CHARLIE CHAPLIN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 22 January 1927, Page 11

CHARLIE CHAPLIN.

TF :C}iarlie Chaplin carries out his present intention, we shall see the most grotesque fairy story ever pictured on celluloid (writes Don Ryan in Picture P.lay Magazine). For that present intention is to film the true life story of Charles Spencer Chaplin. Oi course he may he diverted from this, but the chances are about even that ho will do it.

Thirty odd years ago a small urchin was playing with his kind in a shabby, gray; street at .Kensington Cross, in London. He slept around the corner in Chester street. This was the child Charlie Chaplin. In a barber shop, where the Cockneys came to be shaved. Ihe little follow got. a .job as a lather boy. Thus he earned his first pennies. So he grew up to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, knock-about -performers in the third-rate musical halls of the Upper Bohemian quarter of London.

Then Chaplin, the London music hall performer, got his chance in the movies. A slim chance it was —slapstick comedian with Mack Sennett, who was trying to make comedies on a a shoestring, as they say. But these comedies came to fill a want in the hearts of the American public that nothing else would quite satisfy. And Chaplin was the reason. For sheer mechanics of pantomime, Charlie is unequalled. It is my conviction that, like many a genius of the past, he is a. victim, or rather a beneficiary. of the inferiority , complex. Physically he is small. Once he was poor and despised. Now he is rich and famous.

Chaplin is a radical in politics. Yet at -heart he is an aristocrat of the intellect.. He sees himself, in fact, as a sort of modern Lorenzo the magnificent. He surrounds himself with thinkers.

The diminutive comedian has had more publicity in connection with his reported love affairs than any other male star. He has been pictured as a triupmphant conqueror of feminine hearts. Of the long list of actresses who have lieen reported at one time or other as cherishing a reciprocal affection for Chaplin, most have been talented women: .Claire Windsor, Edna Purviance, Pola Negri—all women of vivid personalities and attainments. On the other hand, the two marriages of the comedian have been with young women, almost schoolgirls in years and experience. His unhappy marriage, with Mildred Harris came to an abrupt end. Now he is married to Lita Grey, and is the father of a son.

The Chaplin-Grey romance is one that could happen nowhere except in Hollywood—where the unusual is regular. Five years ago, a dark-haired girl was playing in the sequestered streets of that town. Aged twelveLollita Louisa MeMurrny gave. jpvidences of being about to blossom into early Spanish beauty. Although her father’s name was MeMnrray, behind her an intricate web connected this modern child, iby blood and marriage, with those early times when the dons ruled in California. While Lollita. aged twelve, was playing in the sequestered Hollywood streets one day, nearly five years ago, a small person came strolling by. “Whose little girl are you?’’ he asked, pleasantly enough. “I live with my mother, my grandmother and Grandfather Curry, sir,’ 7 replied the girl. “Please take rue to them.*’ said Charles Spencer Chaplin. They did not like to let the child go, but Chaplin was insistent, and lie Chaplin. Lila Grey she was reehrisiem* ed for screen purposes—the distinguished name of her relatives by marriage. The childVictress worked for n 'year in the picture that made Jackie 'Ooogan famous. Then she went back to school with the hope of returning to the screen after completing as much education as was deemed necessary. In the spring of 1924, she was about to leave town on a trip with her family. She went around to say good-bye to Mr Chaplin. She had just turned ■sixteen. Her former employer regarded her with even more interest than he had displayed previously, and oven•tuallv married her.