The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (73 page)

In the next few years, he moved nearer the center of his own films, asserting himself as a star rather than a heavy. That in itself was an innovation; the way in which Chaney’s stardom was so allied to mutation was a further novelty. He made
A Doll’s House
(17, de Grasse); and was von Tirpitz in
The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin
(18, Rupert Julian); was encouraged by William S. Hart in
Riddle Gawne
(18, Lambert Hillyer); and then met Tod Browning who gave him a part in
The Wicked Darling
(19). Universal was hostile to his claims for more money and Chaney went to Paramount for his first study in illusion: the sham cripple in
The Miracle Man
(19, George Loane Tucker). While there, he made two with Maurice Tourneur:
Victory
(19) and
Treasure Island
(20), in which he played George Merry and Blind Pew. He went back to Universal for
Outside the Law
(21, Browning) in which he took two parts—a gangster and a Chinaman—and in which the Chinaman finally shoots the gangster. Clearly, the Jekyll and Hyde potential within metamorphosis was becoming evident.

After
The Light in the Dark
(22, Clarence Brown); Fagin in
Oliver Twist
(22, Frank Lloyd);
All the Brothers Were Valiant
(23, Irvin S. Willat);
While Paris Sleeps
(23, but actually filmed in 1920, Tourneur); and
The Shock
(23, Hillyer); he played Quasimodo in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(23, Wallace Worsley), an extraordinary immersion in deformity and a great boxoffice success.

Chaney was now a major star, competed for by Universal and MGM. Irving Thalberg had admired him at Universal and eventually won him over to MGM. Chaney’s work in the mid-and late-1920s is now seldom seen. Yet he is surely one of the greatest imaginative artists of silent cinema, undoubtedly most stimulated by Tod Browning, but compelling under all circumstances:
The Next Corner
(24, Sam Wood);
He Who Gets Slapped
(24, Victor Sjostrom), a more conventional drama, about a scientist who becomes a circus clown when his wife leaves him;
The Monster
(25, Roland West); the very frightening
The Unholy Three
(25, Browning) in which he is a crook who dresses up as an old woman;
The Phantom of the Opera
(25, Rupert Julian), a true classic containing one of the great horrific discovery scenes and in which Chaney moves with a stunning languor, as if he knew of Conrad Veidt in
Caligari;
another Sjostrom drama,
The Tower of Lies
(25);
The Blackbird
(26, Browning), about a man who poses as brothers;
The Road to Mandalay
(26, Browning), as a one-eyed crook; a “straight” role as the sergeant in
Tell It to the Marines
(27, George W. Hill);
Mr. Wu
(27, William Nigh); as Alonzo the Armless in
The Unknown
(27, Browning);
Mockery
(27, Benjamin Christensen), another disguise story; superb as the detective and the vampire in
London After Midnight
(27, Browning);
The Big City Sleeps
(28, Jack Conway);
West of Zanzibar
(28, Browning);
Laugh, Clown, Laugh
(28, Herbert Brenon);
Where East Is East
(29, Browning);
Thunder
(29, Nigh); and his last film and first talkie, a remake of
The Unholy Three
(30, Conway). His voice in that was as varied as his appearance, but he had cancer of the throat and died within a few months. Only forty-four, he had made over 140 films. He was to have played Dracula for Browning, a part that went to Bela Lugosi. It is perhaps the secret of his quality that Chaney could have played most of the parts taken by both Lugosi and Karloff. He had laid down the basis of horror. No one has surpassed his conviction.

Stockard Channing
(Susan Stockard), b. New York, 1944
I am fond of actors and actresses who, while very idiosyncratic, serve a long time without quite making the shore of stardom. In a book that has to be selective, I feel bound to omit too many of them—and so there is no Anne Revere, no Ann Dvorak, no Madeline Kahn, no Blythe Danner, even. And there would have been no Stockard Channing until the extraordinary movie of
Six Degrees of Separation
(93, Fred Schepisi), a tour de force of humor, silliness, great intelligence, vulnerability, and abiding empty-headedness. Here was a big part in an important picture, with a deserved Oscar nomination. So at last I had to consider the byways of being Stockard Channing.

Was she too clever, too sharp, too comic? Was she separated from beauty by one or two degrees too many? Whatever, I am not alone in thinking at various times that major success was about to fall on her. Perhaps there has been an aversion in her, a sturdy perversity, that just refused to get wet.

She was educated at Radcliffe. She has worked regularly in the theatre: that’s where she first did
Six Degrees
. Her movie debut was a small role in
The Hospital
(71, Arthur Hiller) and then
Up the Sandbox
(72, Irvin Kershner). She really attracted attention in a TV movie,
The Girl Most Likely To …
(73, Lee Philips). Its script, by Joan Rivers, described a plain young woman, transformed by cosmetic surgery, but turned into an avenging angel seeking out the men who wronged her. Any Channing fan should hound the airwaves for this one, for it is rare black comedy—maybe it alarmed too many people.

Still, it won her the hotly contested role between Beatty and Nicholson in
The Fortune
(75, Mike Nichols), a flop that seems to have fallen only on her head. Thereafter, her roles were not nearly as encouraging:
The Big Bus
(76, James Frawley);
Dandy, the All-American Girl
(77, Jerry Schatzberg);
The Cheap Detective
(78, Robert Moore); very funny in
Grease
(78, Randal Kleiser); as a deaf stuntwoman in
Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neal Story
(79, Lou Antonio) for TV.

Within the next year, two TV sitcoms were built around her—
Stockard Channing in Just Friends
and
The Stockard Channing Show
—that lasted about eight months. Increasingly, she concentrated on theatre, with these trips to film and TV:
The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh
(79, Gilbert Moses);
Safari 3000
(82, Henry Hurwitz);
Without a Trace
(83, Stanley R. Jaffe);
Not My Kid
(85, Michael Tuchman);
Heartburn
(86, Nichols);
The Men’s Club
(86, Peter Medak);
The Room Upstairs
(87, Stuart Margolin);
Echoes in the Darkness
(87, Glenn Jordan);
A Time of Destiny
(88, Gregory Nava);
Staying Together
(89, Lee Grant);
Perfect Witness
(89, Robert Mandel);
Meet the Applegates
(91, Michael Lehman);
Married to It
(93, Hiller); and
Bitter Moon
(93, Roman Polanski).

She continues to work very hard, often on TV where she is the First Lady on
The West Wing
. She is sometimes cast in emotional family dramas, but her great urge is to be funny and wicked—long may it all last:
David’s Mother
(94, Robert Allan Ackerman);
Smoke
(95, Wayne Wang);
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
(95, Beeban Kidron);
The First Wives Club
(96, Hugh Wilson);
Up Close & Personal
(96, Jon Avnet);
Moll Flanders
(96, Pen Densham);
An Unexpected Family
(96, Larry Elikann);
Lily Dale
(96, Peter Masterson);
Edie & Pen
(97, Matthew Irmas); warming Paul Newman up in
Twilight
(97, Robert Benton);
The Baby Dance
(98, Jane Anderson);
Practical Magic
(98, Griffin Dunne);
Isn’t She Great
(00, Andrew Bergman);
Where the Heart Is
(00, Matt Williams);
The Business of Strangers
(01, Patrick Stettner).

As she begins to gather awards, so her appetite for work extends:
A Girl Thing
(01, Lee Rose);
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
(02, Gavin Millar);
The Matthew Shepard Story
(02, Roger Spottiswoode);
Life or Something Like It
(02, Stephen Herek);
Behind the Red Door
(02, Matia Karrell); Hitler’s mother in
Hitler: The Rise of Evil
(03, Christian Dugnay);
Le Divorce
(03, James Ivory);
Anything Else
(03, Woody Allen);
Bright Young Things
(03, Stephen Fry);
The Piano Man’s Daughter
(03, Kevin Sullivan);
Jack
(04, Lee Rose);
Red Mercury
(05, Roy Battersby);
Must Love Dogs
(05, Gary David Goldberg);
3 Needles
(05, Thom Fitzgerald);
Sparkle
(07, Tom Hun-singer and Neil Hunter).

Sir Charles Chaplin
(1889–1977), b. London
1914:
Making a Living; Kid Auto Races at Venice; Mabel’s Strange Predicament; Between Showers; A Film Johnnie; Tango Tangles; His Favourite Pastime; Cruel, Cruel Love; The Star Boarder; Mabel at the Wheel; Twenty Minutes of Love; Caught in a Cabaret; Caught in the Rain; A Busy Day; The Fatal Mallet; Her Friend the Bandit; The Knockout; Mabel’s Busy Day; Mabel’s Married Life; Laughing Gas; The Property Man; The Face on the BarRoom Floor; Recreation; The Masquerader; His New Profession; The Rounders; The New Janitor; Those Love Pangs; Dough and Dynamite; Gentlemen of Nerve; His Musical Career; His Trysting Place; Tillie’s Punctured Romance; Getting Acquainted; His Prehistoric Past
. 1915:
His New Job; A Night Out; The Champion; In the Park; The Jitney Elopement; The Tramp; By the Sea; Work; A Woman; The Bank; Shanghaied; A Night in the Show
. 1916:
The Burlesque on Carmen; Police; The Floorwalker; The Fireman; The Vagabond; One A.M.; The Count; The Pawnshop; Behind the Screen; The Rink
. 1917:
Easy Street; The Cure; The Immigrant; The Adventurer
. 1918:
Triple Trouble; A Dog’s Life; The Bond; Shoulder Arms
. 1919:
Sunnyside; A Day’s Pleasure
. 1920:
The Kid; The Idle Class
. 1922:
Pay Day
. 1923:
The Pilgrim; A Woman of Paris
. 1925:
The Gold Rush
. 1928:
The Circus
. 1931:
City Lights
. 1936:
Modern Times
. 1940:
The Great Dictator
. 1947:
Monsieur Verdoux
. 1952:
Limelight
. 1957:
A King in New York
. 1967:
A Countess from Hong Kong
.

The worldwide appeal of Chaplin, and his persistent handicap, have lain in the extent to which he always lived in a realm of his own—that of delirious egotism. Is there a more typical or revealing piece of classic Chaplin than
One A.M
. (or I AM), in which he exists in virtuoso isolation for fifteen minutes, executing every variation on the drunk-coming-home theme? It is like a dancer at the bar, confronting himself in a mirror.

The list above includes early films in which Chaplin was only an actor, and which were credited to directors like Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett. But to the world and to Chaplin himself any film in which he appeared has been his own. On
A Countess from Hong Kong
he demonstrated every piece of business for Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren to copy as best they could; and Chaplin the actor has an overbearingly winsome personality that cajoles his films into mawkishness. Chaplin was led to direct because it was a logical extension of the power to be obtained through acting. For there is a paradox between the tramp’s woeful simpleton character and the clear-eyed inquisitiveness with which Chaplin the director and owner of the film is prompting our response. Here is a fascinating moment from his
Autobiography
telling how at the age of five he was forced onto the music-hall stage when his mother’s failing voice was booed off by a callous audience. The child went on and sang a song:

Halfway through, a shower of money poured on to the stage. Immediately I stopped and announced that I would pick up the money first and sing afterwards. This caused much laughter. The stage manager came on with a handkerchief and helped me to gather it up. I thought he was going to keep it. This thought was conveyed to the audience and increased their laughter, especially when he walked off with it with me anxiously following him. Not until he handed it to Mother did I return and continue to sing. I was quite at home. I talked to the audience, danced, and did several imitations including one of Mother singing her Irish march song.

A number of inferences can be legitimately based on that passage that throw light on Chaplin’s later career: First, Chaplin’s early life was a time of considerable emotional hardship. His father deserted the family when Charlie was an infant and later died of alcoholism. That strain affected the sanity of his mother, whose music-hall career was ruined. When she had to go into an asylum, Charlie was sent to an orphanage—this after being born into a home of enough gentility to keep a maid. He was not born deprived, but saw his family lose almost everything while still a child. “I was quite at home” on the stage is not just the narrative conclusion of the first section of
My Autobiography
, but the emotional escape from such real loss and pain.

Second, there is in Chaplin a strange mixture of coy charm and heartless cold, and it is not too farfetched to see it as the response to suffering inflicted on a sensitive and lonely child. The pathos in Chaplin’s work is always focused on himself. That recollection in tranquillity of his first stage appearance is colored by the drama of the child facing the mob, by the romance of championing his mother, and then by the unwitting revelation that he began to imitate her to win more applause.