It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself venting to you about how long directorial biographies are.  Should I be surprised that a biography of a man who tasked himself with every aspect of his films should fall into the same category?  Charlie Chaplin not only directed but starred, wrote, edited, composed scores and basically exhausted himself with every detail of his 80 films.  During the reading of this book we are given a quick snapshot of his involvement.  We are allowed to discover why Charlie’s pictures take so darned long to create as we see that Chaplin is the one-man-band that many others claim they were (ahem, Frank Capra).  He really left little to others to do independently.  He told them what he wanted and they did their best to interpret it.

Given how much Chaplin did and how long he lived it is not surprising that this book was lengthy.  As with many biographies of this expanse, I was both longing for it to be over so I could meet a new character and dreading its completion.  David Robinson did his utmost to stretch out my time with him.  This book has to be written in 8 pt font and quotes are maybe in 7 pt font.  I think that the publisher’s were given this as their only out to include 632 pages of biographical content and still support the lengthy notes section.  To do anything else would have meant that I couldn’t have lifted this book long enough to get to Modern Times.  And gosh darn it, does Robinson love secondary sources and notations.  What with all the small type I’m sure that my optometrist will be impressed with just how badly I need his attention.  Am I complaining about all this extra material?  Though it may sound like it, I actually enjoyed the quotated bits enormously.  Robinson shared with us the Limelight novel that Chaplin wrote in order to base his character’s on it for the movie and pieces from Chaplin’s lovely My Autobiography.  We are also treated to some contemporary reviews and letters of acquaitances.  This book never feels as though someone told Robinson “Say, David.  Why don’t you give us a book about Charlie Chaplin.  Maybe something about his wives and the whole thing where the US banned his return?  That ought to sell”.  No, this is a truly devoted historian and fan writing and he does a great job of not psychoanalyzing the subject, bless his heart.

During the reading of this book I learned a lot about Chaplin’s working style.  Though he would star in all but two, in his direction of these films he acted every part, detailing every action for his actors.  His success as a director was directly related to his abilities as an actor.  Though there would be those who found this method preposterous (I’m looking at you, Marlon Brando) it allowed him to find the right person for a part without concerning himself about their acting abilities.  I also learned quite a bit about his personal life.  Does this cat ever like to get married!  You can’t help feeling for the Tramp as he bungles into yet another brutal and pointless relationship.  You rejoice as he finally finds the right one (this especially true if you also named your cat after “the right one”, I suppose).  His relationship with Oona is heartening and amazing, especially with those 8 kids to their credit.

In the end the most compelling relationship I learned about was that of Chaplin and The Kid.  The young star, Jackie Coogan, played the orphan in The Kid and won the real Tramp over.  Their bond seemed very unique.  After the movie was released Chaplin knew that he needed to allow Coogan to develop on his own and experience other opportunities.  Problem is, all the other opportunities this artful kid got were for poorly-written sob stories and his career not only stalled, it nose-dived.  There were two final bright points for Coogan though.  I was so excited by what I read that it required me running downstairs to talk to The Mister.  Coogan had a short term marriage with Betty Grable AND he played Uncle Fester on the Addams Family.  Isn’t that amazing?  Maybe you don’t think so but it is amazing to me that someone who was the gold standard for child actors would end up starring as Uncle Fester.  Not to mention dating the utmost in pinup babes, am I right?

Back to the topic of Chaplin (my apologies) it was fascinating to learn about his shyness.  He received energy from people and had an internationally reknown ability to entertain them.  Still, they scared the living tar out of him, at times.  I’ve learned that a number of comedians/clowns carry around this happy/sad dichotmy with them and it should have come as no surprise that the leader of the pack exhibited these qualities, too.  But it did. 

I’ll save the rest of the surprises for you.  I really enjoyed this biography as it allowed me to really dig in and get to know a bunch about this enchanting personality.  It’s not a quick read but for someone of Chaplin’s stature you should devote at least this much paper and time.  Heck, I’ll probably grab another biography about him again some day.  I’ll just hope for a larger font.

Chaplin: His Life and Art

David Robinson

I change out the headers here on “The Blarg” pretty often. Over the past year, I’ve changed the header out nearly three dozen times.

My friend Shawn has a header archive over on his site, Darby’s Secret Stash. I thought that was a pretty good idea, so I decided to steal it! Mwa-ha-ha!

So here are all of the site’s headers from the past year. Some worked well; others are embarrassing. But hey, whatever… the site’s free. What do you want?

Here they are, shown from the oldest to the newest. Click on each banner to view a larger image.

Bruce banners,

-Shady

Questi due filmati hanno qualcosa, anzi qualcuno in comune.

non ci credevamo, quando l’abbiamo scoperto!!! Jackie Coogan cioè Il monello di Chaplin, è in realtà… Lo zio Fester!

Quindi, ricapitolando:

Jackie Coogan PRIMA

Jackie Coogan DOPO

August 27, 1939

From “Fidler in Hollywood,” by Jimmie Fidler:

. . . And here’s an item that sounds like a page from Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”  The other day the Laurel and Hardy troupe, making “Flying Deuces,” jaunted out to Encino for location scenes.  While they worked, a shabbily-dressed scrawny little girl stood on the sidelines, watching.  Finally someone started asking her questions.  And she led them to her “house”—a one-room, ramshackle cabin there in the hills.  In addition to her father and mother, there were four other children there—ragged and starving.  Another child had died the week before.  One look and the whole troupe dug deep.  They made up a collection of cash and sent the property man to a nearby grocery to purchase a big supply of canned goods.  All this, mind you, within a few hundred yards of some of the movie colony’s most palatial homes.  Well, that’s one family that has a brighter future, for, in addition to the immediate help supplied, every member of the troupe pledged himself to the task of finding the man a good job.

. . . Despite reports that “Gone With the Wind” is ready for release, studio insiders say that Selznick will order another month’s shooting on battle scenes. . .

Vince Price, who stopped in this morning, wants you to know that he feels like a can of smoking tobacco after playing Prince Albert in “Victoria Regina” and Sir Walter Raleigh in “Elizabeth and Essex.”

St. Petersburg Times

Also from the St. Petersburg Times:

Wed:  Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller, swimmer, and Beryl Scott, San Francisco society girl; Brian Aherne, actor, and Joan Fontaine, actress.

Sued:  Jackie Coogan, for $30,000, by a Hollywood hula dancer, charging defamation of character.

Slain:  A daughter of Musician Bruno Walter, by her husband, a German refugee, who then killed himself, in Switzerland.

Difícilmente se pueden concentrar en 50 minutos más ternura y amor desinteresado que en El chico (The Kid, 1921), una de esas películas que consiguen reconciliarte con el ser humano. La historia de un vagabundo que recoge a un bebé al que, tras una serie de patéticos esfuerzos por colocar en cualquier parte, acabará criando como a su propio hijo.

Como en toda cinta de Charlot que se precie, el protagonista vive sumido en la más absoluta indigencia; imposible olvidar la tetera-biberón o la colcha con un enorme agujero que se recicla en poncho para desayunar. Chaplin, como haría a lo largo de su carrera, consigue desde la primera escena despertar con su personaje un sentimiento a mitad de camino entre la lástima y la admiración: lástima por su mísera condición; admiración por su habilidad para salir del paso. Aquí, con el añadido de ese pequeño pícaro (en la tradición de los mejores del género, iniciado en El lazarillo de Tormes) que revienta las ventanas para que el maestro/padre se presente al momento como salvador con su cristalería ambulante.

A golpe de persecución policial (el agente de la ley, como era tradición entonces, retratado como un patán con pocas luces) y alguna que otra escaramuza (de nuevo, el grandullón estúpido vencido a través del ingenio) avanza la cinta en lo que parece una plácida concatenación de graciosas y chuscas escenas de pillería en el suburbio más desangelado. Hasta que el chico cae enfermo, el doctor descubre que es huérfano, da parte y la maquinaria burocrática se pone en marcha para sacar al crío del andrajoso hogar y encerrarlo en un hogar de caridad.

Y es en este punto cuando la película despega y Chaplin demuestra que, mago del humor, es capaz de exprimir hasta la última gota de una trama que, en otras manos, podría volverse sensiblera, para componer un paréntesis angustioso, llevado al límite por un Jackie Coogan (el pequeño) sencillamente sensacional; quizás por irrumpir en medio de un relato cómico resulta aún más traumática la desesperada lucha de Charlot por recuperar al niño, en inferioridad numérica y de estatura, corriendo por tejados y saltando a coches en marcha.

La parte final, abocada al happy ending, baja el pistón en las emociones e incluso se permite la licencia de un impass onírico que sólo la época (de nuevo, ¡1921!) obliga a perdonar. El poso, terminado el breve metraje, permanece sin embargo inalterable, sin que decaiga un ápice la sensación de haber presenciado 50 minutos imborrables.

Chaplin tendría una legendaria carrera por delante (estaban por llegar Tiempos modernos, Luces de la ciudad y, por supuesto, El gran dictador, entre otras). Jackie Coogan apenas pasó de niño prodigio, y sólo actuó 10 años más, pero simplemente con su actuación en esta cinta merece el agradecimiento eterno por la manera en que, con sólo 6 añitos, se come la pantalla y casi, casi al mismísimo Charlot.

Lo que brindan entre ambos es, a la vez, una película imborrable y un recordatorio, en los tiempos que corren, de que el cine es, de todos los medios artísticos, el más capacitado para captar con más intensidad nuestras emociones… incluso en blanco y negro y sin diálogos.

I have been a huge fan of this beat poem from the Mamie Van Doren flick High School Confidential for years. About 8 years ago I was determined enough to figure out how to pull this track from a VCR that I had hooked up to my computer…and in all honesty, I think I spent weeks trying to figure out how to do it, just so I could take this song from the classic film which features Jackie Coogan, seen here blasting on the upright piano. Now it’s yours.

Here’s a clip from the movie and the mp3 below.

Tomorrow Drag

EXTRA:

Herman Munster is not quite as hep…notice Zalman King at the end of this Munsters clip.

A century ago, when Hollywood was still a city in its own right ( it would be annexed to Los Angeles in 1910), it was also becoming the center of the movie industry, which was leaving downtown Los Angeles in search of greater space. By the time Cecil B. DeMille, Thomas Ince and Jesse Lasky began making films in Hollywood’s new studios, they were living here as well, on estates that appeared plucked from England, France and Italy.

Norma Talmage's and Jesse Lasky's Hollywood Homes. Courtesy Tommy Dangcil, "Hollywood 1900-1950 in Vintage Postcards"

Actors followed, building grand houses on Hollywood Boulevard and northward. S. I. Hayakawa, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jackie Coogan, Janet Gaynor and Norma Talmadge all called Hollywood their home as well as workplace. (Most of their houses have been torn down, though a few remain on the residential stretch of Hollywood Boulevard that runs between Highland and Fairfax Avenues.)  Hollywood’s deluxe residential period occurred during the teens, but the area’s concurrent transformation from leafy hamlet to congested industrial city scotched any further development as a star-studded bedroom community. In the face of urbanization, the Silent Era superstars wanted to live elsewhere. But where?

It’s easy to forget that actors in those days bore more differences than similarities to their present-day counterparts, who come from every conceivable background. In the Silent Era, most actors were poor, uneducated men and women whose previous performing experience, if any, stopped at vaudeville. Without  the medium of film, they would have worked not as stage actors but as factory hands and maids.

In moving out of the Hollywood ghetto, “movies,” as industry folk were called, were forced to confront an unpleasant social reality. Both because of their lower class origins and employment in what was considered a louche medium, actors were shunned by their economic peers: the railway, newspaper, land and oil barons that made up the elite of Los Angeles.

This social drama was played out most vividly in the leafy residential district of Hancock Park, where such luminaries as Harold Lloyd, John Garfield and Mary Pickford bought mansions alongside those owned by the Chandlers, Van Nuyses and Gettys. Finding themselves perpetually uninvited to their neighbors’ parties, the stars soon departed for greener (and less judgmental) pastures. By the mid-1920s, they had established themselves as the aristocracy of a luxurious planned community five miles west: Beverly Hills. (Harold Lloyd, who invested heavily in real estate there, became so wealthy that he was able to retire from acting at an early age.)

In recent decades, movie stars have headed as far west as possible to live in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. At the same time, some have headed back east, establishing  beachheads in the Hollywood Hills and Los Feliz. Some have even settled in Hancock Park, after 70 years of avoidance. The renaissance of this actors’ no-go zone can be credited to John Malkovich, who in the early 1990s bought and restored a decrepit Italianate house in Windsor Square. The fact that he tranformed it into a Moroccan villa brought consternation from his neighbors–some things never change–but not ostracism. Perhaps sensing the newly liberal mood, other actors–Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, Kiefer Sutherland, Patricia Heaton and Kathy Bates, to name a few–bought houses and apparently found domestic satisfaction there. Nowadays the Hancock Park–which as recently as the mid-90s resembled a West Coast Greenwich, CT–is described in national magazines as “toney” and “trendy,” designations unheard of in the high WASP era. Where a dilapidated fixer once occupied every block, the houses have been beautifully and expensively restored–all except, ironically, Harold Llyod’s. But that’s another story.

1938 – College Swing. L to R: Edward Everett Horton, Gracie Allen, Martha Raye, Bob Hope, George Burns, Ben Blue, Florence George, John Payne, Betty Grable, Jackie Coogan.

The full cast from College Swing (1938) which is a romp in which Gracie becomes the dean of men.

Title: The Kid
Year: 1921
Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Starring: Charles Chaplin, Carl Miller, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan
Music: Charles Chaplin
Distinctions: currently #187 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: an orphan ends up in the care of The Tramp
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), April 2008
Subjective Rating: 6/10
Objective Rating: 5/10 (points off for characters, pacing, cinematography, special effects/design and music)

Not bad for 1921. And I actually kind of like how they skip over necessary plot points with the words “Everything works out,” or something to that effect. It’s a bit slow in general. The surreal allegorical dream sequence around the part of the movie that should be the climax is. . . an unexpected choice. Most of the supporting cast is terrible, but Chaplin’s great of course, and oddly the kid (about 5 or 6 years old) is good too.

In you case you missed it, our Nov. 18 program is now available on the archives page at www.tvconfidential.net. Our guest that night was Joal Ryan, correspondent for E! Online, editor and publisher of FSNCentral.com and author of Former Child Stars: The Story of America’s Least Wanted; together we discussed the careers of Gary Coleman (Diff’rent Strokes), Jackie Coogan (The Kid), Ron Howard (The Andy Griffith Show), Paul Peterson (The Donna Reed Show), Anissa “Buffy” Jones (Family Affair) and other former child stars from film and television.

Ed Robertson
Co-Host, TV CONFIDENTIAL
Every other Tuesday at 10:30pm ET, 7:30pm PT
Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
www.edrobertson.com
www.tvconfidential.net
blog.tvconfidential.net
Also available as a podcast via iTunes

A two-block walk from my downtown Denver loft is the local PBS affiliate. It’s a perfectly fine building, but in front is a sidewalk lined with several sorry-looking old handprints, footprints and autographs of personalities from the 1960s.  Among the relics: Nick Adams, Roone Arledge, Bill Bixby, Peter Breck, Jackie “Uncle Fester” Coogan, Anthony Eisley, Linda Evans, Bill “Fred Mertz” Frawley, Brett Halsey, Ty Hardin, Jack Lord, Gardner McKay, E.J. Peaker, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Roger “77 Sunset Strip” Smith and Charlton Heston (Charlton Heston??!!)

This attempt at a ”walk of fame” appears to be the byproduct of someone’s good-idea-at-the-time that was summarily abandoned and left to the ages. 

Walking among these worn-out slabs of concrete got me thinking about legacies. 

A timely subject, legacies. An unpopular president is leaving office soon; one of the great movie stars in history recently left the world a legacy that exceeded his performances on celluloid; the mounting problems of our economy, our environment and our energy resources leave us all questioning what we are leaving future generations.

I’m not interested in exploring the names of the rich and famous appearing on walls or lists somewhere in perpetuity. It’s more compelling to consider people’s simple legacies (and your own) in the here and now.  How you comport yourself with your family, in business and with your community.  The psychic impression you leave behind.  Take ego out of the equation – it’s less about making sure there’s tangible proof that you once passed through the world, and more about the effects of your actions.  

It’s easy, really easy, to be cynical right now.  In some weird way, walking by that forgotten “walk of fame” is a reminder to me that all individuals have some common ground; that life is fleeting; that we need to make sure our priorities are straight; and that we should be nice and play nice while we’re here.  The right actions will follow, and your legacy will flow from there.

According to Tom Waits, the three ages of man are: Youth, Middle.Aged and

“You’re looking good!”

Elvis went from cool and slick to fat and sick

Jackie Coogan was a cute kid but ended up as Uncle Fester

Even the grace and style of David Bowie cannot mask the ravages of time

Time waits for no-one.

Legendas em diversos idiomas, incluso português.