Goodwins, F and James, D and Kamin, D (2017) Charlie Chaplin’s Red Letter Days: At Work with the Comic Genius. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 1442278099 Downloaded from: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618556/ Version: Submitted Version Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Please cite the published version https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk Charlie Chaplin’s Red Letter Days At Work with the Comic Genius By Fred Goodwins Edited by Dr. David James Annotated by Dan Kamin Table of Contents Introduction: Red Letter Days 1. Charlie’s “Last” Film 2. Charlie has to “Flit” from his Studio 3. Charlie Chaplin Sends His Famous Moustache to the Red Letter 4. Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Lost Sheep’ 5. How Charlie Chaplin Got His £300 a Week Salary 6. A Straw Hat and a Puff of Wind 7. A bombshell that put Charlie Chaplin ‘on his back’ 8. When Charlie Chaplin Cried Like a Kid 9. Excitement Runs High When Charlie Chaplin “Comes Home.” 10. Charlie “On the Job” Again 11. Rehearsing for “The Floor-Walker” 12. Charlie Chaplin Talks of Other Days 13. Celebrating Charlie Chaplin’s Birthday 14. Charlie’s Wireless Message to Edna 15. Charlie Poses for “The Fireman.” 16. Charlie Chaplin’s Love for His Mother 17. Chaplin’s Success in “The Floorwalker” 18. A Chaplin Rehearsal Isn’t All Fun 19. Billy Helps to Entertain the Ladies 20. “Do I Look Worried?” 21. Playing the Part of Half a Cow! 22. “Twelve O’clock”—Charlie’s One-Man Show 23. “Speak Out Your Parts,” Says Charlie 24. Charlie’s Doings Up to Date 25. Charlie in a Gay Mood 26. How Charlie Works His Gags 27. The Chaplin Boys’ Beano 28. An Accident in the Chaplin Studio 29. Charlie Chaplin, Syd, and a Football 30. New Chaplin Film a ‘Howling’ Success 31. The Rough End of Movie Work 32. One Hundred Thousand Guineas for Chaplin Films 33. Charlie’s Great Pie-Slinging Scene 34. Charlie Gets Busy with “Behind the Screen” 35. A Hustle Against Time in the Chaplin Studio 36. A Racy Account of “The Rink” 37. “Easy Street” and a Million Dollar Contract And then… Appendix 1: Charlie Chaplin’s New Contract: Record Salary and One Film a Month Appendix 2: Charlie Conducts Sousa’s Band Appendix 3: His Doings in New York Index Introduction Red Letter Days On February 26, 1916, a British magazine called Red Letter began a series of 37 articles about Charlie Chaplin by Fred Goodwins, an actor who became part of Chaplin’s stock company in early 1915. By the end of 1914 Chaplin had become the most popular actor in films, and reporters were clamoring for access and interviews. What makes Goodwins’ articles stand out is that he was a working member of the company, and therefore a privileged eyewitness to Chaplin’s revolutionary transformation of crude slapstick into cinematic art. Equally remarkable is how unguarded Chaplin is throughout the series. This is largely because Goodwins was not only a member of the company, but also one of the studio’s core British members. Chaplin had cut his artistic teeth in the British music hall, and he surrounded himself with fellow music hall veterans. There were deep and unspoken levels of understanding between these countrymen, and their jovial spirit of camaraderie comes across clearly in the articles. The presence of old colleagues also elicits a good deal of spontaneous reminiscing on the comedian’s part, as well as some surprisingly frank reflections on his current concerns, including his controversial decision not to return to England and enlist to fight in the Great War. The series is studded with gems of information and insight about Chaplin’s working methods during this critical time of his artistic development. In addition, in the months leading up to Goodwins’ series the magazine published a rich array of Chaplin-related material that captures a world in the grip of Chaplin fever, including Chaplin covers on many of the issues, “Red Letter Photocards,” which were postcards given away with the magazine that featured stills from Chaplin’s 1915 Essanay films, and a series of strikingly well-drawn cartoon strips featuring Charlie causing his characteristic mayhem. It was all fodder for an eager public that couldn’t get enough of their comic hero. To illustrate the book we have included a selection of Red Letter Photocards, along with posters, sheet music, and magazines of the era. The articles constitute a unique and vivid account of the ebb and flow of life at the Chaplin studio. They both deepen our understanding of Chaplin’s artistry and shed new light on his personality. They also shed new light on the personalities of Chaplin’s unsung collaborators, such as his beloved co-star Edna Purviance, his gigantic nemesis Eric Campbell, and the other familiar faces that populate his films. The text has never been reprinted, nor even referred to in the vast body of literature on Chaplin published since then. This volume contains everything Goodwins wrote (truncating only the longish article titles the magazine supplied to entice readers and most of his references to photos we have not reprinted). In addition, we have included as appendices three anonymous articles published in Red Letter that cover Chaplin’s exhilarating trip to New York in February, 1916, when he signed the historic Mutual contract that made him the highest paid star in Hollywood—indeed, the highest paid employee of any kind in the world—and affirmed his status as the most famous and popular person alive. The magazines were discovered in the British Library in 2013 by Dr. David James, the editor of this book. James worked with Chaplin expert Dan Kamin, who annotated the articles to highlight their revelations. The two of us hope that the resulting book will be as pleasurable for today’s readers as the original articles were for readers in 1916. 1 Charlie’s “Last” Film (February 26, 1916) The world is ringing with the name of Chaplin. The little comedian’s vogue is today undoubtedly even greater than it has ever been, but nowadays we have “Chaplin everything” thrust under our noses, until we are beginning to lose sight of the great vital import of the name, representing as it does the most phenomenal rise to the most phenomenal fame any man or woman has ever achieved in the history of the world, and, what is greater, the world-wide triumph of a style of comedy and a sense of humour that is distinctively British. [Goodwins begins his series by appealing to his readers’ pride in the way Chaplin’s “distinctively British” humor has swept the world. His claim that Chaplin had become not only the most famous person alive, but the most famous person who had ever lived, might be considered a bit premature in 1916, since it wasn’t until the late teens that Chaplin’s films were widely distributed in China, India and some of the other non-Western regions1, as well as war- torn European countries such as France. By 1920, though, the extent of Chaplin’s fame was indisputable. “He is as universal as laughter and as common as tears,” was the way another writer eloquently put it in 1926.2 Chaplin himself was known to boast that people who had never heard of Jesus Christ could imitate his distinctive comic walk.3] But there is something more in the comedian than that great sense of humour and that omnipotent personality. There is the soul of a great human being. I have written certain articles for the press of both Continents upon Chaplin as a personality and as a worker, but the little Britisher’s utter humanity is so essentially a part of all that the name of Chaplin conveys that I feel bound to write about a wonderful week I have just spent with him during the taking of his last Essanay picture. [Goodwins is refreshingly frank in admitting that the purpose of his articles is to idolize Chaplin as a person as much as the public was currently idolizing his screen character. During 1915 Chaplin had been alternately startled, bemused, flattered, irritated and alarmed by the avid public interest in his private life. He resented the intrusiveness of this attention but recognized its publicity value. He also understood that he needed to control the content as much as possible, and hence Goodwin’s transition from actor to actor/publicist. Had Goodwins kept his focus on beatifying his boss the series would have amounted to little more than fan magazine drivel. But while there’s a fair amount of fawning in the articles, luckily for us Goodwins realized that depicting Chaplin in the white heat of artistic creation would be far more interesting to readers. He was also astute enough to sense that even describing the mundane day-to-day operations of Chaplin’s comedy studio, as he does in the next instalment when production is halted by torrential downpours, would make good copy.] <figure 1.1 near here> It was quite a while since I had been in the Essanay studio here, and I always remembered it as the scene of furious activity. In those days a host of men of every trade and profession connected with the motion picture industry bustled around the stage or held brief conferences with the comedian upon the production in hand, what time he was wont to stroll up and down the big expanse of flooring, his tiny hands thrust deep into his pockets, preoccupied, thinking, at times almost absent-minded. The atmosphere was one of tense thought, one of striving and struggling after ideas to put into celluloid form for the amusement of the whole civilised globe—all the time looking ahead.