Adolph Greens Closing Night (Mentions Charlie Chaplin City Lights)

The New York Times December 29, 2002

Magazine

LIVES

Adolph Green's Closing Night

By ADAM GREEN

The last time I had dinner with my father was on the last night of his life. We had planned to eat at his favorite restaurant, Shun Lee (''I wouldn't mind a little chinoiserie,'' was how he put it), and he had dressed to the nines. As we were getting ready to leave, my father said that he felt under the weather, so we ordered in. I mixed us each a martini (his, appallingly, sweetened with a dash of diet iced tea), and we settled down, in the study at my parents' apartment, for velvet chicken and Indian corn soup, Grand Marnier prawns and what would turn out to be a final conversation.

We started right in, trading obscene jokes, for which my father had a particular genius. (A printable example is the stage direction he once devised: ''Enter Scrotum, a wrinkled retainer.'' We argued the relative merits of classical composers (any suggestion that Tchaikovsky had a maudlin streak or that von Suppe might not have been the last word in profundity infuriated him). Occasionally his attention wandered, but his sometimes vague grasp of moment-to-moment details was nothing new. One morning several years ago, my mother sent him out to buy a can of ''Mr Automatic'' brand coffee. Two hours later, he called from the manager's office of a supermarket far from where we lived. ''I've been to eight stores,'' he said, his voice thick with frustration. ''And no one has even heard of Captain Mechanico!''

We leafed through a book of recently discovered photographs of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was one of my father's heroes, and the pictures sparked his memory: being so knocked out by ''City Lights'' on its opening day that he sat through the next two showings; chasing down the street after

Hi,

Thanks, Perceptions, for posting the touching remembrance by Adam Green.

Incidentally, Adolph Green wrote an article for the NY Times in April, 1989, to commemorate the centennial of Charlie's birth:

'Over Couches and Under Tables'

'I was an unemployed young man during the Depression in the early and mid-30's, when Chaplin released his two silent masterpieces, 'City Lights' and 'Modern Times.' These films were filled with an urban loneliness that struck powerful chords of identification in me.

Years later when Betty Comden and I were in Los Angeles writing films for MGM, the impossible happened. We were introduced to him at a dinner party. After a moment of stunned disbelief at the sight of this dapper, white-haired Englishman - I made an absolute fool of myself. I followed him around the room relentlessly all evening, singing his musical scores to him, my faced pressed close to his face.

If he stopped at the bar for a drink and turned around, there I was, nose to nose with him, yelling out film titles and rendering a full orchestral version of the scene that went with it. I kept up this frenzied pursuit till he and beautiful Oona went home. I felt sure he had found me an insufferable ass, and would look the other way if we ever met up again.

To my surprise, some days later, Oona called and invited me to their home the following Sunday. It turned out to be one of many Sundays we spent together. One night, after a quiet dinner at Betty's, I asked him if he knew Darius Milhaud's fascinating musical piece 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit,' which Milhaud had written for an imaginary Chaplin movie score. Charlie had never heard of it, so I ran to my turntable and put on a recording.

The effect was instantaneous. He launched into a chase comedy, paying both the pursuers and the pursued, leaping over couches and under tables, madly fleeing from the cops, then being the cops in mad pursuit, jumping up and down with youthful agility - next a flirtation scene with nonexistent senoritas and tearful farewells, with much kissing of hands followed by a leap onto a table, and riding away on horseback - for 14 frantic inspired minutes. There were no cameras turning, but that Chaplin film is forever in my mind.'

Also, Betty Comden's autobiography, (I think it's called 'Off stage: My Non-Show Business Life' has several stories about her friendship with Chaplin.

I remember reading that Chaplin met Comden and Green one night after a screening at Sam Goldwyn's house, IIRC, and told them about the wonderful film he'd seen. He asked them if they'd heard of it: 'Singin' in the Rain.' Of course, as they wrote the film, they were thrilled by his response to it.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to all!

Lucy your follow up post to my post made my night as I just finished

THANKS!

I'm glad I found this group and if I ever get a DVD player, I want to start building a Chaplin library. My old VCR broke and I never did get it replaced.

Of course the first film I would start with is my personal favorite like many others who are fans of Mr. Chaplin and that's City Lights.

Happy New Year Lucy and to all the other Chaplin fans!

My best,