Evening star., 1928-09-10
MOVIES AND MOVIE PEOPLE
BY MOLLY MERRICK.

had sat, when he was a tot, depending
because of her physical condition on
what he could forage for her, with her
face pressed to the grimy panes OF
such shelter as they could manage,
watching for his return.
Stark roof f-trees these. furnished by
the poverty-hunted people they knew IN
| those days. And that picture OF the
| cobwebbed crookedness of Lambeth was
etched ineffaceably upon her memory
There are chapters in Charlie Chap
| Inns life that a&ve not been written.
Some will never be written during his
| lifetime. A biography was done and
| Chaplin bought it, to keep 1t from pub
| lication man wants some things for
| his own, even though that man may
belong to the world.
Charlie Chaplin found In his mother
the one woman love that did not 1aQ.
Two marriages had been disastrous:
Perhaps eyes that have seen so much OF
human misery cannot take in the pic
ture of happiness, or nature that mas
battled deep troubled waters cannot
stay resistless on the smooth sands. He
had fought to do so valiantly. Neither
Mildred Harris nor Lita Grey could
plumb the dark hinterland OF MS soul:
Only the mother who had shared that
longer see the sun.
Somewhere abroad Charles half
brother sgd is making picture. There
have been bitter quarrels between the
men, for they are Numerically opposite
so far as temperament goes. The bond
of brotherhood has been strained often,
but never completely snapped. Charles
Chaplin cannot forget the half-brother
who came home from cruise as stew
ard on an Australian and South African
run and took him in charge-had he
unkempt hair which had grown down
| to Charles shoulders cleaned and clip
ped; bought him clothes and got him
| work.
From that first regular job Charlie
Chaplin has gone right on up the
| ladder. He has never failed when
standing before throng of people
waiting to be entertained. At IL, with
a cane and bandanna, he initiated
Bransby Williams as the grandfather
in THE Old Curiosity Shop" grooming
over Little Nell. Sheer pathos. But
sheer pathos explains all of Chaplin's
comedy. His laughter is always laid
along the shadow line of tears.
He has great yellow stucco mansion
| in the Beverly Hills. Notables the
world over have been honored to sit
dt 1llo bdDic. 411c pUWCl VA AdiiC oliN
millions is his. But the pictures he
makes-and spends endless time and
money in the making-are in the fore
front of his consciousness always. The
men who have participated in their
making are his best friends.
The one woman who never failed
| him has passed. She was the DOM
inant figure of his childhood. She and
that grisly London of the poor-fog-
soaked and sodden in its hopeless
squalor. Sometimes Chaplin sits for
hours studying etchings and prints of
| those grimy, crooked ways. To him
and his mother these prints were COW
cred with a strange beauty. So mother
and son held hands and talked over
the old days-days she understood and
remembered
This is a hitherto unpublished chap
ter in the story of the king Of clowns.
A chapter to be handled reverently,
for the spangles of this testers motley
all too often have been the bright
prismatic CLINT of tears.
| (Copyright 1923 by North American News
| paper Allance.)