Chris Snowden wrote:Just a few throwaway thoughts about Chaplin, inspired by this very interesting thread.
Chaplin using writers. Richard will disagree with me (hopefully in mellow tones), but I don't think Chaplin used collaborators the way Keaton, Lloyd and the rest did. When Chaplin reported for work at Essanay, and was told to pick up his script from the scenario department, he informed management that he was accustomed to doing his own stories and material, and that he intended to continue doing so. I don't think that ever really changed. He developed a revolving entourage of hangers-on who would offer ideas and criticism (such as Vincent Bryan in the Mutual period, Henry Bergman at Mutual and beyond, Harry Crocker in the late '20s), but I wouldn't call them gag writers.
David Totheroh shared excerpts of grandfather Rollie's recorded recollections of working as Chaplin's cinematographer for 30+ years, and Rollie made it clear that the guiding creative force was always Chaplin. But, we might ask, what about the credited assistants, many of whom went on to successful careers: Chuck Riesner, Monta Bell, Eddie Sutherland, Robert Florey, etc.?
Rollie recalled that on
The Gold Rush, Sutherland was essentially the gofer-in-chief, helpful in terms of handling the dress extras on location in Truckee, and shooting a few pick-up shots that ultimately weren't used, and that sort of thing. But the story and gags were Chaplin's.
In Jack Spears'
Hollywood: The Golden Era, another Chaplin collaborator, Henri d'Abbadie d'Arast, says:
"No, the Chaplin comedies are entirely Chaplin--and he is a very
jealous author... Chaplin carried the ball all the time, and we
were mostly used as punching bags to try ideas on. None of us
yessed him, and he always listened to any criticism we might make.
Later, as I got to know him better, I discovered the best criticism
was silence--being a very sensitive artist, he knew something
was wrong by the expression on our faces."
The story has been told about Chaplin being stuck in one of his many creative dead-ends, and searching for a good idea to resolve a scene that was too good to scrap. Someone makes a suggestion, Chaplin discards it out of hand, the impasse continues for days, and then Chaplin has a eureka moment: he's decided to extend the scene by doing
this, and
this is the same idea that he'd shot down days before. I don't doubt the story, and I'm sure it happened more than once. But I don't think this is the same thing as having a staff of gag writers.
Well, Eddie Sutherland always said the way to sell a gag or story idea to Chaplin was to convince him it was his idea, and he certainly intimated that quite a bit of that went on. And what D'Arrast is describing is very much the way other major comedians, including Keaton, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy went about story construction conferences.It's just that Chaplin was far less willing to give them actual story credits.
And the question always begs, if all Charlie wanted were sounding boards, why by the twenties did his assistants always seem to be people with sound comedy credentials who then went on to solid careers as professionals within the Comedy and even Mainstream Film Industry? And again, when he got rid of those "assistants", completely, as he did around the beginning of production on CITY LIGHTS when he had even dismissed Harry Crocker, did he suddenly have all sorts of production and story construction problems in that four-year production that also seemed to evaporate when he hired a new "assistant" to work with him on MODERN TIMES and THE GREAT DICTATOR, another solid comedy professional whose work with Chaplin has not seemingly ever been discussed particularly much, Carter DeHaven?
Another collaborator who is never given much credit but also seems to have been present when Chaplin is doing his best work, like the Mutual Comedies and the early First National shorts, is his Brother Syd, whom both you Chris and I agree as we have been going through a number of Syd Chaplin's Keystones here recently is also an extremely talented comedian?
The exception to the rule could be Monsieur Verdoux, the whole concept of which sprang from the mind of Orson Welles, including one or more specific scenes that Chaplin later used. But Welles was duly credited, both on-screen and in Chaplin's autobiography.
Well, credited for supplying an "idea", not the full script he apparently wrote and production notes for the film he originally planned and wanted to direct Chaplin in as a performer only, until Chaplin balked at being directed by others and convinced Welles to sell him the script and all of the rights so he could make it himself. Welles said the idea credit always galled him because it was supposed to have been an original story credit and at least a co-writing credit on the screenplay.
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b]The Chaplin ego[/b]. Yes, he had one, but I don't see it in his filmmaking as much as other folks do. One could argue that the inevitable triumphant victory of Harold Lloyd's character in film after film after film was an expression of his own ego; if so, it's interesting that in Chaplin's mature comedies, the Tramp gets progressively shabbier, tossed into jail repeatedly, frequently ending a film no better off than he was at the beginning.
For all of Chaplin's supposed egotism, he readily shared the screen (and the laughs) with fellow performers. Whereas Buster Keaton was willing to hire pros like Al St. John, Phyllis Haver and Ann Cornwall, they seldom got a chance to shine. In Langdon's and Lloyd's films, the star gets all the laughs. But Chaplin wasn't afraid to share scenes with the likes of Jackie Coogan, Mack Swain, Harry Myers, Jack Oakie, Martha Raye etc., and often the scenes are theirs, not Chaplin's. Jack Oakie recalled that Chaplin was not only willing to let his co-star steal scenes, he seemed delighted by the challenge of stealing them right back.
Well, yes and no. To begin with, the names you mention on the Keaton side:
Al St John's only appearance in a Keaton starring short is a featured cameo bit in THE HIGH SIGN, and there the two comics seem to be rather evenly matched.
THE BALLOONATIC is really a duo piece between Keaton and Phyllis Haver, and she manages to get in some solid laughs herself there.
Ann Cornwall can be a reasonably charming lead in some of the late 20's Al Christie shorts she starred or co-starred in, but I never saw a great promising comedy talent there. Her part in COLLEGE is a rather underwritten standard engenue, but I don't see that Keaton can be blamed for the size of her role, especially considering how much footage he gave to some of his other leading ladies like Sybil Seeley, who partners him deliciously in ONE WEEK, or Kathryn McGuire, who practically teams with Buster in THE NAVIGATOR, or even Kate Price in MY WIFE'S RELATIONS?
In fact, Keaton shares major screen time with other performers like Ernest Torrence in STEAMBOAT BILL JR.,or Snitz Edwards in BATTLING BUTLER, and NEIGHBORS is practically an ensemble short between Buster, Joe Keaton, and Joe Roberts. No, I disagree with you strongly that Keaton was not generous towards his fellow performers. He was extremely generous in giving other actors space to get their own laughs and truly develop their characters.
Now, lets look at Chaplin:
In MODERN TIMES, most of Chester Conklin's screentime is spent trapped in a machine where about all he can do is slightly move his head, while Chaplin has all this performing space to do gags as he tries to feed Chester on his lunch hour.
IN LIMELIGHT, Buster Keaton is mainly anchored behind a piano, where, apart from an occasional insert where he is busied trying to keep his sheet music on the stand, he is mainly seen in full-body-two shots behind the piano where he waits at attention while a standing foreground Chaplin again gets the full performing space he needs to do his repetitive shrinking-leg bit. And even within that, Chaplin frequently cuts to a full body-shot just of himself while he's doing the same gag.
In CITY LIGHTS, Chaplin does his boxing routine with two seasoned veteran clowns, Hank Mann and Eddie Baker. However, the nature of the sequence requires a strict choreagraphy in the movements of Mann the Boxer and Baker the referee allowing Chaplin to move in counterpoint to their closely-timed movements and get the payoffs to each gag setup. Little room for improvisation or chance for these two clowns to shine here, the emphasis is always on the counterpoint movement Chaplin is doing rather than any reaction or gesture they do. They are there because they have the good comedy timing needed to make the scene work, and the fact that they are also both seasoned second bananas who will not upstage their star comedian.
Hey, at least Chester Conklin isn't bondaged inside a machine in THE GREAT DICTATOR, but again he is placed in a barber chair in a tightly choreaographed sequence that allows him little to do but react to Chaplin who is bacisally upstage from Conklin the entire time and dominating the entire scene. Still, Conklin fares better than Hank Mann, who gets to be a storm trooper, basically a straight part until a sequence with Charlie the Jewish Barber on the street where he gets to receive a comic bonk on the head and goes down with a comic reaction, but then Charlie is quickly bonked on the head as well, and gee, the camera follows him off into a solo routine.
Perhaps the closest Chaplin came to a real collaborator in several of his pictures was Ben Turpin, who foils Chaplin in his first Essanay Comedy, HIS NEW JOB, then practically teams with him in A NIGHT OUT. But reviews apparently were too positive for Turpins performances, and he barely gets a cameo in a boxing crowd in Chaplin's next film, THE CHAMPION, and they never actually work together again (Remember, they share no scenes together in BURLESQUE ON CARMEN, and Chaplin actually sued Essanay over the added Turpin footage in the film).
Martha Raye spends most of her big scene with Chaplin bent over the side of a boat in MONSIEUR VERDOUX, while the murderous boulevardier gets the main performing space in the shot as he tries to murder her.
Wait a minute, this looks like an ensemble scene in THE GREAT DICTATOR in which Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Maurice Moscovich, and Bernard Gorcey all play russian roulette with suet puddings, one of which has a coin in it to indicate who gets to murder Hynkel, but hey, the camera always ends up going to Charlie for the payoff gags.
The closest real acting collaboration Chaplin has is indeed with Jackie Coogan in THE KID, but Coogan became the focus of a lot of what Chaplin was working through that created THE KID, and Chaplin also was rightly convinced that he had made a major discovery in Jackie Coogan, which Chaplin wanted to showcase, making himself look good in the process.
One of the major complaints I hear from those who really don't like Chaplin's work (and which I again remind you, I am not one of these folk), is how overrehearsed his comedy routines appear to them. While I don't nesessarily agree completely with that idea, it is true that Chaplin worked, and reworked, and reworked each shot and scene, refineing all the movement in the shot until there really was no room for improvisation, and all the movement really is designed to showcase nobody else but the star comedian, with little breathing and performing room for anyone else. And if there was, there's always Chaplin the Director in the cutting room always looking out for Chaplin the star. And as his career went on, Chaplin became more and more dependent on the assurance that the audience completely focused on him as a performer, and the gags became less gags and more dependent on the audience finding his moves cute and appealing. This is when he became the "Goddam Ballet Dancer" W.C Fields apparently called him after seeing one of his later pictures. And it's this "Look at Me! Laugh at ME! Cry for Me!" attitude that turns off the people who like their comedians a little less self-centered. True, Langdon seemed to set up his comedies in a similar fashion, but that appears to be more because the whole success of Langdons character hinges on everything being from that characters point of view so that the laughs come mostly from his reactions to his surroundings that there is really no other way to portray the character.
Chaplin's working methods. Some of us are a little indignant that Chaplin would take a couple of years to shoot one feature, when he could have batted out a dozen terrific two-reelers in that length of time. But he worked quickly in his early years only because he had to, not because he wanted to. When he became his own boss in 1917, his pace immediately slowed to a crawl and kept on slowing. He'd deliberately set a deal with First National that required a certain number of films, but no deadlines for them.
This is why First National kept threatening to sue Chaplin for breach of contract and failure to deliver pictures in a timely fashion and Chaplin kept trying to pawn off inferior material like THE PROFESSOR and HOW TO MAKE MOVIES to fill up and get out of that contract.
Wealthy and independent, he worked at the pace he was comfortable with, and if an idea didn't grab him, he'd wait until one did. That's fine with me. It produced a body of work that's held up very well, and it was only when he later abandoned it in a new era of talkies, union rules and high production costs that his work went into decline.
The Tramp's evolution. I liked Lokke's observations about the Tramp of the later silents. Most of us prefer the energetic, resourceful Tramp of the two-reelers over the weary philosopher Tramp of the later features, and I do too. But I think Chaplin was right to let the character grow, and to explore themes of greater depth than the usual flirting and fighting. If that means fewer gags, so be it. I've experienced the sensation of laughing non-stop with a packed audience at a Harold Lloyd movie, and walking out of the theater aware that I was already forgetting everything I'd just seen. But nobody who sees Jackie Coogan carried away by the orphanage lackey in The Kid, or the climax of City Lights, ever forgets it.
To me there is actually little difference between forgetting everything you've just laughed at in a Harold Lloyd picture (and frankly I disagree strongly with that concept. If you walk out of SAFETY LAST having forgotten the building-climbing sequence, or GIRL SHY and have forgotten the race to the church, I suggest you be checked for early-onset alzheimers), and only remembering the dramatic moments in a comedy. It says that as comedies, which is what the pictures have been designed as, they have failed. It also says that you value the dramatic over the comedic, and in my book, as a human being, you are a pretentious depressive and your values are skewed.
I once jumped all over a seriously pretentious theater director who toasted a performer friend of mine for mixing "low comedy with great art". "Baloney!" I shouted, "Low Comedy is Great Art!" and all you need to see this proven is to watch Lawrence Olivier try to be funny sometime. Remember the other great actors quote , "Tragedy(or dying, depending on the actor the quote is being attributed to) is easy,
comedy is hard . " There's plenty of tragedy and tragedians, drama and dramatists, more than anyone wants. There's a very finite number of comedians at any time, and they are way more finite today than in any other ten decades in recent history. When Chaplin shoots for the tears, he lowers himself, when he gets laughs from that which causes despair, he rises, and so do we. Nobody ever bought a ticket to see a Chaplin picture because he made them cry.
In his two-reelers, Chaplin was serving up dessert. In his later features, he was serving a whole meal. I see that as progress.
I see that as more skewed values on your part in the concept that, because a short is short and a feature is long, this somehow makes the feature a better and more important thing than the short. It's the old "short story/novel" crap arguement that plagued prose writing forever, and it's just as much nonsense here as there. Is a painting's importance determined by the size of the canvas?
I think Chaplin never made a feature as brilliant as THE RINK, EASY STREET, THE CURE, THE IMMIGRANT, A DOGS LIFE, and SHOULDER ARMS. When Chaplin stretched the canvas, the seams began to show, and he always had trouble getting all the way across the frame. He wasnt the only comic who had this problem, I think both Langdon and Laurel and Hardy did their best work in shorts, but if I had to burn all the prints of BIG BUSINESS or SATURDAY AFTERNOON, or all prints of Abel Gances work, the nitrate conflagration would wipe out city blocks.
Great comedy can be a gag-fest like Hot Water or Duck Soup, or it can be mild, genteel, droll or wistful. It can be romantic. It can have a streak of melancholy. It can even end in tragedy, like Harold and Maude does. They're all great comedies, and their greatness isn't a function of the quantity of gags, but of the films' overall impact
No ones arguing any of these comedies greatness, but perhaps there is nothing wrong in noting that some are greater than others, and others made just as great comedies as well. But again, comedy is the most important creative force we have in this life, because it heals and uplifts while it talks with frankly the most honesty of the human condition, and when people are remembering your comedies for the sad bits, you may be in the wrong profession, or they may be in the wrong audience.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:15 pmWith respect, I happen to love WHY CHANGE YOUR WIFE? and DON'T CHANGE YOUR HUSBAND, as well as MALE AND FEMALE. I think they are all delightful domestic comedies. Even OLD WIVES FOR NEW is highly entertaining. I didn't think much of THE AFFAIRS OF ANATOL the first time I saw if. However, when I watched it more recently I enjoyed it allot more. I know allot of other people who really liked this same films as well.
