My first picture, The Floor Walker, was happily a great success. It had a department store setting in which I did a chase on a moving staircase. When Sennett saw the film he commented: ‘Why the hell didn’t we ever think of a running staircase?’
Very soon I was in my stride, turning out a two-reel comedy every month. After The Floor Walker there followed The Fireman, The Vagabond, One a.m., The Count, The Pawnshop, Behind the Screen, The Rink, Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, The Adventurer. In all it took about sixteen months to complete these twelve comedies, which included time off for colds and minor impediments.
Sometimes a story would present a problem and I would have difficulty in solving it. At this juncture I would lay off work and try to think, striding up and down my dressing-room in torment or sitting for hours at the back of a set, struggling with the problem. The mere sight of. the management or the actors gaping at me was embarrassing, especially as Mutual was paying the cost of production, and Mr Caulfield was there to see that things kept moving.
At a distance I would see him crossing the lot. By his mere outline I knew well what he was thinking: nothing accomplished and the overheads increasing. And I would intimate as gently as sledge-hammer that I never liked people around when I was thinking, or to feel that they were worrying.
At the end of a fruitless day, he would meet me accidentally on purpose as I left the studio, and would greet me with a phoney levity and inquire: ‘How’s she coming?’
‘Lousy! I guess I’m through! I can’t think any more!’
And he would make a hollow sound, meant for a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll come.’
Sometimes the solution came at the end of the day when I was in a state of despair, having thought of everything and discarded it; then the solution would suddenly reveal itself, as if a layer of dust had been swept off a marble floor – there it was, the beautiful mosaic I had been looking for. Tension was gone, the studio was set in motion, and how Mr Caulfield would laugh!
No member of my cast was injured in any of our pictures. Violence was carefully rehearsed and treated like choreography. A slap in the face was always tricked. No matter how much of a skirmish, everyone knew what he was doing, everything was timed. It was inexcusable to get hurt, because in films all effects – violence, earthquakes, shipwrecks, and catastrophes – can be faked.
We had only one accident in that whole series. It happened in Easy Street. While I was pulling a street-lamp over the big bully to gas him, the head of the lamp collapsed and its sharp metal edge fell across the bridge of my nose, necessitating two surgical stitches.
Fulfilling the Mutual contract, I suppose, was the happiest period of my career. I was light and unencumbered, twenty-seven years old, with fabulous prospects and a friendly, glamorous world before me. Within a short time I would be a millionaire – it all seemed slightly mad. Money was pouring into my coffers. The ten thousand dollars I received every week accumulated into hundreds of thousands. Now I was worth four hundred thousand, now five hundred thousand. I could never take it for granted.
I remember Maxine Elliott, a friend of J. P. Morgan, said to me once: ‘Money is only good to forget.’ But it is also something to remember say I.
There is no doubt that men of success live in a different world; when I met people their faces would light up with interest. Although I was a parvenu, my opinions were seriously considered. Acquaintances were willing to enter into the warmest of friendships and share my problems as though they were relatives. It was all very flattering, but my nature does not respond to such intimacy. I like friends as I like music – when I am in the mood. Such freedom, however, was at the price of occasional loneliness.
One day, towards the completion of my contract, my brother entered my bedroom at the Athletic Club and blithely announced: ‘Well, Charlie, you’re now in the millionaire class. I’ve just completed a deal for you to make eight two-reel comedies for First National for $1,200,000.’
I had just taken a bath and was wandering about the room with a towel around my loins, playing The Tales of Hoffmann on my violin. ‘Hum-um, I suppose that’s wonderful.’
Sydney suddenly burst into laughter. ‘This goes into my memoirs: you with that towel around your hips, playing the violin, and your reaction to the news that I’ve signed up for a million and a quarter!’
I admit there was a tinge of pose because of the task it involved – the money had to be earned.
Notwithstanding, all this promise of wealth did not change my mode of living. I was reconciled to wealth but not to the use of it. This money I earned was legendary – a symbol in figures, for I had never actually seen it. I therefore had to do something to prove that I had it. So I procured a secretary, a valet, a car and a chaffeur. Walking by a show-room one day, I noticed a seven-passenger Locomobile, which, in those days, was considered the best car in America. The thing looked too magnificently elegant to be for sale. However, I walked into the shop and asked: ‘How much?’
‘Four thousand nine hundred dollars.’
‘Wrap it up,’ I said.
The man was astonished and tried to put up a resistance to such an immediate sale. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see the engine?’ he asked.
‘Wouldn’t make any difference – I know
