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.