Thomas Ince gave barbecues and dances at his studio, which was in the wilds of northern Santa Monica, facing the Pacific Ocean. What wondrous nights – youth and beauty dancing to plaintive music on an open-air stage, with the soft sound of waves pounding on the nearby shore.
Peggy Pierce, an exceptionally beautiful girl with delicately chiselled features, beautiful white neck and a ravishing figure, was my first heart-throb. She did not make her appearance until my third week at the Keystone, having been ill with flu. But the moment we met we ignited; it was mutual, and my heart sang. How romantic were those morning’s turning up for work with the anticipation of seeing her each day.
On Sunday I would call for her at her parents’ apartment. Each night we met was an avowal of love, each night was a struggle. Yes. Peggy loved me, but it was a lost cause. She resisted and resisted, until I gave up in despair. At that time I had no desire to marry anyone. Freedom was too much of an adventure. No woman could measure up to that vague image I had in my mind.
Each studio was like a family. Films were made in a week, feature-length films never took more than two or three weeks. We worked by sunlight, which was why we worked in California: it was known to have nine months of sunshine each year.
Klieg lights came in about 1915; but Keystone never used them because they wavered, were not as clear as sunlight, and the lamps took up too much time to arrange. A Keystone Comedy rarely took more than a week to make, in fact I had made one in an afternoon, a picture called Twenty Minutes of Love, and it was a continuous laugh throughout. Dough and Dynamite, a most successful film, took nine days, at a cost of eighteen hundred dollars. And because I went over the budget of one thousand dollars, which was the limit for a Keystone comedy, I lost my bonus of twenty-five dollars. The only way they could retrieve themselves, said Sennett, would be to put it out as a two-reeler, which they did, and it grossed more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars the first year.
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Now I had several successful pictures under my belt, including Twenty Minutes of Love, Dough and Dynamite, Laughing Gas, and The Stage Hand. During this time Mabel and I starred in a feature picture with Marie Dressler. It was pleasant working with Marie, but I did not think the picture had much merit. I was more than happy to get back to directing myself again.
I recommended Sydney to Sennett; as the name Chaplin was being featured, he was only too pleased to annex another member of our family. Sennett signed him up for a year at a salary of two hundred dollars a week, which was twenty-five dollars more than I was getting. Sydney and his wife, fresh from England, came to the studio as I was leaving for location. Later that evening we dined together. I inquired how my pictures went in England.
Before my name was advertised, he said, many music-hall artists had spoken enthusiastically to him about a new American cinema comedian they had just seen. He also told me that before he had seen any of my comedies he called up the film exchange to find out when they would be released and, when he told them who he was, they invited him to see three of them. He had sat alone in the projection room and laughed like the devil.
‘What was your reaction to all this?’ I asked him.
Sydney expressed no great wonderment. ‘Oh, I knew you’d make good,’ he said confidently.
Mack Sennett was a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which entitled him to give a temporary membership card to a friend, and he gave one to me. It was the headquarters of all the bachelors and business men in town, an elaborate club with a large dining-room and lounge rooms on the first floor, which were open to the ladies in the evening, and a cocktail bar.
I had a large corner room on the top floor, with a piano and a small library, next to Mose Hamberger, who owned the May Department Store (the largest in town). The cost of living was remarkably cheap in those days. I paid twelve dollars a week for my room, which gave me the use of all the facilities of the club, including elaborate gymnasiums, swimming pools and excellent service. All told, I lived in a sumptuous style for seventy-five dollars a week, out of which I kept my end up in rounds of drinks and occasional dinners.
There was a camaraderie about the club which even the declaration of the First World War did not disturb. Everyone thought it would be over in six months; that it would last for four years, as Lord Kitchener predicted, people thought preposterous. Many were rather glad that war had been declared, for now we would show the Germans. There was no question of the outcome; the English and the French would lick them in six months. The war had not really got into its stride and California was far away from the scene of action.
About this time Sennett began to talk of renewing my contract, and wanted to know my terms. I knew to some degree the extent of my popularity, but I also knew the ephemera of it, and believed that, at the rate I was going, within a year I would be all dried up, so I had to make hay while the sun shone. ‘I want a thousand dollars per week!’ I said deliberately.
Sennett was appalled. ‘But I don’t make that,’ he said.
‘I know it,’ I answered, ‘but the public doesn’t line up outside the box-office when your name appears as they do for mine.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sennett, ‘but without the support of our organization you’d be
