My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (find a book to read .txt) 📗

the great French clown, dressed in sloppy evening dress and opera hat, would enter with a fishing rod, sit on a camp stool, open a large jewel-case, bait his hook with a diamond necklace, then cast it into the water. After a while he would ‘chum’ with smaller jewellery, throwing in a few bracelets, eventually emptying in the whole jewel-case. Suddenly he would get a bite and throw himself into paroxysms of comic gyrations struggling with the rod, and eventually pulling out of the water a small trained poodle dog, who copied everything Marceline did: if he sat down, the dog sat down; if he stood on his head, the dog did likewise.

Marceline’s comedy was droll and charming and London went wild over him. In the kitchen scene I was given a little comedy bit to do with Marceline. I was a cat, and Marceline would back away from a dog and fall over my back while I drank milk. He always complained that I did not arch my back enough to break his fall. I wore a cat-mask which had a look of surprise, and during the first matinée for children I went up to the rear end of a dog and began to sniff. When the audience laughed, I turned and looked surprised at them, pulling a string which winked a staring eye. After several sniffs and winks the house-manager came bounding back stage, waving frantically in the wings. But I carried on. After smelling the dog, I smelt the proscenium, then I lifted my leg. The audience roared – possibly because the gesture was uncatlike. Eventually the manager caught my eye and I capered off to great applause. ‘Never do that again!’ he said, breathlessly. ‘You’ll have the Lord Chamberlain close down the theatre!’

Cinderella was a great success, and although Marceline had little to do with plot or story, he was the star attraction. Years later Marceline went to the New York Hippodrome, where he was also a sensation. But when the Hippodrome abolished the circus ring, Marceline was soon forgotten.

In 1918, or thereabouts, Ringling Brothers’ three-ring circus came to Los Angeles, and Marceline was with them. I expected that he would be featured, but I was shocked to find him just one of many clowns that ran around the enormous ring – a great artist lost in the vulgar extravagance of a three-ring circus.

I went to his dressing-room afterwards and made myself known, reminding him that I had played Cat at the London Hippodrome with him. But he reacted apathetically. Even under his clown make-up he looked sullen and seemed in a melancholy torpor.

A year later in New York he committed suicide. A small paragraph in the papers stated that an occupant living in the same house had heard a shot and had found Marceline lying on the floor with a pistol in his hand and a record still turning, playing Moonlight and Roses.

Many famous English comedians committed suicide. T. E. Dunville, an excellent funny man, overheard someone say as he entered a saloon bar: ‘That fellow’s through.’ The same day he shot himself by the River Thames.

Mark Sheridan, one of England’s foremost comedians, shot himself in a public park in Glasgow because he had not gone over well with the Glasgow audience.

Frank Coyne, with whom we played on the same bill, was a gay, bouncy type of comedian, famous for his breezy song:

You won’t catch me on the gee-gee’s back again,

It’s not the kind of horse that I can ride on.

The only horse I know that I can ride

Is the one the missus dries the clothes on!

Off stage he was pleasant and always smiling. But one afternoon, after planning to take a drive with his wife in their pony and trap, he forgot something and told her to wait while he went upstairs. After twenty minutes she went up to see what was causing the delay, and found him in the bathroom on the floor in a pool of blood, a razor in his hand – he had cut his throat, almost decapitating himself.

Of the many artists I saw as a child, those who impressed me the most were not always the successful ones but those with unique personalities off stage. Zarmo, the comedy tramp juggler, was a disciplinarian who practised his juggling for hours every morning as soon as the theatre opened. We could see him back stage balancing a billiard cue on his chin and throwing a billiard ball up and catching it on the tip of the cue, then throwing up another and catching that on top of the first ball – which he often missed. For four years, he told Mr Jackson, he had been practising that trick and at the end of the week he intended to try it out for the first time with the audience. That night we all stood in the wings and watched him. He did it perfectly, and the first time! – throwing the ball up and catching it on the tip of the billiard cue, then throwing a second and catching that on top of the first. But the audience only applauded mildly. Mr Jackson often told the story of that night. Said he to Zarmo: ‘You make the trick look too easy, you don’t sell it. You should miss it several times, then do it.’ Zarmo laughed. ‘I am not expert enough to miss it yet.’ Zarmo was also interested in phrenology and would read our characters. He told me that whatever knowledge I acquired, I would retain and put to good use.

And there were the Griffiths Brothers, funny and impressive, who confused my psychology, comedy trapeze clowns who, as they both swung from the trapeze, would ferociously kick each other in the face with large padded shoes.

‘Ouch!’ said the receiver. ‘I dare you to do it again!’

‘Do yer?’… Bang!

And the receiver would look surprised and groggy and say: ‘He did it again!’

I thought such crazy violence shocking. But off stage they were