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by Charlie Chaplin and starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, the film was generally panned by critics as being "out of date."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.

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.