And all is character.
The Audience does not flock to see Chaplin or Buster Keaton because of the gags alone. The Audience does not thrive solely on repetition but also on character, and it is the character that cannot change.
This he understands.
If the character cannot change, then the character’s fate is fixed. The character cannot escape the actions of fate, because the character cannot escape himself. The character cannot learn, because to learn is to be altered.
This he understands.
But it is no way for a man to abide in real life.
Yet Chaplin, who sleeps with young girls, must be the Little Tramp, and nothing in his life that might cause the Audience to believe otherwise can be permitted to come to light.
Yet Buster Keaton, who is a drunk and a womanizer, must be Great Stone Face, and nothing that might cause the Audience to believe otherwise can be permitted to come to light.
He does not have his own character, not yet, but he will. It is emerging slowly. He senses it. Once he has identified it, the process will begin. It will become fixed in him, and he in it. He will not be able to escape it, even should he wish to do so, because in it will lie his hopes of success.
All is character, but character is pretense.
And his character already has a name.
His character has his name, a nomenclature assumed that now cannot be abjured.
This he understands.
55
He struggles to liberate himself from Joe Rock, because his contract with Joe Rock has more clauses than Shakespeare. Warren Doane, Hal Roach’s business manager, goes through the contract twice and then has to lie down for an hour.
He is shackled to Joe Rock as an actor, but not in any other regard. As long as he does not act, he owes Joe Rock nothing. Meanwhile Warren Doane, now recovered, begins work on the contractual knots. So while Warren Doane negotiates, and Joe Rock stonewalls, he writes and directs for Hal Roach. They pair him with Jimmy Finlayson.
Did you kill Mae? Jimmy Finlayson asks.
– No, I didn’t kill her.
– They say you put her on a boat to Australia.
– That isn’t true either.
– I hope it’s not. If it were, I’d have asked you to put Emily on board with her. Then we could have sunk it.
He works alongside Jimmy Parrott, who is still taking diet pills and still having fits. Charley Parrott, Jimmy Parrott’s brother, is moving on from helming Our Gang pictures to become a comic in his own right. Harold Lloyd has departed from the lot, gone to seek his independence, and Hal Roach must keep the studio’s momentum going. Hal Roach is not averse to elevating Charley Parrott, so Charley Parrott is now Charley Chase, and is making two-reel pictures. Charley Chase worked with Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle. Charley Chase worked with Mack Sennett. Charley Chase is smart and sophisticated. Charley Chase understands that character is all.
He regards Charley Chase closely, because Charley Chase is struggling to handle the pressure. Charley Chase drinks. They all drink, although he drinks less now that Mae is no longer around, but it does not impede the progress of their work. This may be the only way that Charley Chase can continue to function, with the aid of brandy and champagne – well, brandy, champagne, and the set of hand-carved meerschaum pipes that Charley Chase utilizes solely for the purpose of smoking marijuana behind the shooting stages.
When Charley Chase is not filming, or drunk, or high, Charley Chase fucks petite blondes while BeBe, his wife, raises their daughters to be good girls. Charley Chase reads his daughters stories at night. Charley Chase is not a bad guy. Even BeBe knows this, which is why she pretends not to notice the blondes. She wishes her husband would not cast them in his pictures, though. It makes them harder to ignore if she has to view them magnified on a screen before her.
Leo McCarey is often present too, sitting in the director’s chair. Leo McCarey and Hal Roach are close, but Leo McCarey and Charley Chase are closer still. In the evenings, over bootleg hooch, Leo McCarey and Charley Chase compose popular songs together.
If he regards Charley Chase closely, he regards Leo McCarey with even greater care, because Leo McCarey is the best director on the Hal Roach lot. Leo McCarey and Charley Chase are one organism, so it is difficult to tell where the work of Leo McCarey ends and the work of Charley Chase begins. Leo McCarey is a rock. Charley Chase has the ideas, and the technical acumen to bring them to the screen, but Leo McCarey anchors the pictures. Also, Leo McCarey does not fuck petite blondes, nor does he smoke marijuana from meerschaum pipes. On the other hand, if there is a cable, Leo McCarey will trip over it, and if there is a bottle, Leo McCarey will break it. Leo McCarey is the only man he knows who has fallen down an elevator shaft and survived. Leo McCarey is the only man he knows who has fallen down an elevator shaft, period. Jimmy Finlayson says Leo McCarey is still alive only because God isn’t trying hard enough. Jimmy Finlayson says this is proof that God is a Catholic.
So he waits for Joe Rock to concede defeat, and he writes, and he directs. He is no Charley Chase, no Leo McCarey, but like Charley Chase, he can act, and when required, he can demonstrate to his stars what he wishes them to do. He directs Mabel Normand, Madcap Mabel. He directs Clyde Cook, the Australian Inja Rubber Idiot, whose name he once read on music hall bills back in England. Clyde Cook can take falls like Buster Keaton. Clyde Cook’s bones bend, but do not break.
And he directs Babe.
56
It is early 1926. He attends a preview of Charley Chase’s new picture, Mighty Like A Moose. Hal Roach is present, and Charley Chase, and Len Powers, the cameraman, and Beanie Walker, the writer, although much of the script is borrowed from Max Linder, who is dead and cannot complain. Max Linder marries a woman half his age, and then convinces her to commit suicide with him in Paris on October 31st, 1925. Max Linder and his bride take Veronal and inject morphine before cutting their wrists. As a result, Jimmy Finlayson remarks that Max Linder is so dead they ought to bury him three times. The New York Times describes Max Linder’s passing as a ‘death compact with his lovely wife’, as though she were personally known to the newspaper and her loss is therefore more acutely felt by it; or because she was lovely while Max Linder was not, which might well be true. Max Linder was a great comedian but, in the end, a poor husband.