I tried to tell him that I wanted to walk and get some fresh air.
‘This’ll do you more good than fresh air!’
I found myself being marched through the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House and swept down the aisle to two vacant seats.
‘Sit there,’ whispered Guest. ‘I’ll be back at the interval.’ Then he strode up the aisle and disappeared.
I had heard the music of Carmen several times, but now it seemed unfamiliar. I looked at my programme; yes, it was Wednesday, and on that day it announced Carmen. But they were playing another aria which I thought familiar too and which sounded like Rigoletto. I was confused. About two minutes before the end of the act, Guest stole into his seat beside me.
‘Is this Carmen?’ I whispered.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Haven’t you got a programme?’
He snatched it from me. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘Caruso and Graldine Farrar, Wednesday matinée, Carmen – there it is!’
The curtain came down and he bundled me along the seats to the side entrance leading back stage.
Men in muffled boots were shifting scenery in such a fashion that I seemed always in the way. The atmosphere was like a troubled dream. Out of it loomed a tall, rangy man, solemn and austere, with a pointed beard and bloodhound eyes that peered down at me from a height. He stood in the centre of the stage, a worried man, as scenery went and came about him.
‘How’s my good friend Signor Gatti-Casazza?’ said Maurice Guest, extending his hand.
Gatti-Casazza shook it and made a disparaging gesture, then mumbled something. Then Guest turned to me. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t Carmen, it was Rigoletto. Geraldine Farrar called up at the last minute to say she had a cold. This is Charlie Chaplin,’ said Guest. ‘I’m taking him round to meet Caruso, maybe it’ll cheer him up. Come with us.’ But Gatti-Casazza shook his head mournfully.
‘Where’s his dressing-room?’
Gatti-Casazza called the stage-manager. ‘He’ll show you.’
My instinct warned me not to bother Caruso at such a time and I told Guest so.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he answered.
We groped our way along the passage to his dressing-room. ‘Somebody’s turned off the light,’ said the stage-manager. ‘Just a moment and I’ll find the switch.’
‘Listen,’ said Guest, ‘I have people waiting for me, so I must run along.’
‘You’re not leaving?’ I asked quickly.
‘You’ll be O.K.’
Before I could answer he disappeared, leaving me in utter darkness. The stage-manager struck a match. ‘Here we are,’ he said, and gently knocked at a door. A voice in Italian exploded from within.
My friend answered back in Italian, ending with ‘Charlie Chaplin!’
There came another explosion.
‘Listen,’ I whispered, ‘some other time.’
‘No, no,’ he said; now he had a mission to fulfil. The door opened a crack and the dresser peered through the darkness. My friend in an aggrieved tone explained who I was.
‘Oh!’ said the dresser, then closed the door again. The door re-opened. ‘Come in, please!’
This little victory seemed to give my friend a lift. When we entered, Caruso was seated at his dressing-table before a mirror, his back towards us, clipping his moustache. ‘Ah, signor,’ said my friend cheerfully. ‘It is my very great pleasure to present to you the Caruso of the cinema, Mr Charlie Chaplin.’
Caruso nodded into the mirror and continued clipping his moustache.
Eventually he got up and surveyed me as he fastened his belt. ‘You have big success, eh? You make plenty of money.’
‘Yes,’ I smiled.
‘You must be very ’appy.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Then I looked at the stage-manager.
‘So,’ said he cheerfully, intimating that it was time to leave.
I stood up, then smiled at Caruso. ‘I don’t want to miss the Toreador scene.’
‘That’s Carmen, this is Rigoletto,’ he said, shaking my hand.
‘Oh yes, of course! Ha-Ha!’
*
I had assimilated as much of New York as was happily possible under the circumstances and thought it time to leave before the pleasures of vanity fair began to pall. Besides, I was anxious to start work under my new contract.
When I returned to Los Angeles I stayed at the Alexandria Hotel on Fifth Street and Main, the swankiest hotel in town. It was in the grand rococo style: marble columns and crystal chandeliers adorned the lobby, in the centre of which was the fabulous ‘million-dollar carpet’ – the mecca of big movie deals – humorously so named also because of the quidnuncs and quasi-promoters that stood about on it talking astronomical figures.
Nevertheless Abrahamson made a fortune on that carpet, selling cheap State Right pictures which he made economically by renting studio space and hiring unemployed actors. Such pictures were known as the products of ‘Poverty Row’. The late Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, also started in Poverty Row.
Abrahamson was a realist, admitting that he was not interested in art, only in money. He had a thick Russian accent, and when directing his films would shout to the leading lady: ‘All right, come in from de back side’ (meaning from the back). ‘Now you come to mirror and take a look at yourself. Ooh! Ain’t I pretty! Now monkey around for twenty feet’ (meaning ad lib for twenty feet of film). The heroine was usually a bosomy young thing in a loose décolleté, showing plenty of cleavage. He would tell her to face the camera, bend over and tie her shoe, or rock a cradle or stroke a dog. Abrahamson made two million dollars this way, then wisely retired.
The million-dollar carpet brought Sid Grauman down from San Francisco to negotiate the building of his Los Angeles million-dollar theatres. As the town grew prosperous, so did Sid. He had a flair for bizarre publicity, and once startled Los Angeles with two taxis racing through town, the occupants shooting blank cartridges at each other, and on the back of the taxis placards announcing: ‘The Underworld at Grauman’s Million Dollar Theatre.’
He was an innovator of gimcracks. A fantastic idea of Sid’s was to get Hollywood stars to stick their hands and feet in wet cement outside his Chinese Theatre; for some reason they did
