‘Oh-h-h… wonderful!’
Sir Herbert paused and looked at me. ‘You’ve had phenomenal success, haven’t you?’
‘Nothing at all,’ I mumbled apologetically.
‘But you’re known all over the world! In England and France the soldiers even sing songs about you.’
‘Is that so?’ I said, feigning ignorance.
He looked at me again – I could see doubt and a reservation spreading all over his face. Then he got up. ‘Constance is late. I’ll telephone and find out what has happened. In the meantime you must meet my daughter Iris,’ he said, as he left the room.
I was relieved, for I had visions of a child with whom I could talk on my own level about school and the movies. Then a tall young lady entered the room with a long cigarette-holder, saying in a sonorous low voice: ‘How do you do, Mr Chaplin. I suppose I am the only person in the world who hasn’t seen you on the screen.’
I grinned and nodded.
Iris looked Scandinavian, with blonde bobbed hair, snub nose and light blue eyes. She was then eighteen years old, very attractive with a bloom of Mayfair sophistication about her, having had a book of her poems published at the age of fifteen.
‘Constance speaks so much about you,’ she said.
I grinned and nodded again.
Eventually, Sir Herbert returned, announcing that Constance could not come as she had been delayed with costume fittings, and that we would dine without her.
Dear God! With these strangers how would I endure the night? With this burning thought in my mind, we left the room in silence and entered the lift in silence and in silence entered the dining-room and sat at table as though we had just returned from a funeral.
Poor Sir Herbert and Iris did their best to make conversation. Soon she gave up and just sat back scanning the dining-room. If only the food would come, eating might relieve my awful tension.… Father and daughter conversed a little and talked about the South of France, Rome and Salzburg – had I ever been there? Had I ever seen any of Max Reinhardt’s productions?
I shook my head apologetically.
Tree now surveyed me. ‘You know, you should travel.’
I told him that I had little time for that, then I came to: ‘Look, Sir Herbert, my success has been so sudden that I have had little time to catch up with it. But as a boy of fourteen I saw you as Svengali, as Fagin, as Anthony, as Falstaff, some of them many times, and ever since you have been my idol. I never thought of you as existing off-stage. You were a legend. And to be dining with you tonight in Los Angeles overwhelms me.’
Tree was touched. ‘Really!’ he kept repeating. ‘Really!’
From that night on we became very good friends. He would call me up occasionally and the three of us, Iris, Sir Herbert and I, would dine together. Sometimes Constance would come along, and we would go to Victor Hugo’s restaurant and muse over our coffee and listen to sentimental chamber music.
*
From Constance I had heard much about Douglas Fairbanks’s charm and ability, not only as a personality but as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. In those days I disliked brilliant young men – especially after-dinner speakers. However, a dinner was arranged at his house.
Both Douglas and I tell a story of that night. Before going I had made excuses to Constance that I was ill, but she would have none of it. So I made up my mind to feign a headache and leave early. Fairbanks said that he was also nervous, and that when the door-bell rang he quickly descended into the basement, where there was a billiard-table, and began playing pool. That night was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
It was not for naught that Douglas captured the imagination and love of the public. The spirit of his pictures, their optimism and infallibility, were very much to the American taste, and indeed to the taste of the whole world. He had extraordinary magnetism and charm and a genuine boyish enthusiasm which he conveyed to the public. As I began to know him intimately I found him disarmingly honest because he admitted that he enjoyed being a snob and that successful people had allure for him.
Although Doug was tremendously popular, he generously praised other people’s talent and was modest about his own. He often said that Mary Pickford and I had genius, while he had only a small talent. This of course was not so; Douglas was creative and did things in a big way.
He built a ten-acre set for Robin Hood, a castle with enormous ramparts and drawbridges, far bigger than any castle that ever existed. With great pride Douglas showed me the huge drawbridge. ‘Magnificent,’ I said. ‘What a wonderful opening for one of my comedies: the drawbridge comes down, and I put out the cat and take in the milk.’
He had a varied assortment of friends, ranging from cowboys to kings, and found interesting qualities in them all. His friend Charlie Mack, a cowboy, a glib, verbose fellow, was highly amusing to Douglas. While we were at dinner, Charlie would frame himself in the doorway and talk: ‘Nice place yer got here, Doug,’ then looking around the dining-room: ‘Only it’s too far to spit from the table to the fireplace.’ Then he would crouch on his heels and tell us about his wife suing him for ‘di-vorce’ on grounds of ‘cruler-ty’. ‘I says, Judge, that woman has more cruler-ty in her little finger than I have in ma whole body. And no baby ever toted a gun more than that gal did. She’d have me a-hopping and a-dodging behind that ole tree of ours till it was that perforated yer could see thru it!’ I had an idea that Charlie’s fanfaronade was rehearsed before visiting Doug.
Douglas’s house had been a shooting lodge, a rather ugly two-storey bungalow set
