Half-way through making The Great Dictator I began receiving alarming messages from United Artists. They had been advised by the Hays Office that I would run into censorship trouble. Also the English office was very concerned about an anti-Hitler picture and doubted whether it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. However, I was determined to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race: As though such a thing ever existed outside of the Australian Aborigines!
While I was making The Great Dictator, Sir Stafford Cripps came to California en route from Russia. He came to dinner with a young man just down from Oxford whose name escapes my memory, but not the remark he made that evening. Said he: ‘The way things are going in Germany and elsewhere, I have a small chance of living more than five years.’ Sir Stafford had been on a fact-finding tour in Russia and was profoundly impressed with what he had seen. He described their vast projects and of course their terrific problems. He seemed to think that war was inevitable.
More worrying letters came from the New York office imploring me not to make the film, declaring it would never be shown in England or America. But I was determined to make it, even if I had to hire halls myself to show it.
Before I had finished The Dictator England declared war on the Nazis. I was in Catalina on my boat over the week-end and heard the depressing news over the radio. In the beginning there was inaction on all fronts. ‘The Germans will never break through the Maginot Line,’ we said. Then suddenly the holocaust began: the break-through in Belgium, the collapse of the Maginot Line, the stark and ghastly fact of Dunkirk – and France was occupied. The news was growing gloomier. England was fighting with her back to the wall. Now our New York office was wiring frantically; ‘Hurry up with your film, everyone is waiting for it.’
The Great Dictator was difficult to make; it involved miniature models and props, which took a year’s preparation. Without these devices it would have cost five times as much. However, I had spent $500,000 before I began turning the camera.
Then Hitler decided to invade Russia! This was proof that his inevitable dementia had set in. The United States had not yet entered the war, but there was a feeling of great relief both in England and America.
Near the completion of The Dictator, Douglas Fairbanks and his wife, Sylvia, visited us on location. Douglas had been inactive for the last five years and I had rarely seen him, for he had been travelling to and from England. I thought he had aged and grown a little stouter and seemed preoccupied. Nevertheless, he was still the same enthusiastic Douglas. He laughed uproariously during the taking of one of our scenes. ‘I can’t wait to see it,’ he said.
Doug stayed about an hour. When he left I stood gazing after him, watching him help his wife up a steep incline; and as they walked away along the footpath, the distance growing between us, I felt a sudden tinge of sadness. Doug turned and I waved, and he waved back. That was the last I ever saw of him. A month later Douglas Junior telephoned to say his father had died in the night of a heart-attack. It was a terrible shock, for he belonged so much to life.
I have missed Douglas – I have missed the warmth of his enthusiasm and charm; I have missed his friendly voice over the telephone, that used to call me up on a bleak and lonely Sunday morning: ‘Charlie, coming up for lunch – then for a swim – then for dinner – then afterwards, see a picture?’ Yes, I have missed his delightful friendship.
In what society of men would I prefer to associate? I suppose my own profession should be my choice. Yet Douglas was the only actor of whom I ever made a friend. Meeting the stars at various Hollywood parties, I have come away sceptical – maybe there were too many of us. The atmosphere was more challenging than friendly, and one ran many gauntlets to and from the buffet in vying for special attention. No, stars amongst stars gave little light – or warmth.
Writers are nice people but not very giving; whatever they know they seldom impart to others; most of them keep it between the covers of their books. Scientists might be excellent company, but their mere appearance in a drawing-room mentally paralyses the rest of us. Painters are a bore because most of them would have you believe they are philosophers more than painters. Poets are undoubtedly the superior class and as individuals are pleasant, tolerant and excellent companions. But I think musicians in the aggregate are more cooperative than any other class. There is nothing so warm and moving as the sight of a symphony orchestra. The romantic lights of their music stands, the tuning up and the sudden silence as the conductor makes his entrance, affirms the social, cooperative feeling. I remember Horowitz, the pianist, dining at my house, and the guests discussing the state of the
