Keystone Bits

Here's an assortment of Chaplin Keystone bits to chew over...

Minta Durfee was interviewed many times over the years about Chaplin's days at Keystone. She didn't like him. Betty Fussell, in her book 'Mabel,' says, 'Minta Arbuckle thought Chaplin vulgar because he came from 'a low-caliber family,' wore 'a race-track suit,' and did 'dirty things' like scratching his hair or armpit with a fork.' Fussell also says Minta complained about his smell. Minta told interviewer Don Scheider, 'He was a clever man, but he was plenty dirty.'

Mack Sennett claimed that, after Chaplin's arrival at Keystone, not even Mabel Normand wanted to work with him: 'I should say not, Mack. I don't like him so good now that I've seen him.'

According to Betty Fussell's book 'Mabel,' Marie Dressler complained to Sennett on the set of 'Tillie's Punctured Romance' that Chaplin 'had the same piece of banana on his collar for sixteen days running.'

We often hear that 'Tillie' was the first feature-length comedy made in America. But it wasn't. At least a dozen comedy features were released earlier, as far back as 1912.

When Chaplin's contract was running out late in 1914, Sennett balked at a salary demand of a thousand dollars a week, according to Chaplin's autobiography. Sennett's autobio says Chaplin refused to name a figure. But in any case, the salary Marie Dressler had made for 'Tillie' was $2500 per week. After Triangle took ownership of Keystone in the summer of 1915, vaudevillian Sam Bernard was hired at $1000 per week, Eddie Foy was hired at $1200 per week, and the team of Weber and Fields was hired at $3500 per week; they all were making more than Sennett's established stars like Arbuckle and Normand, and they all failed quickly and left the studio.

Two other new hires at Keystone in 1915 later became Chaplin's collaborators: Charles Reisner and Vincent Bryan.

From April through June, 1914, Mabel Normand appeared in nine Keystones. Six of those were with Chaplin. Then in July, she was cast with him for 'Tillie's Punctured Romance.' Was Sennett trying to make them a team?

Another question: who directed 'Twenty Minutes of Love'? Chaplin made a list of his films in August 1914 and cited it as one of 'my own.' But in his autobiography, he named a later film, 'Caught in the Rain,' as the first one he directed.

McDonald, Conway and Ricci in 'The Films of Charlie Chaplin' says it was made under the supervision of Sennett. Ronald Magliozzi in his 'Treasures from the Film Archives' identifies the director as 'James Maddern(?)' while Kalton Lahue in 'Kops and Custards' says it was directed by 'Madden.' Lahue doesn't say who 'Madden' is, but notes that one other (non-Chaplin) Keystone was directed by the same man.

There's quite a bit of evidence that young Chaplin cultivated some rather bohemian habits, including neglect of personal hygeine. He seems to have given this up when he became famous and an object of public scrutiny. By all acocounts, he showered and bathed frequently in the '20s.

He also dressed carelessly into the 1920s, buying suits off the rack, but later he became quite fastidious and (unless he was lounging around the house) wore tailored clothes.

Mockery of proper table manners remained one of his favorite gambits, however.

Are we sure what order the films were *shot* in?

Chaplin may simply have meant that _TMOL_ was his own story idea. The making of films at Keystone could be highly collaborative, and in some cases it might be hard to sort out exactly who did what.

But Chaplin's recollections about his Keystone career and other early films are sometimes a bit hazy. He recalls _The Property Man_ as _The Stage Hand_, and I believe in one case confuses _Recreation_ and _Twenty Minutes of Love_. He's probably right about _Mabel's Strange Predicament_ being the first film in which he wore the Tramp costume, though