A FILM GENIUS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 September 1929, Page 26 (Supplement)

A FILM GENIUS

FROM £3 TO £3900 A WEEK. . A MANAGER’S DISCOVERY. Chaplin start at £3 a week but soon increased his salary to £3009! Used- to wear-one collar a fortnight, but kept spats for travelling. I can claim to have given a start to more artistes now at the top of the tree than any other man in the country. One of mv earliest “finds” was Charlie Chaplin, who was brought to me by his brother Syd after he had been with me for some time. When I first saw Charlie he struck me, I must say, as far too. shy to do muck good on the stage, especially in the kind of knockabout work in which I specialised. He had almost a shrinking air. I asked him what he had been doing, and he told me he had been a member of a team called the “Eight Lancashire Lads.” I told him I would give him a start, and after he had been with me for a week or two I singled him out for a part in the “Football Match.” It did not take me long to discover, that Charlie could not only fool cleverly, but act. So I made him the Drunk in “Mumming Birds',” giving him then £3 a'week. Over that he was very bucked. ■ ’ ■ \ THOSE SNOW-WHITE SPATS. ' When-we went-on tour, I-saw -some of Charlie’s eccentricities. For weeks on end he would .go about, in and out of the theatre looking like a tramp—a grotesque figure, with a dirty, unshaven face, and boots that were unpolished and laceless. I have know him wear a collar for a fortnight. But at a train call there as a transformation. Charlie turned up at the station immaculate, sporting new washleather gloves the colour of butter, snowy white spats, spotless collar- and cuffs, and a faultless soft felt hat set at a jaunty angle. Ho never missed anything. When I was rehearsing the others or preparing a new show in which there were people who had not previously worked with me, he stood on one side, watching every movement, despite the far-away look in his eyes that millions have seen on the screen. He was so much on the spot that sometimes, when I despaired of getting a person tp do a thing’in a certain way. he jumped forward, and said: —• “Let me show them, guvnor, will you?” And then he would make the exact movements I wanted. About 1910 I was short of a man to send to America for a “Mumming Birds” company, and my choice was practically restricted to Syd Chaplin and his brother Charlie. Syd I thought too valuable to be spared, and consequently I decided to send Charlie after 1 had taken certain precautions. Hollywood was starving for funny men, and people like Mack Sennett kept on drawing recruits from my company. They saw that Fred Kamo's “comics” were just the type they wanted for slapstick ’ comedy, and, as a result, about onco a month I had a cable from my business manager: “So-and-so left today for a picture contract. Send another comedian quickest possible.” I got tired of involuntarily acting as purveyor-general to the new-born movies. So I resolved to do my best to keep Charlie. “I’m going to send you over to the States,” I told him; “but I shall have a cast-iron contract with you. You know how many of my men over there have cut adrift and gone to Sennett and other picture people. I don’t want to provide you with a free passage ami then find you quitting me in the same way.” Charlie grinned. “There’s no fear of that, guv’nor,” he said. “I could never see myself being funny in front of a camera. It would be like play ing to the Mood family” (playing to empty benches) I Not long afterward ho was drawing about £3090 a week for being funny in front of a camera! Well, away he went. One day I received a cable from Kaaisas City: “Charlie gone.” As a result I had to close down tho show till I could reeast the company, and it was laid off for six weeks. But Charlie and I still correspond on the most friemuy terms.