A Daily Mail article entitled “Mr. Chaplin Spends the Whole Night Talking,” details Chaplin’s visit to Chequers:

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald asked me if I could possibly visit the kitchen, as he was afraid that if I did not do so, the whole domestic staff would be disorganized, as they were all so eager to see me. I went down stairs and spent a very delightful time talking to the staff.

The cook, a charming Manchester woman, was delighted to hear that I had lived in Hyde-road there. I signed autographs for the members of the staff and had a most pleasant time with them.

During the afternoon I had a sleep. The night before I had been too excited to sleep. To be candid, I think that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald had an afternoon nap himself.

He played one of two practical jokes on me. When I told him how fond I was of the feel of old books he pointed some out to me and suggested I should take them from the shelves. When I tried to do so I nearly tore my nails off as they were just dummies.

He also showed me a picture and covering the inscription with his hand said to me, “This is one of the most beautiful young women in English history.” I said, “She is quite adorable,” and then taking his hand away, I read from the inscription that it was a painting of Oliver Cromwell at the age of ten.

Mr. Chaplin showed great interest in The Daily Mail Spot the Stars Competition. “I think,” he said, “this is a very novel and interesting contest, and it does not surprise me that so many of your readers have entered for it.”

19. Princess Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco (1897-1945) was the daughter of Margo Asquith, who became famous for her writing. She is also well known for her affair with Katherine Mansfield. Two fellow writers have this to say about her:

Princess Bibesco delighted in a semi-ideal world—a world which, though having a counterpart in her experience, was to a great extent brought into being by her own temperament and, one might say, flair.

—Elizabeth Bowen

She is pasty and podgy, with the eyes of a currant bun, suddenly protruding with animation.

—Virginia Woolf

20. “Quaglino’s is an attractive restaurant where one can dance to excellent music, both jazz and tango. The decorations are in excellent taste with low warm lighting. You can always be assured of meeting someone interesting here—a Prince of the realm, a politician or an actor” (“ACSTW” typescript draft).

21. Randolph Churchill (1911-68) was the son of Sir Winston Churchill and is probably best known for the two-volume biography he wrote of his father. However, he was a popular young journalist in life, also having a distinguished career in military intelligence in World War II.

22. Son of the famous First Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930), who had just recently passed away when Chaplin met him in 1931 at Quaglino’s. His father the earl was a Conservative MP since 1906, well known for his oratorical powers and wit.

23. David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was an Advanced Liberal for Caernarvon Boroughs since 1890, the same year he officially became a solicitor. He served as chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915, becoming during this period a noted social reformer. At this time he passed the Old Age Pensions Act (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911). He served as prime minister from 1916 to 1922 and was one of the big three at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. He resigned from public office shortly following the 1931 elections.

24. David Kirkwood, the son of a laborer, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1872. In 1891 Kirkwood was converted to socialism after reading Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. The following year he joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (AEU). He joined the Independent Labour Party and served on the Glasgow Trade Council. He remained active in the AEU and was chief shop steward at the Beardmore Works (1914-15). On 25 March 1916, Kirkwood and other members of the Clyde Workers’ Committee were arrested by the authorities under the Defense of the Realm Act. The men were court-martialed and sentenced to be deported from Glasgow. Kirkwood went to Edinburgh, but in January 1917 he traveled to Manchester to speak at the national conference of the Labour Party. On his return to Glasgow, he was rearrested and deported once more to Edinburgh. He remained there until he was freed on 30 May 1917. In the 1922 General Election Kirkwood was elected to the House of Commons for Dumbarton Burghs. He was one of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party in Parliament until joining the Labour Party in August 1933. He held his seat in Parliament until 1951, when he was created Baron Kirkwood. He died on 16 April 1955.

25. From Chaplin’s typescript draft (Charlie Chaplin Archive):

Today is Sunday and I have arranged to meet my friend, Thomas Burke, the novelist and author of “Limehouse Nights,” “The Wind and the Rain,” etc. Ten years have intervened since I saw him last and it is surprising how little he has changed—so different from myself who has greyed-up in the interim.

Burke is always stimulating and we discussed every topic under the sun. I told him of my visit to Hanwell Schools and wondered whether Hanwell is the school he referred to in his book, “The Wind and the Rain,” but it wasn’t the same. I told him how thoroughly I enjoyed the visit to my school, how fascinating it was to go back into the past. Burke says he is afraid of the past. He hates to go back. He said he could never disassociate himself sufficiently to enjoy it. I agreed poverty does frighten one, but having lived in America for twenty years, I was sufficiently removed from its stigma.

I discussed his work, telling him that I thought “The Wind and the Rain” was his best book, because it revealed the soul of the artist. Later we went for a drive in the country and pulled up at some wayside inn where we partook of an English tea.

Part II

1. Chaplin’s typescript draft adds this information:

My manager has shown me a newspaper with a derogatory story in it about myself. “Ha, Ha” I exclaim. “I am outstaying my welcome.” “I think you have offended Beaverbrook in some way,” my manager commented. “Beaverbrook. Who’s Beaverbrook?” I enquired. He is the head of a syndicate of newspapers here in England and from what I gather he does not feel generously disposed towards you. However I am not perturbed about this; having developed the proverbial ducks feathers, I am no longer unfledged or vulnerable to their attacks. I have lived in Hollywood for seventeen years and having been married and divorced twice; and by this time, I am a seasoned old duck.

I am also informed that I had made enemies amongst some of the exhibitors. They felt they had been slighted. It is here I should like to explain myself and say that after working for ten years in the atmosphere of motion pictures, on an occasion of this sort it is a relief to get away from it. For those whom I have offended, I am sorry but if they reflect on my position and the circumstances, I feel sure they will understand and forgive any delinquency on my part. However, other things have cropped up also. There is a Trust in the British film industry, so I am told, who is dictating the price they will pay for my picture. Being an ultra-individualist and disliking Trusts of any kind, I give my London representatives carte blanche to fight them as they please. If their price had been fair and satisfactory, my manager contends, we would do business with them but they want to take advantage of their power. All this is very boresome. I wave it aside, telling him not to worry me with their business troubles and to go ahead and do as they please. At this stage I always shrug my shoulders and become complicated.

2. Chaplin was still using this anecdote in the late 1950s. It appears nearly verbatim in the text of the “Immortal Memory” speech he gave at the Charles Dickens birthday dinner in London on 7 February 1955 (“Immortal Memory” 112-14).

3. In an article dated 30 May 1931, and entitled “Charlie Chaplin’s Favourite Dance Tune!” in Home Chat, one of Chaplin’s episodes with Sari Maritza is recounted:

In “City Lights” there is a haunting melody which threads its way through the film. It is Charlie Chaplin’s favourite dance tune, and Jean Butt tells you where you can buy it in record form.

Those of you who have seen Charlie Chaplin’s famous talkie, “City Lights,” will no doubt remember the haunting little melody which runs all through it. Once heard, it is difficult to forget, and I am going to tell you an interesting piece of news about it, taken from the Columbia advance notes.

“Violetera” is the name of the tune we hear all through the film. On the night of Charlie Chaplin’s cabaret party at the Carlton Hotel it was played by Geraldo’s Gaucho Tango Orchestra, specially engaged for the occasion to entertain Charlie and his friends. This orchestra has made the tango (coupled with “El Relicario”) for Columbia, exactly as played at the Carlton, and it contains a vocal refrain in French.

It is said that as the orchestra began to play, and nobody took the floor, Charlie approached Sari Maritza—the well-known film star—and together they gave a perfect exhibition of the dance.

This will certainly be a most popular record, both for the charm of its melody and for the interest which attaches to it.

4. Chaplin reports in My Autobiography the way in which he and Barton spent part of their final day together:

Before leaving he [Barton] asked if I would go with him to visit his daughter, who had only a year previously taken the veil and was now in a Catholic convent in Hackney. She was his eldest daughter by his first wife. Ralph had often spoken about her, saying that since the age of fourteen she had felt the call to become a nun, although he and his wife had done everything they could to dissuade her. He showed me a photograph of her taken when she was sixteen, and I was instantly struck by her beauty: two large dark eyes, a full sensitive mouth and an engaging smile looked out of the picture.

Ralph explained that they had taken her round Paris to many dances and night clubs, hoping to wean her away from her ecclesiastic desire. They had introduced her to beaux and given her the gayest time, which she seemed to have enjoyed. But nothing could deter her from becoming a nun. Ralph had not seen her in eighteen months. She had now graduated from novicehood and had fully embraced the order.

The convent was a gloomy, dark building in the heart of a slum district in Hackney. When we arrived there, we were greeted by the Mother Superior and ushered into a small, dismal room. Here we sat and waited for what seemed an interminable time. Eventually his daughter entered. I was immediately struck with sadness, for she was just as beautiful as her picture. Only, when she smiled, two teeth were missing at the side.

The scene was incongruous: the three of us sitting in that small gloomy room, this debonair, urbane father of thirty-seven, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, and his daughter, this pretty young nun of nineteen, sitting across from us. I wanted to excuse myself and wait outside in the car. But neither would hear of it.

Although she was bright and vivacious, I could see that she was detached from life. Her actions were nervous and jerky and showed strain as she talked of her duties as a schoolteacher. “Young children are so difficult to teach,” she said, ‘but I’ll get used to it.’

Ralph’s eyes twinkled with pride as he talked to her and smoked his cigarette. Pagan that he was, I could see he rather enjoyed the idea of his daughter being a nun. (347)

5. Chaplin reports on his reception in Berlin during this tour in his book My Trip Abroad:

We go to the Adlon Hotel in Berlin and find that hostelry jammed, owing to the auto races which are being run off at this time. A different atmosphere here. It seems hard for me to relax and get the normal reaction to meeting people. They don’t know me here. I have never been heard of. It interests me and I believe I resent it just a bit.

I notice how abrupt and polite the Germans are to foreigners, and I detect a tinge of bitterness, too. I am wondering about my pictures making their debut here. I question the power of my personality without its background of reputation.

I am feeling more restful under this disinterested treatment, but somehow I wish that my pictures had been shown here. The people at the hotel are very courteous. They have been told that I am the “white-headed boy and quite the guy in my home town.” Their reactions are amusing. I am not very impressive-looking and they are finding it hard to believe.

There is quite a crowd in the lobby and a number of Americans and English. They are not long in finding me, and a number of English, French, and American reporters start making a fuss over me. The Germans just stand and look on, bewildered. (115)

6. At the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, Germany, where Chaplin wanted to stay in 1921 but wasn’t able until 1931, the following event occurred, as related in Adlon’s Hotel Adlon:

The news of [Chaplin’s] coming had been spread abroad, and the pavement on Unter den Linden was covered by a dense mass of people through which he had to fight his way from the car to the hotel doors, shaking hands, signing albums, returning smiles and greetings and struggling frantically not to be trodden underfoot. His navigation light, as he was washed to and fro on the bosom of this human tide, was the pale-blue peaked cap of the Adlon porter, who finally managed to rescue him and thrust him to safety through the revolving door. But then, when it seemed that all was well, he suddenly stopped in the middle of the reception hall and gazed at himself in comical bewilderment. His trousers were coming down! Souvenir-hunting admirers had robbed him of every button. He could do nothing but clutch them and make hastily for the lift, using that shuffling gait that all the world knows. (193)

Interestingly, a line to the effect that the Adlon boasts “the lobby in which Chaplin dropped his trousers” is still used in Hotel Adlon publicity.

7. The British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Horace Rumbold, agreed that the Nazis believed in force as opposed to cooperation in solution of European problems. “In the eyes of the Nazis,” he wrote, “Germany is like Prometheus bound, and Hitler, or the Nazi movement, is cast for the part of Hercules. This aspiration for freedom and for equality has come to stay, and is an element which every German Government must take into account. It is bound, in my opinion, to exercise an influence on the conduct of Germany’s foreign policy and has begun to exercise such an influence” (Gilbert 791).

8. Dr. Karl Vollmueller, poet and auto industrialist, had met Chaplin for the first time in Hollywood, where he worked in the early days of the film industry. He is noted for having worked on Dietrich’s The Blue Angel (1930) (Gersch 37-38).

9. Erich Carow was, at the time of Chaplin’s visit, the most beloved comic in Berlin. He appeared at his own club, a sort of musical variety slapstick club, “Der Lachbühne”:

Er spielt eine arme, aber unbeirrbare Figur, einen Künstler, der zum Faktotum erniedrigt wird, dreimal wegläuft mitten ins Publikum, bis er die Stellung annimmt; der dann die Leute hinauswerfen und endlich sogar boxen muß. Er hat bein allem genausoviel Angst und genausoviel verzweifelten Mut wie der mittlere Mensch, den die Ereignisse treffen, und meinstens denkt er an die täglichen fünzig Pfennig, für die er bestehen muß, was über ihn kommt. (qtd. in Gersch 44-45)

10. Chaplin’s typescript draft (Charlie Chaplin Archive) includes this additional information:

Before visiting the members of the Government, I was taken through the local police gaol. This was unlike any I had seen before. There were no iron bars, or riveted tanks, which are characteristic of the English and American gaols. But for the many wooden doors along the corridor, one would hardly suspect it being anything but an ordinary building. With the level of the eye, there is a small trap door about a half foot square which the warders open to look into the cells. We looked in one. I was surprised to see how big they were. They had six bunks with as many occupants and a mess table on one side where some of the prisoners were playing checkers, while the others were lazily reading newspapers. I was told that the majority of crimes were due to economic want and a great many were political offenders.

After visiting the Administration Buildings, we were shown into the Police Museum. I have never in my life seen a more gruesome spectacle than the horrors of that museum. Upon entering you are hit in the face, metaphorically speaking, by enlarged colored photographs about 2 ½ × 2 feet, of murdered victims just as they were found by the police in all their gruesome detail. There were decapitated bodies; quartered limbs in trunks; crushed in skulls and horrors of every kind. Then in the section along the wall that you could not escape, was a gallery of sex-maniacs and beside them the pictures of their dead victims. Next, was the gallery of suicides, both men, women and children, photographed in all their nightmarish methods of destruction. The whole scene was so revolting that I never got over it for days. It seemed unnecessary to keep recorded details of all this horror but they said it was a gallery for detectives to study the nature of crimes and that it represented classic forms of criminology. There were instruments and weapons of all kind. There were different gambling articles for the purpose of cheating, marked cards, loaded dice, etc. However, I was too horrified to remain long in that department so we quickly left, hoping to forget as quickly as possible the memory of such awful things.

11. This four-time Academy Award–nominated composer was born in 1896. After studying at the Berlin Hochschule for Musik and the Stern Conservatory, Friedrich Hollander began writing music for producer Max Reinhardt at his Berlin cabaret. In the post–World War I era, Hollander became a leading intellectual on the Berlin scene, leading a jazz band in Berlin, composing music, and directing scathing anti-Nazi satirical cabaret revues. A pianist and prolific composer, poet, actor, and director, Hollander also wrote and directed early sound films in Berlin. He was also the composer for Marlene Dietrich’s now-classic 1929 film, The Blue Angel, which includes the famed standard “Falling in Love Again.” After immigrating to the United States, Friedrich Hollander moved to Hollywood, where he composed music for more than 120 films. He died in Germany in 1976.

12. La Jana was born as Henriette Margarethe Hiebel in Vienna. She began her career at a child ballet for the Frankfurter Opera. Later she appeared in cabarets and revues as a dancer. She made her film debut in 1925 with Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit. Among her other films are Die weisse Geisha (1926), Der Biberpelz (1928), Thérèse Raquin/Du sollst nicht ehebrechen (28), Gaunerliebchen (1928), Ritter der Nacht (1928) and Die Warschauer Zitadelle (1929). She had her greatest successes with her sound films Der Schlemihl (1931), Truxa (1936) and especially in the two-parter Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1937) and Das indische Grabmal (1937). Her last movies were Es leuchten die Sterne (1938), Menschen vom Varieté (1939), and Stern von Rio (1940). She caught pneumonia and pleurisy during a Christmas tour, which led to her death at the age of thirty-five.

13. In her 1940 book Charlie Chaplin, von Ulm reports on this episode: Sir Philip [Sassoon] then accompanied Charlie and Kono to Potsdam as guests of Prince Henry of Prussia, nephew of the former Kaiser. [. . .] Charlie was frank in his disapproval of the huge seventeenth-century quadrangular pile. [. . .]

Prince Henry was amused.

“You’re quite right, old man. They’re rather hideous, but you’ll have to blame old Wilhelm I for that. Frederick the Great thought the palace bad, too, and built himself a retreat in the eighteenth century which, I am sure you will agree with me, is very nice. Though he and Voltaire both lived in your acrobats’ pedes.”

They strolled across the Havel, into the terraced gardens of Sans Souci and Charlie immediately recognized the prototype of many self-conscious eastern American estates. Great was his glee over Voltaire’s room, which Frederick had caused to be papered with parrots, when he had become weary of the latter’s interminable talk.

Browsing among the personal relics of the great Frederick, Charlie felt the glories and the tragedies of the man, who, though he was Emperor, had the courage to be, also, a musician. [. . .]

Charlie was awed by the gardens in which man had captured nature, as any unformed material, and fashioned it into line and proportion and color. (295-96)

14. The Yorkshire Evening Press reported on 16 March 1931, that the photograph actually bore the dedication “‘To Charlie Chaplin, the nautical economist.’”

15. Sigmund Freud wrote to Yvette Guilbert in 1931: “In the last few days, Chaplin has been in Vienna [. . .] but it was too cold for him here, and he left again quickly. He is undoubtedly a great artist; certainly he always portrays one and the same figure; only the weakly poor, helpless, clumsy youngster for whom, however, things turn out well in the end. Now do you think for this role he has to forget about his own ego? On the contrary, he always plays only himself as he was in his dismal youth. He cannot get away from those impressions and humiliations of that past period of his life. He is, so to speak, an exceptionally simple and transparent case. The idea that the achievements of artists are intimately bound up with their childhood memories, impressions, repressions and disappointments, has already brought in much enlightenment and has, for that reason, become very precious to us.”

16. Oscar Straus (1870-1954) was born in Vienna, but became a naturalized French citizen in 1939. He was best known for composing operettas and comic operas, of which his most famous is Der Tapfere Soldat (1908).

17. In an article dated 24 March 1931, (unidentified newspaper) and entitled “Whether Chaplin Is Jew Causes Him to Cancel His Visit to Budapest,” the reporter details what turns out to be an itinerary change at this time:

Another of those East European religious quarrels that has in the past cost many lives has unknowingly been kindled up by Charles Chaplin. All of Budapest is in a turmoil and as a result of the argument Chaplin had to cancel his visit here enroute from Vienna to Berlin.

Trouble started when a Jewish paper in Budapest wrote a highly laudatory article of the comedian, claiming him as a Jew and a representative of the fine things Jews have accomplished in the arts. Went on to say that Chaplin originally came from Eastern Europe and that his name once was Thronstein [sic].

Immediately the anti-Semite press, highly in majority, bit back with long articles abusing Chaplin and the type of Jew he represented as well as Jewish fans of the theatre.

Although no rioting or trouble, situation looked highly serious until Chaplin made his diplomatic move by not coming here. Incidents of even minor value to this one have in the past incited much rioting and pogroms in Hungary, Roumania and other countries in the Slavic circle of Europe.

18. On 19 March 1931, the Record [Troy, NY] reports on Chaplin’s entrance in “Chaplin’s ‘Armada’ Blocks All Traffic on Venice Canal”:

Down the Grand Canal of Venice came Charlie Chaplin this afternoon in a triumphal procession reminiscent of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

Big boats, little boats, motor boats, row boats, steam boats, ferry boats and gondolas, tagged along behind his motor launch, from which Charlie bowed and waved to throngs which the windows of famous old palaces along the banks. At the Daniels Hotel, he disembarked and was ushered to the choicest suite.

Police had their troubles unraveling the tangle of navigation around the front of the hotel so that traffic could be resumed.

19. Chaplin sought out another of his interests while in Paris, one that would lead to his Monsieur Verdoux almost fifteen years later. As Sadoul writes in Vie de Charlot: “Le singulier assassin [Landru] intéressait depuis longtemps Chaplin. Lors de son séjour à Paris, en 1931, il avait tenu à rencontrer des chroniqueurs judiciaries presents au process Landru, pour se faire raconter différents details sur l’affaire” (165).

20. Comtesse Anna Elizabeth de Brancoven (1876-1933) was a noted French poet and novelist of Romanian and Greek descent. Her first popular work was a collection of sensual and musical poems entitled La Coeur innombrable (1901).

21. A similar anecdote appeared in Chaplin’s earlier book: “Then there were others thanking me for happiness given the senders. These came by the thousand. One young soldier sent me four medals he had gotten during the big war. He said that he was sending them because I had never been properly recognized. His part was so small and mine so big, he said, that he wanted me to have his Croix de Guerre, his regimental and other medals” (My Trip Abroad 77-78).

22. Albert I (1875-1934), king of the Belgians (1909-34), nephew and successor of Leopold II. He married Elizabeth, a Bavarian princess, in 1900. In World War I his heroic resistance (1914) to the German invasion of Belgium greatly helped the Allied cause. The King and Queen did much to improve social conditions in Belgium and in the Belgian Congo. Albert’s democratic and affable ways won him great regard at home and abroad. He died in a rock-climbing accident.

Part III

1. Wallace Morgan (1873-1948) drew the beautiful comic sketches for this installment of Chaplin negotiating the boar hunt. He got his career start as a newspaper artist at the turn of the twentieth century. Because this career required him to draw diverse subjects under pressure, he never needed models in later life. He was one of the official artists assigned to the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I and he taught at the Art Students League on and off, from 1905-29. He served as president of the Society of Illustrators from 1929 to 1936 and received many respected awards later in life.

2. In a 20 March 1931, article in the New York Herald Paris edition, an episode involving Lord and Lady Deterding is recounted:

Tonight Mr. Chaplin will be the guest of Sir Henri Deterding, the oil man, and Lady Deterding, who also are staying at the Crillon. They were guests of Mr. Chaplin during their recent visit to California and saw him make several scenes for “City Lights.”

Unofficial advices last night stated Mr. Chaplin will be decorated with the Legion of Honor tomorrow. Mr. Robinson believes the comedian will leave Paris on Sunday, probably for Barcelona.

Mr. Chaplin as an artist, genius, actor and psychologist was lauded in the traditional center of French learning last night by two noted French scholars, Pierre Andrieu and Raoul Villedieu-Benoit.

So tremendous was the rush to hear the double illustrated lecture in the Amphitheatre Descartes of the Sorbonne that the audience, filling this room and overflowing far into the corridors, was transferred to the institution’s largest hall, the Amphitheatre Richilieu.

Mr. Andrieu, praising Mr. Chaplin’s artistry, traced his evolution as an actor from his days of pure comedy to those of a comic element mixed with pathos and deep knowledge of human nature.

Not only is the film star a great actor and artist, said M. Villedieu-Benoit, but he is a great psychologist.

To illustrate the savant’s discussion, takes from many of the Chaplin films were projected, starting with the ancient, pie-throwing Mutual pictures of 1913 on up to “The Kid” and “The Circus.”

3. Sem (Georges Goursat, 1863-1934) was born in the Dordogne region of France. He was attracted to the glamour of the big city and studied art in Paris. He was neither a fine artist, nor one whose drawing was held in high regard, but his skill in caricature was outstanding. He is especially known for his skilled portrayals of city life in Paris at the turn of the century.

4. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News for 4 April 1931, reports in an article entitled “Charlie Hunts the Boar in France—in a Duke’s Pink Coat” that Chaplin “followed the Duke’s pack of boarhounds in Hallet Wood, part of the Forest of Eu.” Accounts of Charlie Chaplin’s success in riding to hounds vary from being well up in “a thrilling run of 20 miles in 3 ½ hours,” unfortunately without killing the boar, “due to his inability to master his horse in covert.”

5. Not mentioned here, but only in his later My Autobiography (1964) is Chaplin’s lover, May Reeves. Their relationship was reported on at length in the press at the time. Noted gossipmonger, Louella Parsons, in a column published on 28 July 1931, offers her analysis of the affair: “A romance as hot as the rays of the July sun has just reached me via cable. Our old friend, Charlie Chaplin, king pin of the comics and regular Don Juan when it comes to falling in love, has again succumbed to love’s young dream. Charlie, according to our cable advices, is infatuated with a beautiful Roumanian girl.

Unfortunately for Charlie’s reputation as the perfect Romeo, our information is that the love is mostly on Charlie’s side, the Roumanian beauty being admittedly in love with a slick haired youth who might be cast as a gigolo if he were in Hollywood.

Having had many experiences in matters of the heart with such beauties as Lita Grey Chaplin, Mildred Harris, Pola Negri, Peggy Joyce, et cetera, et cetera, Charlie has, like Alexander, cut the Gordian knot. He has, putting it in simple language, promised the said youth to make another Valentino of him.

The lad with visions of the glamour and glory that surrounded the adored Rudolph, has let Charlie occupy the center of the stage. So not every one is happy, the boy, the girl and the other side of the triangle, the world’s greatest comedian.

Happiness means to Charlie contentment in affairs of the heart and when the screen clown is in love the sky is the limit. Ordinarily as thrifty as a Scotch banker, Charlie forgets money when he is basking in the sunlight of some fair charmer’s smiles. So just to prove to the Roumanian beauty how little money means, he has built a costly home in Juan Les Pins adjoining the lady’s humble abode.

6. A Continental Daily Telegraph article dated 19 August 1931, and entitled “Millionaire’s Wife as Film Star,” suggests that Mrs. Gould had an ulterior motive for making sure that Chaplin became the Goulds’ guest:

The reason of the film star’s visit, it is understood, is to make a last effort to secure the consent of Mr. Frank J. Gould, the American millionaire, to permit beautiful Mrs. Frank Jay Gould to appear in a super motion picture.

Mr. Chaplin is endeavoring to find a way to make use of what he believes to be the wonderful picture talents of Mrs. Gould. He offered Mr. Gould to have different scenarios written by half-a-dozen of the world’s best authors and so secure a suitable and satisfactory medium in which Mrs. Gould could appear. So far Mr. Gould is adamant. It is understood that one condition he made when he married Mrs. Gould was that she should never appear on the stage in a professional capacity. In fact, this difference of opinion on the matter soon led to the couple’s divorce.

7. An article entitled “April 1 Joke on Chaplin,” dated 3 April 1931, in Edinburgh’s Scotsman, relates one of Syd’s typical practical jokes on the trip:

Charlie Chaplin found out to-day that it was April 1. He lunched with his brother Sydney and a large number of friends at a hotel, and one item on the menu was Charlie’s favourite dish, “crepes suzette,” the fascinating little rolled pancakes which are served with blazing rum.

When the dish arrived Charlie took three, and began to tell everyone of the excellent pancakes he had eaten in all the four corners of the world. “Ah!” said his brother Sydney, “just eat these, Charlie; I’ve bet you’ve never tasted any like them.” Charlie struggled with them for some time before he discovered that they were made of cheesecloth covered with batter. It then gradually dawned on him that he had forgotten the date. “These are too hard on a man,” he said, and then joined heartily in the laughter until he was otherwise occupied with some real “crepes suzette.”

8. Chaplin provides this additional information in his typescript draft (Charlie Chaplin Archive), perhaps one of his wittiest parts of the work as a whole:

The casino life I found dull and silly but one could meet several nice people who had attractive homes and they would entertain in a nice way. I later discovered there were many lives to live there—the social, the intellectual and the bohemian, and of course the “casinian” to use my own eulogism.

Since staying here, I have made a discovery. The Riviera has a tendency to inspire ladies—I might say, middle-aged women, with a maternal feeling. Several were pointed out to me, who had adopted sons—young men between the ages of 19 and 25 who were usually young men of Latin origin and who had been left exposed to the bitter cruelties of the indifferent world. These yearning affectionate mothers with all the tenderness of their maternal heart would adopt these children. They were grand inspiring sights to see, mother and son dancing to the strains of a pleading tango. It has become quite a vogue lately to adopt these handsome young sons. I often thought it was singular that these adopting mothers only yearned for boys and never for little girls. It seemed that the old gentlemen were more interested in the latter. I suppose it is the law of opposites that ladies should like sons and gentlemen should like daughters. I hadn’t been on the Riviera long before I felt that I should adopt one myself. Strange how one gets inspired with this paternal feeling. Maternity and Paternity is prevalent everywhere. One would occasionally see some old gentleman’s adopted daughter running away with play with a mother’s adopted son and how concerned the parents would be on finding their little children playing around the gambling tables. The parents would never like their offspring to mix with other children. Such a thing would cause them great anxiety, yet occasionally the little ones would play, not realizing the grief they were causing their fond parents. Due to this sort of disobedience parents would sometimes release from their legal charge and then the little boy would be homeless again. These tragedies are frequent on the Riviera, the land of adopted sons and daughters.

9. Von Ulm reports:

Another renewal of friendship delighted him; it was with Elsa Maxwell, that unique impresarianne of the party whose originality had resulted in changing dull and stately receptions and balls into wacky gatherings somewhat resembling mild riots, but, withal, a lot of fun. Miss Maxwell, short, stout and pudding-featured, impeccably frocked by Europe’s famous couturiers—and still a frump—is a triumph of personality over bank balance. She ruthlessly jarred American society loose from its fond convictions that three generations of dubiously gotten wealth presupposed charm and other ingredients for social superiority. She convinced them that personal achievement in the arts, and professional distinction, or even just being amusing, were more logical entrance cards to the charmed circle in a supposedly democratic country than mere riches.

On the barren canvases of parties, Elsa Maxwell splashed—and still splashes—lavish color. As a beginning she flung her repertoire of songs (of her own composition) not to the favored few, the artists who revel in an occasional abandonment to Rabelaisian humor as a divagation from the effete pursuits, but to the stuffed shirts who could take her downright, spontaneous hell-raising—or go home. They did not go home. (319-20)

10. Sir Oswald Ernald Mosely (1896-1980), Sixth Baronet, was an English politician and founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was a member of Parliament for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931 and then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour government from 1929 to 1931, resigning to form the “New Party,” which eventually merged with the British Union of Fascists in 1932. He generally opposed free trade and affiliated himself with Nazi Germany.

11. The Western Evening Herald, in an article dated 10 April 1931, and entitled “Royalty Kept Waiting,” relates that “An unfortunate hitch occurred at the first night of ‘City Lights’ at Monte Carlo”:

The Duke of Connaught had graciously accepted an invitation to be present and arrived at the appointed hour, but Mr. Charles Chaplin did not arrive until an hour later.

The Duke, however, took the incident in the best part, and his welcome of the film star when he did arrive lacked nothing in warmness.

12. Prince Louis Honoré Charles Antoine Grimaldi, (1870–1949) was the ruler of Monaco from 1922 to 1949 and is largely remembered as nearly running the principality into the ground, despite the great success he achieved as a military man prior to his reign, where he even received the Légion d’Honneur medal in 1908. His reign included the establishment of Prince Louis II Stadium, the Monaco Football Club, and new management for the shadily run Monte Carlo Casino, but then World War II intervened. The Grimaldi family found itself divided between loyalties to France, the Vichy government, and even Italy and her Fascists, leading to near dissolution by the communist faction of the occupying Allies at the close of the war.

13. Emil Ludwig (1881-1948). An article in the Boston Globe, entitled “Tragic Comedians” and dated 6 September 1931, provides more information on this meeting:

Mr. Emil Ludwig, that inexhaustible writer of biography after the mode, was astonished recently when he paid visit to Charlie Chaplin on the Riviera. This emotion was due to discovery that the artist, whose portrayals of outcast poverty have won him fame and fortune, is quite as simple and unaffectedly natural in life as he is in his role; that he is alert to the things of the spirit and to the vital movements of world affairs, and that he is a man of profound sadness.

Capable of embittered ferocity towards institutions, Charlie views the men and women who live and move beneath them with serene pity of acceptance and with quick sympathy. It is possible for this singular humorist to remark, one minute: “Suffering is beautiful, don’t you think?”; and the next: “Ideals are dangerous things, from which, too often, nothing comes. Ideals? They are usually false.” And he means that, too.

One instant he may explain that his model is Anatole France, the genial French mocker, who saw in life neither right nor wrong, but only the illusions born of human frailties; another minute this king of pantomime can lose himself in contemplation of a danseuse, performing courageously before an array of tables almost entirely empty in an enormous restaurant, and he can exclaim: “Look! How gripping when she bowed to the empty tables. I must open a picture that way: There will be a street singer who will sing up to a house full of windows, and later one will see that it is only a dead wall with nothing—no faces, no nods, nothing—to hear and acknowledge the singing.”

14. The Lancashire Daily Post reports on “Charlie Chaplin’s Reading” on 27 February 21931:

The Mysterious Universe by Sir James Jeans (Cambridge)

The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist by Dr. Robert Eisler (Methuen)

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell (Allen and Unwin)

The Treasurer’s Report and Other Aspects of Community Singing by Robert Benchley (Harpers)

Brother and Sister by Leonard Frank (Davies)

Other titles are revealed in Syd’s letter to R. J. Minney, 9 March 1932:

I noticed a few of the books in Charlie’s cabin,

Behind the Scenes of International Finance by Paul Einzig

The Bank of International Settlement by Paul Einzig

The Economic Consequences of the Peace by J. M. Keynes

Reminiscence of the Russian Revolution by Phillip Price

15. Sadakichi Hartmann, critic and poet (1864-1944), was half Japanese and half German. His play Last Thirty Days of Christ “embodies a rare and, to the strictly orthodox, sacrilegious vein of satire. It portrays Jesus as the mystic, the lone philosopher in an age of materialism, eons ahead of his own disciples, an ‘old soul’ far above the understanding of his closest followers. But it shows him as a cynic, also, divining the sycophancy of his disciples” (Von Ulm 281-82).

16. Chaplin recounts in his autobiography that:

I now saw H. G. Wells frequently. He had an apartment in Baker Street. When I visited him there, he had four lady secretaries inundated in books of reference, checking and making notes from encyclopedias, technical books, documents and papers. “That’s The Anatomy of Money, my new book,” said he. “Quite an industry.”

“It strikes me they’re doing most of the work,” I remarked jokingly. What appeared to be large biscuit tins were ranged on a high shelf around his library, each labeled “Biographical Material,” “Personal Letters,” “Philosophy,” “Scientific Data,” and so forth.

After dinner, friends arrived, among them Professor Laski, who was still very young-looking. Harold was a most brilliant orator. I heard him speak to the American Bar Association in California, and he talked unhesitantly and brilliantly for an hour without a note. At H. G.’s flat that night, Harold told me of the amazing innovations in the philosophy of socialism. He said that the slightest acceleration in speed translates into terrific social differences. The conversation was most interesting until H. G.’s bedtime, which, with little subtlety, he indicated by looking at the guests, then at his watch, until everybody left. (My Autobiography 348)

17. Paul Morand (1888-1976) is the son of a painter and a dramatic author. At twenty-four, he became an attaché of the French embassy in London. At twenty-nine, he published his first novel, Mercure de France. His novel Milady was his masterpiece. However, he made some unwise political choices and attached himself to the Vichy government, becoming an ambassador to Bucharest. After the war, he was decommissioned and retired to Montreux, Switzerland. However, with the passage of time, his collaborator status was forgotten and he was elected to l’Académie française in 1968.

18. A Herald Dispatch [Huntington, WV] article dated 30 April 1931, and titled “Aimee, Charlie Go Sightseeing,” confirms that McPherson, the famous Glendale, California, evangelist (Angelus Temple), met up with Chaplin in Marseilles: “While attempting to evade the public eye here by changing her residence four times, she bumped into Charlie Chaplin, the film comedian, and when they learned that their plans to visit the same resort coincided, they boarded the same train for Juan-les-Pins.” Gerith Von Ulm, ostensibly through Chaplin’s valet, Kono, reports that the two spent several days together. After an initial dinner at which Chaplin regaled McPherson with such lines as “Religion—orthodox religion—is based on fear, fear of doing something on earth which will keep them out of heaven. My God, they miss out on all the glorious freedom of life in order to reach a mythical heaven where they can walk on golden streets and play a harp—a bait of pure boredom, if you ask me,” (330-31), he set out night after night thereafter until McPherson’s departure, “to the colorful, picturesque waterfront of Marseilles” (331).

19. Frank Harris (1856-1931). Irish writer Harris ran away to America in 1871 and then returned to London in 1876 to become a journalist. He was known in this field for his sensational headlines. Although he is most remembered for his excellent biography of Oscar Wilde, he encountered the most controversy for his four-volume autobiography, My Life and Loves, which was banned for pornography. He accompanied Chaplin on his first tour of Sing Sing in 1921.

Part IV

1. Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast was born in Argentina, educated in Paris and England, and highly decorated for service in World War I. He met George Fitzmaurice, the director, following the war and followed him back to Hollywood, circa 1922. D’Arrast was known for his boyish good looks, charm, and grace. Chaplin offered him a position as technical adviser on A Woman of Paris and D’Arrast continued in his employ on The Gold Rush before beginning his own directorial career. Although he made only eight films, A Gentleman of Paris, Laughter, and Topaze among them, they are remembered for their stylishness, their wit, and photographic beauty.

It is likely that Chaplin stayed overnight at D’Arrast’s family estate, Château d’Echauz, in the tiny village of St. Etienne de Baigorry in the Basque country.

2. Elsa Maxwell relates in her autobiography:

The first time I saw Chaplin, he gave an unforgettable one-man show at Biarritz in 1928 [sic]. Jean Patou had hired a fleet of motorboats to take a party of guests to a bullfight at Bayonne, but the excursion was canceled by a violent hurricane that blew up suddenly. The storm knocked out the electric lights and several women showed signs of panic as the wind and the rain mounted in fury. Patou’s house was on the water and everyone was wondering apprehensively whether it was safe to remain, until Chaplin took charge of the situation.

“It’s nonsense to sit around like this,” Chaplin said to me. “Let’s amuse ourselves. Play something from Carmen and I’ll take it from there.”

With absolutely no preparation, Chaplin proceeded to give an enthralling pantomime of a bullfight in the flickering candlelight. He impersonated, in turn, a frenzied spectator, the bull, a picador, a gored horse, and the matador. Each characterization was so perfect and the continuity had such dramatic purity that there was a collective gasp when he made the matador’s final thrust at the bull. With a subtle shrug, Chaplin abruptly changed the mood and improvised a tragic triangle in which a husband murdered his wife and her lover, then committed suicide. Chaplin’s artistry held us spellbound for three hours, by the watch. It was not until he finished that we realized the hurricane had long since subsided. (233)

3. Two instances indicating Chaplin’s altruistic nature were reported in the press at this time. The Camberwell & Peckham Times, reported on 5 September 1931, in “Charlie Chaplin’s Gift,” for instance, that:

Charlie Chaplin has a soft spot in his heart for the men who work in the Borough Market. He has written to Mr. W. Blackman, secretary of the Borough Market sports, enclosing a cheque for £20, to be spent on buying a suit of clothes, an overcoat, and a gold watch to go to the winners of the basket carrying competition at Herne Hill next week. The watch has to be inscribed with the winner’s name and will be marked “From Charlie Chaplin. London Market Sports, 1931.” Nearly 60 entries have been received from men, representing all the London markets, for the basket-carrying competition, and 672 baskets will be required to equip them all for the contest.

Yet again, in the Sunday Dispatch of 11 October 1931, reports in “Karno Comrades” that:

there is all the romantic irony of an O. Henry plot in the story of how Charlie Chaplin met a colleague after twenty years. With his cousin Aubrey, Chaplin spent a day revisiting old haunts at Lambeth. On returning they walked through the Strand and passed a pavement artist. Charlie grinned as he noticed a crayon drawing of himself. Suddenly he stopped and gripped Aubrey’s arm. “Just go back and ask that artist fellow if his name is Dando.” Aubrey did so. The man’s name was Dando. Charlie strode over in a flash. Their hands met in a tight grip—these two who used to act together. They were both members of Fred Karno’s Mumming Birds. Dando’s name was Arthur Webb. A piece of crinkly paper passed to Dando “just to celebrate the reunion.”

4. In an article entitled “Chaplin to Witness ‘Fun’ of Elections,” by Ferdinand Kuhn Jr., dated 9 October 1932 (Charlie Chaplin Archive pressbook, no source listed), he reports that:

Charlie Chaplin and Ramsay MacDonald had an unexpected midnight meeting Monday just as the Prime Minister, pale and tired, was walking home from the House of Commons. Somehow Mr. MacDonald was gloomy. His cabinet had decided to plunge into a general election, and as an old campaigner he did not enjoy the prospect. He knew that the strain of past struggles would be nothing compared with the responsibility of leading the so-called National party, all of whose component elements were pulling in opposite directions.

But Chaplin was grinning happily. “I had thought of leaving England in a few days,” he told the Prime Minister, “but now that there is going to be an election, I’m going to stay and see the fun.”

Not being a candidate or party leader, Charlie was perfectly right in looking forward to “fun.” From the sightseer’s viewpoint—and from the newspaper correspondent’s, too—this election is going to be more fun than any since the famous knock-down, drag-out fight which Dickens described so cruelly a century ago. It may be as Lord Derby said this week, “The most jealous election in British history,” but it is going to have its lighter sides. [. . .]”

5. It was during this few weeks when Chaplin made his oft-quoted critique of the European situation, quoted here in the 5 September 1931, Burlington Post [Iowa], in an article entitled “Wisdom from the Mouth of a Jester”: “When importuned on patriotic grounds to participate in some public function, contrary to his practice, he replied: ‘Patriotism is the greatest form of insanity the world ever suffered. It is rampant everywhere and what is going to be the result?—another war. I hope they send the old men to the front next time, for they are the real criminals of Europe today.’”

6. Painter Augustus John writes that:

It was at the Morrells that I once met Charlie Chaplin. He found it difficult, I think, to preserve his natural cheerfulness amidst the habitual gloom of the Bloomsburyites who formed the rest of the party, but his spirit was more than equal to those adverse conditions: he was not one to be silenced and he had the hearty backing of his hostess to count on.

While he was speaking on social conditions in a strain which seemed to me familiar and sympathetic, I was impelled to slap him on the back, saying “Charlie, why, you’re nothing but a dear old anarchist!” Recovering, he replied, “Yes, that’s about it.” Although he agreed that London was his proper habitat, he admitted to being enticed by the powerful lure of Hollywood. Recalling his early days and the vicissitudes of his family, all rolling stones of the music hall, he mentioned that his mother had been courted by a lord: “Oh,” drawled Ottoline, much interested, “which lord?” “Ah, I’m not going to tell you,” replied Charlie. (84-85)

7. Chaplin presents a different version of the story in My Autobiography: For company, I bought a rabbit, and wherever I stayed I would smuggle it into my room unknown to the landlady. It was an endearing little thing, though not housebroken. Its fur looked so white and clean that it belied its pungent odor. I kept it in a wooden cage hidden under the bed. The landlady would cheerfully enter the room with my breakfast, until she contacted the odor; then she would leave, looking worried and confused. The moment she was gone I would release the rabbit and it would lope around the room.

Before long I had it trained to run to its box every time there was a knock at the door. If the landlady discovered my secret I would have the rabbit perform this trick, which usually won her heart, and she would put up with us for the week.

But in Tonypandy, Wales, after I showed my trick, the landlady smiled cryptically and made no comment; but when I returned from the theatre that night my pet had gone. When I inquired about it, the landlady merely shook her head. “It must have run away or someone must have stolen it.” She had in her own way handled the problem efficaciously. (83)

8. The Douglas Plan was based on the work of Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952), an English engineer and social economist, educated at Cambridge University. Having devised the economic theory of Social Credit in 1924, in which he applied engineering methodology to economics, Douglas believed the economic system was organized to create unnecessary scarcity of products and services in order to maximize profits for the powerful, without any of that profit ending up in the hands and pocketbooks of the workers. To remedy the problem, he proposed a twofold plan. First he proposed the establishment of a National Dividend to distribute money equally to all citizens (over and above their wages) and second employ a price adjustment mechanism, the Just Price, which would prevent any threat of inflation. Individual freedom as provided by economic freedom was Douglas’s central goal. See also Martin-Nielsen.

9. The 4 November 1931, issue of Performer reports on Chaplin’s initiation:

Sunday was a red letter night in the records of the Grand Order of Water Rats, for Charlie Chaplin was initiated into the brotherhood of the Order, in the presence of one of the biggest attendances of officers and Rats ever experienced for such a ceremony.

Had space permitted the gathering would have been even greater, for though the time of the initiation had been kept secret many more than could be accommodated called up at the Water Rats’ Club and had to be tactfully denied admission. Telegrams were also received from many Rats who were unable to be present.

The initiation ceremony was impressively carried through by King Rat Will Hay, Chief Precentor Fred Russell and the officers of the Lodge—after which formality was discarded, and there ensued one of those real jolly nights in the celebration of which the Rats stand pre-eminent among all organizations.

Into these proceedings of informal nature Charlie Chaplin entered with zest and spirit taking an active part in anything that happened; meantime exchanging confidences and reminiscences with those of the company of whom he remembered of yore. For, as he remarked, there were many there that night who were stars when he (Mr. Chaplin) had but just stepped onto the music hall stage—and many whose work he retained a lively recollection of from the time when he was one of the Eight Lancashire Lads. The time passed rapidly and pleasantly, and not least for the new member, who clearly welcomed the opportunity of being, not a famous film star, the center of adulation, but just Charlie Chaplin among associates in the great business of entertaining the public. So strongly did this effect him that towards the close of the evening, he assured the company that it had been the jolliest and happiest time he had spent since he had been back to England.

10. Walska, in her memoir Always Room at the Top, relates her Chaplin encounter in St. Moritz:

Ten days! With some friends, I went for the winter sports to—St. Moritz. [. . .] What a pity it got dark after four o’clock. But then the pastries were so good at Hanselmann’s!

An after-dinner philosophical conversation with Charlie Chaplin easily compensated for the shortness of the day. And I had as a flirt the handsomest man Great Britain has produced! He was so very handsome! And his mentality did not overtire him at all! Wonderful—there was no possibility of getting into a discussion with him. We skated together. He skated badly but his skating suit was so becoming to him! (330)

11. A Los Angeles Times article, dated 27 May 1932, and entitled “Chaplin’s Prank Sends Naples Policeman to Jail” details at least one of Chaplin’s activities while in Naples:

Because Charlie Chaplin engaged in one of his characteristic pranks on his recent tour of Europe, a Naples policeman had to spend five days in his native “cooler” and now wants to come to Hollywood—if Charlie will give him a job.

Alf Reeves, business manager for Chaplin, learned about it yesterday in a letter from the poliziotto.

In a spirit of fun, it seems, Charlie posed between two policemen, mocking an expression of surprise at his “arrest.” Photographs of the funny pose found their way to the press and were widely published. Then the superior of the two poliziottos was reprimanded and sentenced.

12. According to Syd Chaplin’s notes for the Asian leg of the tour (Charlie Chaplin Archive), he and Charlie noticed “British methods of using the whip on natives. We noticed the same thing in Cairo.”

13. According to Syd Chaplin’s notes (Charlie Chaplin Archive), Chaplin was “very much impressed with the modern design and compliment the manager. [He] and the manager [stood] outside in the center of the road admiring the architecture in the pouring rain. [The manager was] trying to be polite and getting soak[ed] to the skin. [Chaplin was] wearing a MacIntosh and entirely unconscious of predicament.”

14. According to Syd Chaplin’s notes (Charlie Chaplin Archive), Chaplin “made a speech over the radio in the hotel [Orange Hotel] lobby” here.

Part V

1. His work still revered and collected today, Peter Helck (1893-1988) was the illustrator for this installment. Like the other illustrators for the series, Helck was also a student at the Art Students League in New York City. Known especially for his studies of automobiles, Helck acquired this passion and expertise during four years abroad in which he did some British motor advertising. He was author-illustrator of two books, The Checkered Flag and Great Auto Races.

2. According to Syd Chaplin’s notes (Charlie Chaplin Archive), the young men were Sitton and Johnson.

3. Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) and his wife Florence lived in Bali during this period because it was a cheap place to be an artist. Florence wrote an extensive article on Chaplin’s visit, entitled “Charlie Chaplin, Balinese.” In one passage, she relates that:

Chaplin entered into the spirit of the place and ate rice with his fingers from dishes made of banana leaves, squatted on the ground to watch cockfights, and would go any distance to see a native dance or hear an orchestra. His understanding of the dancing and music was amazing. The music is entirely different from the white man’s, and persons who have long been in Bali find it difficult to interpret, yet Chaplin went away from the performances humming entire passages with unerring instinct. And his imitations of the dancers would pack a Broadway house. (n.p.)

4. Walter Spies was born in Russia on 14 September 1898, so he was about twenty-five years old when he came to Indonesia in 1923, and about twenty-nine years old when he moved to Bali in 1927. In almost everybody’s opinion, Walter Spies was the greatest and certainly the most flamboyant painter to live in Bali, where his name has become a legend. After World War I, he was thrown into the creative maelstrom of the Weimar Republic, embracing the German artistic avant-garde. Lover of the great German film director, Frederich Murnau, Spies was in close contact with Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka, who both influenced his painting. In a letter to his father in 1919, Walter writes that he wishes to free himself of indoctrination and prejudices about taste and beauty and paint freely like a child, with the skill of Chagall and Klee. Bali was to give him the freedom to realize his wish.

5. According to Syd Chaplin’s notes (Charlie Chaplin Archive), in the kris dance, “the dancers are supposed to be in a trance and are brought out of same by holy water thrown upon them by the priest. [. . .] Just before this dance commenced, we noticed all the younger people vacating the front seats while full-grown men took the pleasure. We were informed that they were placed there to protect us in case the dancers should attack us with their knives which they were apt to do under the [influence] of their trance.”

6. Donald Richie writes that:

Prime Minister Inukai was one of Japan’s foremost liberals. He had long fought for parliamentary democracy and had initiated a policy of friendly relations with China that would, it was hoped, somewhat counter Japan’s military adventures in that country.

It was only many years later that Chaplin learned of the connection between his own experiences and the assassination. At the trial of those who had killed the prime minister, Lieutenant Seishi Koga, the leader, testified that there had been plans for another assassination—that of Charlie Chaplin.

The famous comedian was to have met Inukai on May 15 and both he and the prime minister were to have been killed. During the proceedings, the judge asked Koga what the significance of killing Chaplin was to have been. The young man answered (in the words of Hugh Byas, from whom this account is taken) that “Chaplin is a popular figure in the United States and the darling of the capitalist class. We believed that killing him would cause a war with America.” Japanese sources, however, say the assassination of the comedian was merely to cause such confusion that the coup d’état could be more easily consolidated. (110-11)

7. Takejirô Ôtani (1877-1969). With his twin brother Matsujirô Shirai, he founded Shôchiku, a kabuki production company in 1895 (named as such in 1902). Samuel Leiter, personal communication, 24 November 2013.

Appendix B

1. “The Legion was founded as a military institution, as the names of its ranks indicate, and the members were distributed around the country in different regional groups. It was intended as a framework for civilian society.

This new order, established on the initiative of the First Consul Bonaparte, was to consist of a corps d’élite that would combine the courage of servicemen and the talents of civilians, and would form the basis of a new society to serve the nation.

On 14 floréal year X (4 May 1802), Bonaparte declared to the Council of States ‘If we award honors to civilians or military men, then we would need to set up two separate orders—but there is only one Nation. However, if we only gave honors for military exploits, that would be even worse, because it would make the Nation appear worthless.’”