*
Creating this way made films exciting. In the theatre I had been confined to a rigid, non-deviating routine of repeating the same thing night after night; once stage business had been tried out and set, one rarely attempted to invent new business. The only motivating thing about acting in the theatre was a good performance or a bad one. But films were freer. They gave me a sense of adventure. ‘What do you think of this for an idea?’ Sennett would say, or: ‘There’s a flood down town on Main Street.’ Such remarks launched a Keystone comedy. It was this charming alfresco spirit that was a delight – a challenge to one’s creativeness. It was so free and easy – no literature, no writers, we just had a notion around which we built gags, then made up the story as we went along.
For instance, in His Prehistoric Past I started with one gag, which was my first entrance. I appeared dressed as a prehistoric man wearing a bearskin, and, as I scanned the landscape, I began pulling the hair from the bearskin to fill my pipe. This was enough of an idea to stimulate a prehistoric story, introducing love, rivalry, combat and chase. This was the method by which we all worked at Keystone.
I can trace the first prompting of desire to add another dimension to my films besides that of comedy. I was playing in a picture called The New Janitor, in a scene in which the manager of the office fires me. In pleading with him to take pity on me and let me retain my job, I started to pantomime appealingly that I had a large family of little children. Although I was enacting mock sentiment, Dorothy Davenport, an old actress, was on the sidelines watching the scene, and during rehearsal I looked up and to my surprise found her in tears. ‘I know it’s supposed to be funny,’ she said, ‘but you just make me weep.’ She confirmed something I already felt: I had the ability to evoke tears as well as laughter.
The ‘he-man’ atmosphere of the studio would have been almost intolerable but for the pulchritudinous influence. Mabel Nor-mand’s presence, of course, graced the studio with glamour. She was extremely pretty, with large heavy-lidded eyes and full lips that curled delicately at the corners of her mouth, expressing humour and all sorts of indulgence. She was light-hearted and gay, a good fellow, kind and generous; and everyone adored her.
Stories went around of Mabel’s generosity to the wardrobe woman’s child, of the jokes she played on the camera-man. Mabel liked me in a sisterly fashion, for at that time she was very much enamoured of Mack Sennett. Because of Mack I saw a lot of Mabel; the three of us would dine together and afterwards Mack would fall asleep in the hotel lobby and we would while away an hour at the movies or in a café, then come back and wake him up. Such propinquity one might think would result in a romance, but it did not; we remained, unfortunately, only good friends.
Once, however, when Mabel, Roscoe Arbuckle and I appeared for some charity at one of the theatres in San Francisco, Mabel and I came very near to being emotionally involved. It was a glamorous evening and the three of us had appeared with great success at the theatre. Mabel had left her coat in the dressing-room and asked me to take her there to get it. Arbuckle and the others were waiting below outside in a car. For a moment we were alone. She looked radiantly beautiful and as I placed her wrap over her shoulders I kissed her and she kissed me back. We might have gone further, but people were waiting. Later I tried to follow up the episode, but nothing ever came of it. ‘No, Charlie,’ she said good-humouredly, ‘I’m not your type, neither are you mine.’
About this time Diamond Jim Brady came to Los Angeles – Hollywood was then in embryo. He arrived with the Dolly Sisters and their husbands, and entertained lavishly. At a dinner he gave at the Alexandria Hotel there were the Dolly Twins and their husbands, Carlotta Monterey, Lou Tellegen, leading man of Sarah Bernhardt, Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Blanche Sweet, Nat Goodwin and many others. The Dolly Twins were sensationally beautiful. The two of them, their husbands and Diamond Jim Brady were almost inseparable; their association was puzzling.
Diamond Jim was a unique American character, who looked like a benign John Bull. That first night I could not believe my eyes, for he wore diamond cuff-links and studs in his shirtfront, each stone larger than a shilling. A few nights later we dined at Nat Goodwin’s Café on the pier, and this time Diamond Jim showed up with his emerald set, each stone the size of a small matchbox. At first I thought he was wearing them as a joke, and innocently asked if they were genuine. He said they were. ‘But,’ I said, with astonishment, ‘they are fabulous.’ ‘If you want to see beautiful emeralds, here,’ he replied. He lifted his dress waistcoat, showing a belt the size of the Marquess of Queens-berry’s championship belt, completely covered with the largest emeralds I have ever seen. He was quite proud to tell me that he had ten sets of precious stones and wore a different set every night.
It was 1914 and I was twenty-five years old, in the flush of youth and enamoured with my work, not alone for the success of it, but for its enchantment, as it gave me an opportunity of meeting all the film stars – and I was their fan at one time or other. Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Miriam Cooper, Clara Kimball Young, the Gish sisters and others – all of them beautiful, and actually to
