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City Lights Clippings 90/387

Rob Wagner, Screenland, New York, December 1929


„That will be the great novelty of City Lights

Editorial content. „CHARLIE CHAPLIN

      All About Charlie‘s New Picture and What he Really

      Thinks of the Talkies

      The Best Interview ever Written about the Comic

      Genius of the Screen

      By Rob Wagner

      SINCE starting my own little magazine – Rob Wagner‘s

Beverly Hills Script (adv!) – I haven‘t had much time

to barge around Movieland, and in consequence have seen

little of my old playmates. But as I had promised

SCREENLAND a story about Charlie Chaplin and his new

picture, I just grabbed an hour off from my cosmic

editorial duties and beat it down to his studio. I expected to get

my stuff in about  fifteen minutes and then

be back on the job. I was with him for eight hours!

      It was my good – or bad! – luck to find

him not working and when Charlie is not working he doesn‘t

want anybody else to work, and when two non-workers

like us get together there are no end of colossal problems that

have to be solved – religion, politics, love, and of course,

Art with a capital R.

      Despite the Gethsemane he has passed through in the

last two years, Charlie is looking wonderfully well.

His back hair has erased ten years from his age. he had to dye

it for his picture. A daily smearing of mascara was

too messy and irksome. He was wearing white tennis trousers

and a white sweat-shirt.

      All afternoon we sat in his little ,conference cottage‘

and talked our heads off. One of Charlie‘s insistent

quirks it that he is utterly and completely selfish and is

interested in nobody‘s work but his own. That‘s

what he says. But if there is any angle to my business

or domestic affairs that he doesn‘t know about, it

could be written on a postage stamp. Whenever I discuss

a story or article I am writing, he will grow as excited

as a school-boy and the chances are he will call me up the

next day with a corking suggestion. He has been

thinking about it all night.

      As to his selfishness and inconsideration of others –

well, his own organization is an utter contradiction

of his egoistic pose. His whole crew has been with him

for years and if any of them drift away during his

interminable troubles they always drift back. Charlie‘s loyalty

to his old friends is one of the most charming

things in his character.

      Well, after pumping me dry about my new journalistic

adventure, advising me on its finances, suggesting

schemes to get subscriptions and even offering to write

for it, we finally got around to his work. Naturally,

the big question was: how is Charlie to meet the new idiom –

talking pictures?

      ,I must admit, Rob, that they fascinate me, anger me and

frighten me. Of course, they are here to stay, but not,

I think, in their present expression. It‘s so new that few people

know what it‘s all about, and so far most of the results

are artistic bastardies. In drama they are trying to marry the

conventions of the theater with the realism of the

screen, and the result is an illegitimate child.‘

      I have not the space to tell of his generalizations

regarding the problem as a whole, so I‘ll get down to his own

immediate problem.

      ,By far the finest marriage is that of pantomime

and music. It always has been, but heretofore

all we could do was to have some one score a picture

to well-known themes and then hope that the

organist would play them. You know what happened in the

small towns – the high-school girl played anything

she wished and usually out of all harmony with the action.

      ,Now, however, we can absolutely determine

the music and as it is part of the mechanical projection,

nobody can change it and the smallest theater

will hear it just as completely as the Roxy.

      ,This is a wonderful thing for me, and even though

I‘m using no dialogue in my picture I think you‘ll

that the musical accompaniment will satisfy all expectations

for ,sound.‘

      ,Furthermore, I am using no popular airs; my music

will be just as original as the picture, for I am

writing every bit of it myself! I am having it scored and

orchestrated as I go along and every movement

and gesture is accompanied by its own musical theme.

      ,Yes, I have a ,theme song,‘ but it is not

registered in the usual way. No principal sings. I, in my

character of Charlie, first hear it as a phonograph

record. You get the title from the disc itself – Wondrous Eyes,

by Charles Chaplin. The song is strongly impressed

upon me so that later, when I fall in love with the little blind

girl, whenever Wondrous Eyes is played by street

musicians or in saloons it has a very dramatic significance.

In fact, all through the picture music and song become

a background for the action almost important as the pantomime

itself.‘

      Charlie then went on to tell me of some particular

musical stunts that he doesn‘t wish to make

public as yet, but which will be a new and sensational

development of this perfect marriage of the arts.

      ,I think I‘ve got some of the funniest business I have ever

done,‘ he went on, ,and I feel sure the picture will

have all the novelty in the sound accompaniments that the

public craves. My only fear is that I have been cursed

by too much high-brow publicity. My purpose is to entertain

and amuse. I am not trying to be subtle. I am trying

to be funny. The high-brows are looking for and expecting

subtleties. I must avoid that if I am to hold my own.

      ,Don‘t think I am avoiding dialog because of personal

fear. I was on the legitimate stage for years, but

I don‘t wish to give up the eloquence and beauty of pantomime

for a spoken title. The printed title is still a legitimate

tool. It is optical, the same as the picture, but it has its proper

mental effect I shall still use it when necessary.

      ,But it is the music that now for the first time I can

absolutely control, that will be the great novelty of City Lights.‘

      Then for an hour of tennis on Charlie‘s new court.

He has only lately taken up the game under a professional

instructor and leave it to the little devil to excel in it

right off the bat. I have been playing for years and beat him

the first set 6-4, and then he turned in and beat me –

me, mind you – 6-3!

      His court has been hewn out of the hillside and as you

play you look over the lower hills to the Pacific Ocean

lying in the west like an alluring dream of vast adventure.

As the sun set we turned on the side lights and

finished our game.“ (...)

      Three photos.


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