The first day I arrived at the Alexandria Hotel the desk clerk handed me a letter from Miss Maude Fealy, the famous actress who had been leading lady to Sir Henry Irving and William Gillette, inviting me to a dinner she was giving for Pavlova, Wednesday, at the Hollywood Hotel. Of course, I was delighted. Although I had never met Miss Fealy, I had seen postcards of her all over London, and was an admirer of her beauty.
The day before the dinner I told my secretary to phone and inquire whether it was informal or I should wear a black tie.
‘Who is calling?’ Miss Fealy asked.
‘This is Mr Chaplin’s secretary, about his dining with you on Wednesday evening –.’
Miss Fealy seemed alarmed. ‘Oh! By all means, informal,’ she said.
Miss Fealy was on the porch of the Hollywood Hotel waiting to greet me. She was as lovely as ever. We sat for at least half an hour conversing irrelevantly, and I began wondering when the other guests would arrive.
Eventually she said: ‘Shall we go in to dinner?’
To my surprise, I found we were dining alone!
Miss Fealy, besides being a lady of charm, was also very reserved, and, looking across the table at her, I wondered what could be the motive for this tête-à-tête. Roguish and unworthy thoughts flashed through my mind – but she seemed too sensitive for my unseemly surmisings. Nevertheless, I began throwing out my antennae to find out what was expected of me. ‘This is really fun,’ I said ebulliently,’ dining alone this way!’
She smiled blandly.
‘Let’s do something amusing after dinner,’ I said: ‘go to a night-club or something.’
A look of mild alarm stole over her face, and she hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I must retire early this evening, as I start rehearsing tomorrow morning for Macbeth’
My antennae wavered. I was completely baffled. Fortunately, the first course arrived and for a moment we ate in silence. Something was wrong, and we both knew it. Miss Fealy hesitated. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather dull for you this evening.’
‘It’s perfectly delightful,’ I replied.
‘I’m sorry you weren’t here three months ago at a dinner I gave for Pavlova, who, I know, is a friend of yours. But I understand you were in New York.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said quickly producing Miss Fealy’s letter, and for the first time I looked at the date. Then I handed it to her. ‘You see,’ I laughed, ‘I’ve arrived three months late!’
*
Los Angeles in 1910 was the end of an era of Western pioneers and tycoons, and I was entertained by most of them.
One was the late William A. Clark, multi-millionaire, railroad magnate and copper king, an amateur musician who donated $150,000 annually to the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in which he played second violin with the rest of the orchestra.
Death Valley Scottie was a phantom character, a jovial, fat-faced man who wore a ten-gallon hat, red shirt and dungarees, and spent thousands of dollars nightly along Spring Street’s rathskellers and night-clubs, throwing parties, tipping waiters hundred-dollar bills, then mysteriously disappearing, to show up a month or so later and throw another party, which he did for years. No one knew where his money came from. Some believed he had a secret mine in Death Valley and tried to follow him there, but he always evaded them and no one, to this day, has ever learned his secret. Before he died in 1940 he built an enormous castle in Death Valley, in the middle of the desert, a fantastic structure costing over half a million. The building still stands rotting in the sun.
Mrs Craney-Gatts of Pasadena was a woman with forty million dollars, an ardent socialist who paid for the legal defence of many anarchists, socialists and members of the I.W.W.
Glenn Curtiss worked for Sennett in those days, doing aeroplane stunts, and was looking hungrily for capital to finance what is now the great Curtiss aircraft industry.
A. P. Giannini ran two small banks, which later developed into one of the greatest financial institutions in the United States: the Bank of America.
Howard Hughes inherited a large fortune from his father, the inventor of the modern oil-drill. Howard multiplied his millions by going into aircraft; he was an eccentric man who ran his large industrial enterprises over the telephone from a third-rate hotel room and was seldom seen. He also dabbled in motion pictures, achieving considerable success with such films as Hell’s Angels, starring the late Jean Harlow.
In those days, my routine pleasures were watching Jack Doyle’s Friday-night fights at Vernon; attending vaudeville at the Orpheum Theatre on Monday night; Morosco Theatre’s stock company on Thursday; and, occasionally, a symphony at Cluine’s Philharmonic Auditorium.
*
The Los Angeles Athletic Club was a centre where the élite of local society and business gathered at the cocktail hour. It was like a foreign settlement.
A young man, a bit player, used to sit around the lounge, a lonely fellow who had come to Hollywood to try his luck but was not doing very well, named Valentino. He was introduced to me by another bit player, Jack Gilbert. I did not see Valentino again for a year or so; in the interim he jumped to stardom. When we met he was diffident, until I said: ‘Since I last saw you you have joined the immortals.’ Then he laughed and dropped his defences and became quite friendly.
Valentino had an air of sadness. He wore his success gracefully, appearing almost subdued by it. He was intelligent, quiet and without vanity, and had great allure for women, but had little success with them, and those whom he married treated him rather shabbily. Soon after one marriage, his wife started an affair with one of the men in the developing laboratory, with whom she would disappear into the dark-room. No man had greater attraction for women than Valentino; no man was more deceived by them.
I now began preparing to fulfil my $670,000 contract. Mr Caulfield, who represented the Mutual Film
