Charlie Chaplin - Mysteries & Scandals

An episode of Mysteries & Scandals, the story of Charlie Chaplin.

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Actors, dialogue and the art of listening

Writers tend to worry about dialogue, with good reason. A bad line can kill a scene. A good line can become the buzz phrase of the year. And be quoted in the actor's biography, with all credit to them, but that's the business we've chosen.

This blog has borrowed a few quotes from Michael Caine's book Acting in Film. It was written for actors, but provides food for thought to writers as well. Here's one more.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Many writers fail to appreciate just how much a good actor can extract from a single word. Michael Caine explains:

You can bring new life to an apparently mundane reply by planning a thought process based on a key word and then never voicing it.

Other actor: "Would you like some tea?"

You:  "Yes, please."

"Tea" is the key word. The simple word "tea" can open up so many responses. Let's say you would have preferred coffee. The minute the other actor says "tea," your eyes will change because you'd really like coffee. Or maybe you're allergic to tea. Then you answer politely, but with a bit of anguish, knowing that you won't really drink it. The camera thrives on niceties like that; yet you often see actors missing out on these little presents that can open whole realms of possible action.

"Tea" could be an indication that he's too poor to offer you booze, or that he regards you as an alcoholic who shouldn't be offered a drink. Take the script and explore these possibilities because to pick up key words opens a repertoire of potential response that can lift a scene off the page and into reality. Don't make a fetish of it or you will complicate things unnecessarily. You'll seem a maniac if everything sets you off. But take it to reasonable bounds and you'll find that your performance is more interesting to you and more believable on the screen.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

I have been guilty, in my writing, of underestimating actors, with the result that I compensated by overwriting the dialogue. It's about trust, really. (If you've watched as many bad film actors as I have, you'll know the fault doesn't lie 100% with me.)

Back to Michael Caine: If you think an actor can do a lot with one word, look at what a good one can do with no words at all.

When I was very young and in repertory theatre, I was given some advice by a clever director. He said:

"What are you doing in that scene, Michael?"

"Nothing," I said, "I haven't got anything to say."

"That," said the director, "is a very big mistake. Of course, you have something to say. You've got wonderful things to say. But you sit there and listen, thinking of wonderful things to say, and then you decide not to say them. That's what you're doing in that scene."

And that's the greatest advice I can give to someone who wants to act in movies. Listen and react. If you're thinking about your lines, you're not listening.

David Niven listening to Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther 

I first encountered that advice, second-hand, from another great English actor. David Niven published his first autobiography, The Moon's a Balloon, in 1971. In it he provides an endless stream of anecdotes from the Golden Age of Hollywood, including the following:

Irving and Norma, like all top movie people, had a private projection room in their house. One night Lubitsch brought down a print of Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and they ran it after dinner for their friends.

I sat squirming with embarrassment throughout the showing but after it was over, everyone, with one exception, was overly flattering and enthusiastic. Fairbanks and Sylvia, Merle, the Astaires, Paulette Goddard and Frederick Lonsdale, all puffed me up most pleasantly. One guest sat silent in his chair. Finally, I could stand it no longer.

"What did you think, Mr. Chaplin?"

 His answer constituted the greatest advice to any beginner in my profession.

"Don't be like the majority of actors... don't just stand around waiting your turn to speak—learn to listen."

First posted:  17 November 2011

Charlie Chaplin directs 'City Lights'

This clip, shared by The Criterion Collection, shows Charlie Chaplin at work on City Lights. He was a perfectionist and didn’t settle until he was satisfied. The audio commentary is a window into the process he followed. Despite City Lights being Chaplin’s fifth feature film, and after countless short films, the production lasted almost two years. Shot without sound, although sound films were becoming more and more mainstream, City Lights is also the first film where Chaplin took on writing the score, on top of co-writing the screenplay, directing and acting in it.

"Screenland"

Over the years there have been many magazines with a focus on Hollywood and the movies. One such was the Screenland magazine, which was established in Los Angeles, California, and published between September 1920 and June 1971.

In 1923 the magazine reported a love affair between Evelyn Brent and Douglas Fairbanks, resulting in legal threats, and a retraction.

The little lady on the front cover is clutching a Decree of Divorce.

________________________________________________________________________

In 1921, the process whereby enthusiastic amateurs submitted screenplay ideas for movies was already well established. If you were a subscriber to Screenland magazine, you could submit your story idea to "The Scenario Editor" and receive a "detailed criticism" on the What's the Matter with My Story? page.

Here are a couple of examples of the feedback provided.

This assessment—Yours is the hardest manuscript to read that we have ever seen—was published in 1921. The film Her Accidental Husband was released two years later by Belasco Productions. I don't know what happened to the script during that transition, but I think the moral of the story is, Never Give Up! ________________________________________________________________________

Mildred Harris (1901–1944) was a harem girl in D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916). She appeared as a leading lady through the 1920s, but her career slowed with the coming of sound.

The sixteen-year old Harris met actor Charlie Chaplin in mid-1918. They married in October 1918. She conned Chaplin into marrying her by falsely claiming she was pregnant. And she later took him to the cleaners in a lucrative divorce settlement. During their brief marriage she did become pregnant but that baby died at birth. During the divorce that followed this loss, Louis B. Mayer attempted to exploit Chaplin’s domestic difficulties by trying to sign Mildred Harris to a film contract, billing her as "Mrs. Charlie Chaplin." L.B. and Charlie actually squared off and got into a brief fist fight (with Mayer landing a sucker punch).

Harris filed for divorce on the basis of mental cruelty in 1920. Chaplin accused her of infidelity, and, though he would not name her lover publicly, Alla Nazimova was suspected. Divorce was granted in November 1920 with Harris receiving $100,000 in settlement and some community property.

The following spread appeared in Screenland magazine two years later, and is headed by the question: Who Said Mildred Harris Can't Act? The subtext says:

This group of remarkable character studies was especially posed by the Paramount actress for the fourth installment of Screenland's Principles of Pantomine.

Silent era acting was summed up by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950):

Still wonderful, isn't it?  And  no dialogue.  We didn't need dialogue.  We had faces.

The first photo is normal. The other faces being portrayed are labelled:
Contempt (top right), Dejection (centre), Fear (bottom left), and Revolt (bottom right).

Milla Jovovich as she portrayed Mildred Harris in the film Chaplin (1992).

________________________________________________________________________

Back issues of this magazine, from 1920 to 1922, are available online, courtesy of the Media History Digital Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Smile" - Charlie Chaplin, Nat King Cole

Smile is a song based on an instrumental theme used in the soundtrack for the 1936 Charlie Chaplin movie Modern Times. Chaplin composed the music, while John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added the lyrics and title in 1954.

Smile has become a popular standard since its original use in Chaplin's film. Originally sung by Nat King Cole in 1954, the song has been covered by many people, including Cole's daughter, Natalie, Petula Clark and Michael Jackson.

A day without a laugh is a wasted day.
                              ~Charles Chaplin

Here the Nat King Cole version is married to clips of Charlie Chaplin... smiling.

Actors, dialogue and the art of listening

Writers tend to worry about dialogue, with good reason. A bad line can kill a scene. A good line can become the buzz phrase of the year. And be quoted in the actor's biography, with all credit to them, but that's the business we've chosen.

This blog has borrowed a few quotes from Michael Caine's book Acting in Film. It was written for actors, but provides food for thought to writers as well. Here's one more.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Many writers fail to appreciate just how much a good actor can extract from a single word. Michael Caine explains:

You can bring new life to an apparently mundane reply by planning a thought process based on a key word and then never voicing it.

Other actor: "Would you like some tea?"

You:  "Yes, please."

"Tea" is the key word. The simple word "tea" can open up so many responses. Let's say you would have preferred coffee. The minute the other actor says "tea," your eyes will change because you'd really like coffee. Or maybe you're allergic to tea. Then you answer politely, but with a bit of anguish, knowing that you won't really drink it. The camera thrives on niceties like that; yet you often see actors missing out on these little presents that can open whole realms of possible action.

"Tea" could be an indication that he's too poor to offer you booze, or that he regards you as an alcoholic who shouldn't be offered a drink. Take the script and explore these possibilities because to pick up key words opens a repertoire of potential response that can lift a scene off the page and into reality. Don't make a fetish of it or you will complicate things unnecessarily. You'll seem a maniac if everything sets you off. But take it to reasonable bounds and you'll find that your performance is more interesting to you and more believable on the screen.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

I have been guilty, in my writing, of underestimating actors, with the result that I compensated by overwriting the dialogue. It's about trust, really. (If you've watched as many bad film actors as I have, you'll know the fault doesn't lie 100% with me.)

Back to Michael Caine: If you think an actor can do a lot with one word, look at what a good one can do with no words at all.

When I was very young and in repertory theatre, I was given some advice by a clever director. He said:

"What are you doing in that scene, Michael?"

"Nothing," I said, "I haven't got anything to say."

"That," said the director, "is a very big mistake. Of course, you have something to say. You've got wonderful things to say. But you sit there and listen, thinking of wonderful things to say, and then you decide not to say them. That's what you're doing in that scene."

And that's the greatest advice I can give to someone who wants to act in movies. Listen and react. If you're thinking about your lines, you're not listening.

David Niven listening to Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther 

I first encountered that advice, second-hand, from another great English actor. David Niven published his first autobiography, The Moon's a Balloon, in 1971. In it he provides an endless stream of anecdotes from the Golden Age of Hollywood, including the following:

Irving and Norma, like all top movie people, had a private projection room in their house. One night Lubitsch brought down a print of Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and they ran it after dinner for their friends.

I sat squirming with embarrassment throughout the showing but after it was over, everyone, with one exception, was overly flattering and enthusiastic. Fairbanks and Sylvia, Merle, the Astaires, Paulette Goddard and Frederick Lonsdale, all puffed me up most pleasantly. One guest sat silent in his chair. Finally, I could stand it no longer.

"What did you think, Mr. Chaplin?"

 His answer constituted the greatest advice to any beginner in my profession.

"Don't be like the majority of actors... don't just stand around waiting your turn to speak—learn to listen."