Charlie & Buster: What Might Have Been

Jazz musicians used to get together, usually after hours, for jam sessions.

It was a thrill to see and hear these jazz greats sitting in with each other.

Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson and Lester Young. Guys who played with their own groups, but still enjoyed the challenge and stimulation of interplay.

What does this have to do with Charlie Chaplin? A lot, I believe. Charlie retained control of his films for most of his life. His final film here, in 1952, was Limelight. It was then, at the age of 63, that he decided to work with Buster Keaton. And that's what I can't understand. Why did it take so long for these two giants of silent film to get together in a movie? Surely someone must have had such an idea.

During the last weekend of September (about a week from now), fans of Keaton will convene in Kansas for the annual Buster Keaton Celebration. Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, KS    

This year the focus is on Keaton and Chaplin. I'll be there, as I was last year when I learned to appreciate Keaton even more than I had before. Relatives of Keaton, friends, academics (or is it academicians?), an actor who worked with him, the head of the Association Chaplin in Bologna, Italy... they'll be there. I look forward to what they have to say about Buster and Charlie.

In the meantime:

Life Magazine ran an 11-page spread on "Chaplin at Work" in its March 17, 1952 issue. It contained a lot of photographs of the Limelight production, but only a couple show Buster. Here's a short paragraph from that article.

     "Chaplin had carefully planned what to do in his dramatic scenes. But the comedy routines often had to be developed through trial and error and patient improvisation. The scene below with Buster Keaton, himself a star of the silent comedies, began with only the meager idea of a nearsighted pianist and an acrobatic violinist. The two, who had never appeared together before, spent a day of preparation in shirtsleeves organizing the piece of business which would form their act. With utter disregard of their ages (Keaton, 56, Chaplin, 63), they danced and tumbled, experimented, repeated. Over and over Chaplin twirled, tripped, rolled across the footlights into the orchestra pit where worried grips stood by to catch him. Time and time again Keaton staggered from the wings, crashed awkwardly into the piano and fell to the floor in a flutter of music sheets. Stagehands, dancers, musicians sat in bemused groups breaking into laughter, applauding as they watched a show no one else would ever see."

When I've watched Limelight, I'm struck by the number of single shots in what was essentially a duo performance. I prefer the shots where you see both of them on stage.  Instead of including both Buster and Charlie in the shot, Charlie frequently went to the single shots. I think that's a shame, considering that the appeal of this sequence is watching two of the greatest film artists working together.

David Robinson, in "Chaplin: His Life and Art," explains.

     "Keaton worked on the film for three weeks.... It was a sweet gesture of Chaplin's to employ him: Keaton had not worked in comedy for years and was all but forgotten. He arrived, Jerry Epstein recalls, with the little flat hat he had worn in his own films, and had to be gently told that Chaplin already had a costume and business worked out for him. The whole unit was enchanted to see, however, that once on stage, Chaplin and Keaton became two old comedy pros, each determined to upstage the other.... Claire Bloom felt that 'some of his gags may even have been a little too incandescent for Chaplin because, laugh as he did at the rushes in the screening room, Chaplin didn't see fit to allow them all into the final version of the film.'"

Of all the Chaplin out-takes and alternate scenes that have been uncovered and discovered, mainly by Kevin Brownlow, none - as far as I know - show all the magic and inventiveness that certainly occurred between Charlie and Buster during those three weeks. I wonder about Charlie's motives, especially since he did not see fit to mention Buster in his autobiography. But I shouldn't complain. At least he brought Buster in for these few glorious moments. Rather than wonder about what's been left unseen, better to fully appreciate the two greatest comic stars of the silent era.

The applause and laughter will ring forever.

HOW CHARLIE WORKED WITH HIS ACTORS

On March 17, 1952, about a month before Charlie’s 63rd birthday, Life Magazine ran a feature called “Chaplin at Work.” Subhead: “He reveals his movie-making secrets.” It was basically a photo essay showing him at work on Limelight. His secret seemed to lie in the method he employed working with his actors, along with his complete involvement in every aspect of making the film.

Ironically, this would be the last film that Chaplin made as a resident of the U.S. Just six months later, on Sept. 18, 1952, Charlie left the U. S., headed for London and the world premiere of “Limelight.” The following day U.S. Attorney General James McGranery revoked his  re-entry permit. Although Charlie could have fought it on solid legal grounds, he decided he would rather live in Europe.

In his autobiography, Charlie says:

"Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me. I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up of America's insults and moral pomposity.”

He would not return until 1972, to be honored at Lincoln Center in New York and at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

With old friends Harry Crocker (left) and Tim Durant,
who had bit parts in the film

 But about the article: The photos here reinforced what I had heard about Chaplin’s method of directing actors. Basically, it was to play their part for them, show them exactly what he wanted from them. For the first time in his career, Chaplin gave a photographer the freedom to spend 5 weeks on the set, shooting whatever he wanted.

Demonstrating to Melissa Hayden how he wants her to move

Jeffrey Vance, in his book, Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema, says:

“From his first film to his last, Chaplin remained a man of the theater, and his primary concern was to convey to the audience the action and the emotion of a scene through the performances of his actors, not through innovative or elaborate photography, lighting, or editing. By any standard, Chaplin’s directing style, perfected during the filming of the Mutuals and employed throughout the rest of his career, was unique in the cinema. He simply acted out the parts of all the actors as he wished them to be played, down to the slightest gesture of the hand or movement of the eyebrow. Chaplin and his cast would be in full costume and make-up while he rehearsed scenes and refined ideas over and over again on film. This directorial style was considered eccentric even in 1916, and the time he lavished on his films was the envy of every filmmaker. Yet for Chaplin, a laser-like concentration on performance and perfection to the exclusion of all else was his unyielding obsession, even until the end of his career.”"Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema"

Kevin Brownlow, in his exquisite 1986 “Unknown Chaplin” documentary, clearly reveals the concentration and obsession with perfection that was so much a part of Chaplin’s genius. Unknown Chaplin DVD

Charlie substitutes momentarily for Claire Bloom

I wondered what Charlie had to say about his directing style, so I revisited his autobiography. Here’s how he saw it:

“...Also a brief word about directing. In handling actors in a scene, psychology is most helpful. For instance, a member of the cast may join the company in the middle of a production. Although an excellent actor, he may be nervous in his new surroundings. This is where a director’s humility can be very helpful, as I have often found under these circumstances. Although knowing what I wanted, I would take the new member aside and confide in him that I was tired, worried and at a loss to know what to do with the scene. Very soon he would forget his own nervousness and try to help me and I would get a good performance out of him.

Charlie rolls on the ground to show extras what he
wants of them as an audience in the music hall

“....I do not believe acting can be taught. I have seen intelligent people fail at it and dullards act quite well. But acting essentially requires feeling.... In instructing a true actor or actress about a character, a word or a phrase will often suffice... I have found that orientation is the most important means of achieving this; that is, knowing where you are and what you’re doing every moment you’re on the stage....I have always insisted on this method of orientation with the cast when I’m directing my films.”

Showing Sophia how to play the scene

Fourteen years later, Chaplin would direct Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren in “The Countess from Hong Kong.” Though Chaplin thought the movie was among his best work, most critics did not agree. Here is what Charlie said about his actors, in a 1967 interview with Richard Merryman:

“Marlon Brando is an exceptionally good actor... There were a lot of things he did that I didn’t like - but, you know, they came off 100 percent. Very trifling things, but the sort that loom up to a director, especially for a person like me, I can act, you know, I can act.

“I don’t think either Brando or Loren understood the value of the script that it would work so well. I did. I’m an actor. I wrote it. When you’ve had fifty years experience, you know something about a script.”

Charlie the actor. Charlie the director. Charlie the writer. 

The various faces of Chaplin in "Limelight"

I can only wonder what more he might have accomplished if he had not been forced from the U.S., or if he had decided to fight it and remained here. I wonder where his creative force would have taken him, in an era when silent movies were historic curiosities, when television invaded every home, when the very nature of “what is funny” changed. Yet, looking back at that Life article 63 years later, I am not surprised that his movies are still held in high regard, are shown in theater and festivals and on TCM consistently. Whatever his relationship with actors was, he knew what he wanted. And he got it.