Louise Brooks and Charlie - Part 2

 Kenneth Tynan's article continues with Louise Brooks' appraisal of Charlie:

 

Louise is speaking:

"Do you know, I can't once remember him still. He was always standing up as he sat down, and going out as he came in. Except when he turned off the lights and went to sleep, without liquor or pills, like a child. Meaning to be bitchy, Herman Mankiewicz said, 'People never sat at his feet. He went to where people were sitting and stood in front of them.' But how we paid attention! We were hypnotized by the beauty and inexhaustible originality of this glistening creature. He's the only genius I ever knew who spread himself equally over his art and his life. He loved showing off in fine clothes and elegant phrases - even in the witness box. When Lita Grey divorced him, she put about vile rumors that he had a depraved passion for little girls. He didn't give a damn, even though people said his career would be wrecked. It still infuriates me that he never defended himself against any of those ugly lies, but the truth is that he existed on a plane above pride, jealousy, or hate. I never heard him say a snide thing about anyone.. He lived totally without fear. He knew that Lita Grey and her family were living in his house in Beverly Hills, planning to ruin him, yet he was radiantly carefree - happy with the success of 'The Gold Rush" and with the admirers who swarmed around him. Not that he exacted adoration. Even during our affair, he knew that I didn't adore him in the romantic sense, and he didn't mind at all. Which brings me to one of the dirtiest lies he allowed to be told about him - that he was mean with money. People forget that Chaplin ws the only star ever to keep his ex-leading lady (Edna Purviance) on his payroll for life, and the only producer to pay his employees their full salaries even when he wasn't in production. 

 "When our joyful summer ended, he didn't give me a fur from Jaeckel or a bangle from Cartier, so that I could flash them around, saying, 'Look what I got from Chaplin.' The day after he left town, I got a nice check in the mail, signed Charlie. And then I didn't even write him a thank-you note. Damn me."

Louise Brooks was one of the most fascinating and independent figures of old Hollywood. Here is the link to the complete Tynan article in the New Yorker of June 1979. It's an interesting look at this almost-forgotten star of silent film.

 

 

Louise Brooks, Kenneth Tynan, and Charlie

 A recent New Yorker magazine carried an article written by Kenneth Tynan on June 11, 1979. It is about a famous silent film actress named Louise Brooks. Her story is fascinating, a Hollywood fable unlike any I've ever read. 

    Louise was born in 1906, when Charlie was seventeen years old. She became well-known for her acting ability, her independent attitude towards studios and directors, and her hair style. Some referred to her as "the girl in the black helmet."

    Towards the end of this article, Tynan quotes Brooks on her opinion of Charlie Chaplin. It made me like her all the more, because she glimpsed a trait of the famous man that others knew little or nothing about. This is from the article:

 

    "Of all the names that spilled out of Brooke's memories of America in the twenties, there was one for which she reserved a special veneration: that of Chaplin. In an article for the magazine Film Culture, she had described his performances at private parties:

    He recalled his youth with comic pantomimes. He acted out countless scenes for countless films. And he did imitations of everybody. Isadora Duncan danced in a storm of toilet paper. John Barrymore picked his nose and brooded over Hamlet's soliloquy. A Follies girl swished across the room and I began to cry while Charlie denied absolutely that he was imitating me. Nevertheless I determined to abandon that silly walk forthwith.

      Tynan continues:

      "For me, she filled the picture."

    I was eighteen in 1925, when Chaplin came to New York for the opening of The Gold Rush. He was just twice my age, and I had an affair with him for two happy summer months. Ever since he died, my mind has gone back fifty years, trying to define that lovely being from another world. He was not only the creator of the Little Fellow, though that was miracle enough. He was a self-made aristocrat. He taught himself to speak cultivated English, and he kept a dictionary in the bathroom at his hotel so that he could learn a new word every morning. While he dressed, he prepared his script for the day, which was intended to adorn his private portrait of himself as a perfect English gentleman. He was also a sophisticated lover, who had affairs with Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Marion Davies and Pola Negri, and he was a brilliant businessman, who owned his films and demanded fifty per cent of the gross - which drove Joe Schenck wild, along with all the other people who were plotting to rob him.

 

I'll stop here. This is half of the section on Charlie. I'll pick up the other half on my next blog here. Thanks for reading...and commenting, please.
 

     

 

 

Thoughts from an esteemed critic on "City Lights"

 In Film Comment, October 1972, the renowned critic Stanley Kauffmann gave his thoughts about Charlie's 1931 movie "City Lights." Here are some excerpts from that which I find interesting and thought-provoking.

Chaplin had a lot of trouble with Virginia Cherrill and tried to replace her during the lengthy shooting. This backstage story makes the results all the more astonishing. Chaplin got an extremely good performance from her. Without it, the last scene would have been impossible. When the (even more) ragged Tramp stares happily at her through the shop window, she says to her assistant, "I've made a conquest," with just the right touch of haughty pleasure, the slight air of cruelty in the formerly maimed person made whole. A moment later, when she takes his hand and recognizes him by touch, she becomes her former self, but larger. He says, "You can see now?" Her face -  on the reply, "Yes, I can see now" - is beautiful. The film has to end with a close-up of Charlie - we'd feel cheated otherwise - but, dramatically, the last scene is hers.

Chaplin did not always succeed as a director, or discoverer, of actresses. Merna Kennedy in "The Circus" is a dud, as is Marilyn Nash in "Monsieur Verdoux." But when he succeeded, as with Georgia Hale in "the Gold Rush" and Cherrill here, he transformed them into something they never touched again.

One more section of Kauffmann's article I want to include here:

Sentiment is the burden and the blessing of Chaplin's work.  The durability of the sentimental passages may be a chief secret of his survival. Of his one-time peers, only Keaton - who really is his peer - is still as affecting. ... In the beginning of "City Lights," when he discovers that the girl is blind, the film seems to stop for a moment. In the last scene, when he gazes at her so selflessly, so happily, he says more than in that whole last speech of "The Great Dictator."

 

 

A Hard Look at "The Kid"

 

The next film up in Film Comment, Sept-Oct 1972, is “The Kid.”

The author of the article is Gary Carey. I tried to find some information on him, but only came up with a rather long list of books he’s written, mostly about Hollywood stars and movies. I wanted to find out about him because he takes a strongly negative view of “The Kid,” one of the harshest assessments of the movie I’ve ever seen. Here are some excerpts from his contribution to the Chaplin legacy.

 

“Legend tells us that Chaplin first conceived the idea for “The Kid” when Jackie Coogan wink at him in a hotel lobby. Perhaps this encounter did give him the specific idea for the film, but Chaplin had for some time been considering a project to win the approbation of American motherhood. “The Kid” has occasionally been dismissed as a shameless ploy to achieve this end…The charge of sentimentality often leveled against “The Kid” could be dismissed were it not for the frame story, which drips off the screen with mawkishness”

He goes on to pretty much rip the entire film. After a description of several scenes, he lets loose with this:

“These scenes are further hampered by indifferent photography, awkward introduction of symbolic inserts, and the inadequacy of Miss Purviance. …”The Kid” also falls short of “A Woman of Paris” in story construction. (This was never Chaplin’s forte: In fact, A Woman of Paris: it arguably his best-constructed film.)”

Carey finds great fault in Chaplin’s inclusion of the “heaven” sequence. He calls the fantasy irrelevant to a plot and takes the idea too far. The article continues with some discussion of Jean Cocteau and how he used Chaplin’s heaven fantasy in one of his plays. Rather unsuccessfully.  Then he concludes with this:

“It’s hard to decide how much Chaplin consciously put into his films, and how much sprang from his unconscious - or our own. Cocteau, at least, believed Chaplin was in full control of his art.”

I’ll finish this blog with a few words which appear earlier in his article, and allows me to sign off on a more positive note, since I think “The Kid” is a gem and a promise of the Chaplin that lay ahead.

“Still, even the most antipathetic mother must have succumbed to Chaplin’s genuinely sweet relationship with Coogan - the first and best of the cherubs with dirty faces - and been touched by the pathos of the child’s and the Tramp’s temporary parting. These scenes are imbued with an honest sentiment, something of a rarity in the history of the American film”

If you know anything about the life/career/accomplishments of Gary Carey, please tell me about him. He seems to know what he’s talking about, has an impressive store of information on Hollywood, and isn’t afraid to criticize a Chaplin classic.

Born 130 Years Ago, He Still Makes Us Laugh

He was born into poverty on April 16th in 1889. His father abandoned him when he was a child. His mother began a long, gradual descent into madness. He lived on the streets of London by his wits, along with his half-brother Sydney. He fell in love with the magic of the English music hall when he was eight years old. Audiences loved this funny and talented youngster who made them laugh.

By the time he was 25, he was the most recognized and beloved figure in the world. And remained so for many years.

©Roy Export SAS.

His name was Charles Spencer Chaplin. On screen he was The Little Tramp. Charlie referred to him as The Little Fellow, elevating him somewhat in social standing. Chaplin may have been the most influential film maker in history. He broke away from his early work in Mack Sennett's film factory of slapstick, a kick in the pants, chases and two-dimensional stories, to discover the power of storyline, character development, connection with the audience, performance, nuance, use of pathos and, especially, humor. His films, both the shorts and the features, had immeasurable impact on those who followed. 

©Roy Export SAS. 

This year marks the 130th anniversary of his birth. And, yes, Charlie is still alive in many ways. Activities and events are being held around the world, throughout the year and into 2020. The Chaplin Office in Paris, under the guidance of Kate Guyonvarch, recently posted a calendar of events in their newsletter. It’s impressive. Take a look at www.charliechaplin.com, the official website. 

Before I tell you more about this 130th celebration, a word about why I care. In 1960 I was living in San Francisco, somewhere between beatnik and aspiring writer. On Tuesday nights I’d head across the Golden Gate Bridge to Zack’s, a waterfront bar in Sausalito, where they showed Charlie Chaplin movies. Scratchy, old 16mm prints accompanied by the chatter of the projector. For me, it was magic! Over a scotch and water, and a hamburger, I fell in love with The Little Tramp, the beginning of a life-long obsession. I even wrote a novel about a guy who meets Chaplin today. Yes, time travel. Hollywood yesterday and today. The title is “Shadow and Substance: My Time with Charlie Chaplin.” If you would like to order a copy, send me an email, at spidermandel@charter.net. Reasonably priced, signed at no extra cost. (End of plug.) 

Back to the celebration. Here are some of the cities, countries and venues. For starters, Chaplin’s World in Vevey, Switzerland. That’s where Charlie lived after he left the U.S., and is now a museum (I was there two years ago, an unforgettable experience). Other event locations: London and Bristol, England. Paris. Slovakia. Japan. Italy. Israel. Turkey. United States. Germany. Austria. Switzerland. Spain.  Maybe even St. Louis. I'm working on it. And more on the horizon.

Events and projects include a new documentary, a new album of Chaplin music by violinist Philippe Quint, new plays and adaptations, a revival of “Chaplin: The Musical” in various countries, a BBC Radio series, Chaplin feature films shown with live orchestral accompaniment, limited edition of art prints of photographs from the Chaplin archives. And the party continues into 2020.

In September of 2017, my wife and I visited Paris. We made plans to meet Kate for lunch. As we walked to the restaurant, Kate said, “I’ve invited someone to join us. I hope you don’t mind.” Of course I didn’t mind and said so. Then she told me who it was. Charlie’s grandson. Charles Sistovaris. His mother was Josephine, one of Charlie and Oona’s daughters. It was a lunch I’ll never forget. Charley was incredibly charming and gracious, with that magic Chaplin smile.The meal was delicious, the setting elegant, the company...one for the ages.

I urge you to celebrate Chaplin’s 130th. Go to Paris, London, NYC, DC, or wherever you find a Chaplin event on the website. Or watch a Chaplin movie at home. Maybe start with “The Kid” or “The Gold Rush.” Or his Mutual shorts. Chaplin considered these shorts some of his best work. You can buy them on-line or find them at the library. If possible, get a recent edition of the movie, where the image is sharp and the music track is crisp and clean. You’ll see why Charlie still makes us laugh and perhaps shed a tear. You'll understand why the world remembers his birthday. And rejoices.

When Marlon, Sophia and Charlie Got Together

Today I'm turning over my blog to a former writer for Life Magazine. 
Her name was Dora Jane Hamblin. She died in 1993, in a retirement home in Rome, at the age of 73. 

But on April 1, 1966, she wrote an article about the new movie being produced in London. Written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, the film was generally panned by critics as being "out of date." During pre-production, Chaplin suffered a great personal loss when his brother, Sydney, died in Nice, France at the age of 80. 





Two esteemed visitors to the set during shooting were Gloria Swanson and the film historian Kevin Brownlow. Kevin wrote about his experience that day, which David Robinson included in his magnificent biography of Chaplin. 

Sadly, this was Chaplin's final film.

But, right now, let's listen to Dora Jane Hamblin. These are excerpts of her article. The "Sydney" she refers to here is Charlie's son.

"Walking onto Charlie Chaplin's set at England's Pinewood Studios feels quite a bit like trying to tip-toe into church after the service has started. There are, to be sure, a lot of slamming doors and exploding champagne bottles and actors leaping around like scalded cats, but between the bangs and the crashes there is a silence quite unlike the perfunctory quiet of the ordinary movie set. Everybody's watching Charlie teach some new tricks to a trio of old pros - Sophia, Marlon and Sydney Chaplin. The stars sit rapt, like well brought-up children, hanging on his every word. That is much easier than hanging onto him.

"Marlon is supposed to chase Sophia around the furniture? Charlie takes off in a frantic deadpan dash, to show Marlon how he wants him to do it. Sophia is supposed to flee? Charlie skitters around uttering little yelps of alarm and casting arch looks back over his tweedy shoulder. Sydney Chaplin is supposed to puff on a cigar and make himself sick? Charlie Chaplin wraps his small hand around an imaginary cigar, tilts his head, and everybody not he set can smell the nonexistent smoke.....

"The new picture, though it is the 81st of Chaplin's 52-year movie career, is a first in a couple of significant categories: it is Chaplin's first film in color; it is the first time he hasher directed established stars, let alone a pair of Oscar winners and staggering personalities like Loren and Brando; and it is the first time in years that he has worked for a company not his own. Universal is bankrolling this one at an estimated production cost of $4 million and will distribute it. But Chapin is clearly running it. .... Hardly a day passes that Charlie doesn't mutter 'We're using too much film.' Actually, Charlie's first feature-length film, the six-reeler Tillie's Punctured Romance in 1914, had almost exactly the same shooting time as this present film, 14 weeks.

"'That was very, very difficult, that scene,' Sophia says. 'It was a charlie Chapin scene, you see. Silent, and subtle. He has the timing exactly right when he does it. Charlie never does the obvious thing, like most actors. He turns it all upside down, thinks of the opposite from the obvious thing.' "...

"'In the next few days I thought I had gone raving mad, Charlie had gone raving mad, and it was impossible,' says Brando. 'I can't do fades and triple-takes and things like that, and I was wanting to go to Charlie to say, 'I'm afraid we've both made a horrible mistake. But then it all started to work out. With Charlie it's chess, it's chess at 90 mph.' ...

"He (Charlie) plays one scene in the film. The morning he did it, he hopped onto the set grinning from ear to ear. He slid into the white jacket of a ship's chief steward, and he combed his hair and muttered his lines under his breath and gave that old familiar half-apologetic look just over the left shoulder. His assistant director called 'Action!' and Chaplin opened the door. He put on the walk of an aging chief steward and then the look of a seasick chief steward He made straight for a porthole and tripped over something that wasn't in the script. Just before the assistant director could call 'Cut' he stopped, bent down, picked up an imaginary object and slipped it intones pocked, adjusted his shoulder, walked on. It was very funny.


"'Well, that's my contribution,' he said as he walked off the set. Kona gave him a big kiss and everybody told him the scene was wonderful. The only reason there wasn't a round of applause was that everyone in the place was afraid he might snap at them. 'Quiet, now let's all be adult!'"

And so ends the article. I've included photos from the magazine, which were shot by famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Also included is an ad from that same issue which features another very funny man.

Seth Puts Charlie in the News

The Riverfront Times is a weekly newspaper in St. Louis that is more contemporary and edgier than our daily St. Louis Post Dispatch. Which is why I pick it up whenever I can. It's a freebie. Seth Rogen's new movie, "The Interview," doesn't really interest me, but the uproar it has created... actually an international crisis, if you believe the media... I find fascinating.

What made this article even more fascinating, when i turned to page 13, was the photo of Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel in "The Great Dictator." Tales of courage and conviction in Hollywood are few and far between. Like finding melody in rap. 

I wanted to share with you that portion of the RFT article that talks about Chaplin. 

"Comedy is the greatest way to attack anything like a totalitarian regime," said Ray Bradbury. He was speaking of "The Great Dictator," Charlie Chaplin's bold lampoon of Adolf Hitler. The Little Tramp was furious when the Nazis called him a "disgusting Jewish acrobat." Chaplin wasn't Jewish. But that wasn't the point. He was upset that being Jewish was an insult - and worse, that more people weren't offended.

"Hitler must be laughed at," Chaplin insisted.

He and Hitler were born just one week apart in April 1889. Both were raised in troubled homes and pursued artistic careers — albeit, in Hitler's case, temporarily. "He's the madman, I'm the comic," Chaplin said. "But it could have been the other way around."

United Artists

Charlie Chaplin ridiculed Adolf Hitler in his 1940 film, The Great Dictator.

The Great Dictator was preemptively banned in Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy and all Nazi-occupied territory — no surprises there. The one time a projectionist snuck it into a military theater, German soldiers fired pistols at the screen. But thanks to the Hayes Production Code, which frowned upon breaking Hollywood's neutrality stance, screenings weren't even guaranteed in America or Chaplin's native England.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt learned that Hollywood was giving Chaplin a hard time, he urged the filmmaker to press on. Roosevelt even attended The Great Dictator's premiere in 1940 — by that time, hating Hitler was politically smart.

Rogen and Goldberg wanted to screen The Interview at the White House, but they were turned down, Rogen says. "We got back a funny email, like, 'Given the subject matter, we do not feel that this would be appropriate.'" And so far, The Interview will not be shown anywhere in Asia.

The genius of The Great Dictator is that it doesn't just attack Hitler's policies. As in The Interview, the film makes the dictator a buffoon. Chaplin's dictator falls down the stairs, gets soiled by a baby, frets about his social status and gets caught in his own cape. He doesn't rule with an iron fist — he's ruled by his emotions.

But Chaplin held back by dubbing his mustachioed, Jew-hating tyrant "Adenoid Hynkel."The Interview aggressively names names.

Plus, Chaplin ended The Great Dictator with a four-minute speech in which he addressed the camera and pleaded for utopian peace: "Let us fight to free the world — to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance." It's no spoiler to say that Rogen and Goldberg end their film with less sincerity.

Clearly, Hitler's own favorite film about himself, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, can be defined as propaganda. Audiences have a harder time using the word to describe Chaplin's work, though both are unquestionably films designed to further a cause."

The rest of the article talks about Rogen, the movie, and N. Korea. 

But here we are, just a couple of days away from the 37th anniversary of the passing of Chaplin, and he is as alive and relevant as ever. In this case, maybe more so, given the added weight of time and circumstance. The world in 1940 was headed towards complete chaos, already immersed in it in Europe. The studio heads in Hollywood backed off from implicating the Nazis and Germany's aggression for fears of losing foreign markets and stirring up anti-Semitism in the U.S. 

One man was unafraid. 

Charlie and Jeff:The Good, the Bad, the Timely

A newsletter arrived in the mail today. Not email, but an old-fashioned, USPS delivered, 4-pager that you can hold in your hand, fold and put in your pocket, set a glass of iced coffee on it so the sweat won't leave a puddle. It's called Hightower LOWDOWN (all caps), and is written by Jim Hightower. No idea who he is. Didn't subscribe to it. Almost pitched it after reading the headline: "Like Walmart, only with supercomputers and drones: At Amazon.com, "cheap" comes at a very hefty price."

Not a subject I'm particularly interested in. Get depressed when I go to WalMart. Blame Amazon for running most of the independent bookstores out of business. The article fills the entire 4 pages. But then I read the opening sentence, some of it in bold type, and I reconsidered:

"IN HIS CLASSIC 1936 COMEDY, Modern Times, silent filmmaker Charlie Chaplin depicted the trials and tribulations of a harried factory worker trying to cope with the sprockets, cogs, conveyor belts, and managerial 'efficiencies' of the new industrial culture. The poor fellow continuously finds himself caught up (almost literally) in the grinding tyranny of the machine."

He goes on to call the movie "hilarious" while adding "it's also a powerful and damning portrayal of the dehumanizing consequences of mass industrialization...

" and elaborates on that aspect of the movie. "Ruthless bosses." "Faster output." "Monotonous assembly-line work." You've probably seen the movie, so you know what he's talking about. 

And you remember the contraption that force-fed workers as they worked. Charlie's hilarious scene with the bowl of soup, corn on the cob, and a piece of pie.

It's one of my favorite scenes in Modern Times. Especially considering how Chaplin accomplished the intricate timing on the contraption. 

Finally, Hightower gets to the point of the comparison between the movie and Amazon:

"Of course, worker-feeding machines were a comedic exaggeration by the filmmaker, not anything that actually existed in his day, and such an inhuman contrivance would not even be considered in our modern times. Right? Well....if you work for amazon.com,Inc., you'd swear that Chaplin's masterpiece is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' idea of a properly run workplace."

The next 3 1/2 pages are basically an indictment of the way Bezos runs his company. I don't want to take up space on Time with Charlie Chaplin talking about how and why Amazon got to be the 10th largest retailer in the country. Much of it reads like a horror story, reminiscent of 19th century London or lower Manhattan garment factories in the 1920's. It's almost enough to make me throw away my Kindle. Almost. 

At the end of the article, we return to Chaplin: "Reducing workers to Chaplinesque automatons in a rigid time-motion nightmare, however, is not the end of Bezos' reprogramming of work and workers. Why not just replace those pesky humans altogether?"

All of which makes me wonder just what Chaplin would have done with this scenario. Drones and robots and artificial intelligence and whatever else Bezos has in store for America. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like Metropolis instead of Modern Times. If you'd like to read the entire article, you can find it on www.hightowerlowdown.org. 

Amazon, of course, is not alone in its corporate environment. They have plenty of company throughout the world. Today it's the documentary that attempts to expose and correct these situations. Back in 1936, Chaplin did it with comedy, with The Little Tramp, and with Paulette Goddard.

I'd just rather keep the two separate, continue to enjoy Chaplin and Paulette and the brilliant scenes and sequences, finally ending with an iris out as Charlie and Paulette walk away from camera into the distance and a promising future. 

Now that's a happy ending, and I don't need a drone to deliver my next re-issue of Chaplin films.

Time for a Chaplin Statue

Two situations came together for me recently which tell me "it's about time."

The subject is a sculpture of Charlie Chaplin. In the United States.
Now you'd think there would be an appropriate statue of him in bronze somewhere in this country, but you'd be wrong. At least as far as I can tell. Certainly, there would be one in Hollywood, a town he helped create. They do have a bas relief of him on Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

There's another one of him across the street, in the lobby of the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel. It's a life-size Tramp sitting on a bench. And that's it.

About those two motivating events I mentioned:
I was talking to a friend of mine, Harry Weber, an accomplished sculptor with installations throughout the U.S., Europe, even Africa. He's currently working on a bronze statue of Elvis, to be placed in Springfield, Missouri. Don't ask me why Springfield. I didn't ask. Harry has created sculptures of Chuck Berry, Bobby Orr, 8 or 9 St. Louis Cardinal Hall of Famers, Doug Flutie, Tennessee Williams... the list is long and varied. You can see what I mean at Harry Weber sculptures

Harry and me with Chuck Berry sculpture.

Harry working on the Lewis & Clark sculpture.

I'm not trying to drum up business for Harry, though I'd love to see what he could do with Chaplin. I'm just trying to figure out why there is no significant sculpture of Chaplin, when so many other celebrities and non-celebrities have been immortalized in bronze. Harry says it is usually an individual that steps forward to initiate a project. So it seems no one has done that on Chaplin's behalf.

Which brings me to event #2.

The scene is London. Today. Thanks to my friend Carl Sturmer, I've learned that the British honored Chaplin with a sculpture by John Doubleday in 1981. Originally it was in a place of honor: across from William Shakespeare in Leicester Square. Quite a duo, Will and Charlie. Covers a wide range of creative excellence that originated in London. Even though Chaplin's career grew and flourished in Hollywood, his roots were deep in London.

Due to a major renovation, Charlie was moved to a side street, about two blocks from Will. Carl tracked it down and took these photos. He says, "I was really sad when I saw it standing there. Despite it all as I loitered for a few minutes people still stopped to take their picture with him. Nothing can kill his legacy."

Here's the World View on Chaplin sculptures. It's probably more comprehensive than you imagined. There are sculptures of Charlie in Alassio, Italy; Merida, Venezuela; Shanghai; Vevey, Switzerland; Waterville, Ireland; the Czech Republic; Hyderabad, India, and a couple of more.

So I say, "It's about time." For the United States to honor one of its greatest film artists with a magnificent sculpture in a place of honor. In Hollywood. That's where it should go, I believe. In a significant location. There are lots of folks in Hollywood (and Beverly Hills and Malibu and Bel Air) who could write a check tomorrow for this and not even notice the cost. There are lots of folks who probably owe at least some part of their success to Chaplin's accomplishments and ideas. Maybe I'm biased but I can't think of any other individual who so much represents what the legacy of movies and Hollywood is all about.

I'm not experienced at starting grass roots movements. But I'll try. You can send an email to Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles. Just tell him about this timely idea for a Chaplin sculpture. You can mention that 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of The Little Tramp, and it happened in Venice, California. There's no better time to initiate this project.

mayor.garcetti@lacity.org

Also, you can drop a note to the LA Times. 

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79793461/

If this works, I've got a terrific idea. We'll all meet in L.A. for the dedication ceremony, followed by dinner at Musso & Frank Grill, a landmark on Hollywood Boulevard dating back to 1919. It was one of Charlie's favorite restaurants. I'll pick up the check...for the food...not the airfare. See you there. And thanks.