It’s well known that Louise Brooks and Charlie Chaplin had a fling in the late summer of 1925. Their short term romance began sometime after Chaplin arrived in New York City for the premiere of The Gold Rush at the Mark Strand theater. The famed actor was twice Brooks’ age — he was 36 years old, and she was 18 — and, he was married. Their brief affair — which was the subject of gossip and something of an open secret — lasted only a month or two, but still left a strong impression on Brooks.
Following the August 15th premiere of The Gold Rush (which Chaplin attended with his former leading lady, Edna Purviance *), the actor was free to enjoy himself and take in the city and all that it had to offer.** According to her 1966 article, “Charlie Chaplin Remembered,” Brooks met Chaplin one afternoon at a cocktail party held by Walter Wanger. Like everyone else, she had seen and liked Chaplin’s films and admired the actor — but meeting him in person was something else. Brooks — then a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies — thought Chaplin a “faun” and “the most bafflingly complex man who ever lived.” In person, Brooks stated, she felt his “physical presence revealed an exquisiteness the screen could not reflect. Small, perfectly made, meticulously dressed…. Inside he was glowing too with the radiant gaiety released by the successful conclusion of two year’s work on his film.” In a 1978 audio recording, Brooks described Chaplin as “the loveliest he ever was” and “a very beautiful man, beautiful skin, beautiful hair, and white teeth, and a fine little body,” adding “I have never seen a man happier than he was at that particular moment … at the peak of his genius.”
The two also encountered one another backstage at the New Amsterdam theater, the home of the Ziegfeld Follies. In a letter to James Card referenced in the Barry Paris biography, Brooks recalled “During the run of the Follies, the dressing room of Dorothy Knapp and me became the cultural drop-in of such clowning gentlemen as Walter Wanger, Herman Mankiewicz, Michael Arlen, [and] Charlie Chaplin.”
By all accounts, Chaplin spent at least some of his free time in the company of Brooks. According to “Charlie Chaplin Remembered,” Harry d’Arrast, Chaplin’s assistant, “was staying with him at the Ritz, and they took Peggy Fears, my best friend in the Follies, and myself to all the smart new night clubs. Swirling in chiffons of pink and blue, Peggy and I danced the tango with them at the Montmartre . . . . ” The two also took “Peggy shinning in crystal beads and me magnificent but itchy in gold lace, to the Lido for the opening of the great dancer Maurice [Mouvet] with his new partner Barbara Bennett — my second best friend.” (At the Lido, one year later, Brooks encountered another great dancer, film star Rudolph Valentino.)
Besides dancing, Chaplin and Brooks went to see the newest plays. Among them was Cradle Snatchers at the Music Box theater, at which, according to Brooks, “we sat . . . looking at Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver and a young actor, Humphrey Bogart, on the stage, while the rest of the audience looked at Charlie.” Somewhat ironically, Cradle Snatchers was a comedy about married older women who entertain younger men. [It is not known on what date Chaplin and Brooks saw Cradle Snatchers, which played for more than a year at the Music Box Theatre from September 1, 1925 through October, 1926. It was later parodied by the Marx Brothers in Coconuts.]
Chaplin and Brooks also went to see Outside Looking In — Maxwell Anderson’s adaption of Jim Tully’s celebrated book, Beggars of Life. “From the Ambassador Hotel, where Charlie moved after Harry returned to Hollywood, we walked seventy blocks down to the Greenwich Village Theatre to see Outside Looking In, a play about tramps which Charlie had already seen twice.” In the cast were Charles Bickford (as Oklahoma Red), twenty-five-year-old James Cagney (as Little red), and “lip-biter” Blyth Daly*** as a girl on the run who disguises herself as a boy. “Her performance might have interested me more had I known that I would play her part in the film renamed Beggars of Life,” Brooks quipped in 1966. [Also not known is the exact date on which Chaplin and Brooks saw Outside Looking In. The play, which was produced by Kenneth MacGowan, Robert Edmond Jones and Eugene O’Neill (the dramatist and Chaplin’s future father-in-law), opened at the Greenwich Village Theatre on September 07, 1925. It moved to the 39th Street Theatre on November 2, 1925 and played through mid-December.]
Besides Cradle Snatchers and Outside Looking In, they also went to the opening of Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat at the Broadhurst on September 15, with Arlen in attendance. The New York Daily News reported as much; in “And They Were All Dressed Up”, the paper wrote, “Seen at the opening of The Green Hat at the Broadhurst last Tuesday: Charlie Chaplin, film comedian, with Louise Brooks, Louie the 14th chorus dancer; Lee Shubert standing up in the rear of the orchestra; a beautiful lady wearing a silver wig; another beautiful lady with lavender-bleached hair; the dramatic critics all tuxed up to a man in full dress.”
“He had what one would call a filing cabinet mind,” recalled Brooks in the 1978 recording. “Everything he saw, every one he saw, everything he did, he photographed and filed away. He was like Charles Dickens in his day. A waiter would come into the room and walk out and Charlie would do an imitation. It was part of his nature. He was always doing imitations. That’s how he memorized them. That’s how Dickens memorized his people, by writing letters or little sketches or articles in magazines. Charlie said he couldn’t remember when he couldn’t see a person and be able to do them instantly.”
As Brooks recounted in both her 1966 article and the 1978 recording, Chaplin loved to take long walks. “We used to walk everywhere. He loved to walk. It was nothing to walk from 52nd street — me in high heels — down to 14th street so he could watch this man play the violin,” Brooks observed ****. “He would dress up in his Edwardian finery, his derby, his shoes with the grey tops and pearl buttons and his fine lacquered cane. We went to a fashionable place like the Colony restaurant, or a fashionable nightclub like the Lido and Montmarte, where everyone was watching him at every instant.”
During one nighttime walk, they found themselves on the Lower East Side in a Jewish neighborhood. The streets were very narrow, and children began to gather behind him. “As we walked down he moved from the side of the street to the middle of the street. He became the pied piper with all these joyful children following Chaplin. All of the sudden he panicked, and without saying anything, he darted into a restaurant, and we darted in after him. It was a little white-tiled Hungarian Jewish restaurant. We sat down and ordered some kind of food. In the corner was a small upright piano with a man playing it and a man standing up playing a violin, a Hungarian violinist. He hadn’t played for long. No one else was paying any attention to him but Chaplin. And Chaplin became enraptured, and he gave him a five dollar bill. He played more, and he [Chaplin] watched him and watched him. We got very bored. There was nothing to drink. But Charlie didn’t drink. He didn’t care. We left. For the next week, almost every night, he would go back to this Hungarian restaurant. He never explained to us why he wanted to go back and hear this Hungarian violinist play. But 27 years later we found out. In the sequence in Limelight, he is the Hungarian violinist and Buster Keaton is the pianist.”
Another walk proved to be a “mystification of only minutes.” One afternoon, while walking up Park Avenue, Brooks recognized the unmistakable figure of Chaplin more than a block ahead. “Swinging his cane, he was strolling with his usual grace except that at intervals he would snap his head back for a quick look behind him. Running to catch up with him I asked: ‘What in the world is the matter with you?’ Looking back once more, Charlie whispered, ‘Mr. Hearst is having me followed!’ and then vanished through the Ambassador’s lobby door.”
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| The Pomona Bulletin, November 10, 1925 | The Lincoln Star, November 5, 1925 | Medford Mail Tribune, November 12, 1925 |
The time Brooks and Chaplin spent together was not always in public. “After d’Arrast’s departure, he was replaced in our foursome by A. C. Blumenthal, the film financier. It was September now and Charlie was sick of being watched in public, sick of entertaining society and the intellectuals who numbed his soul. Most of our time together was spent in Blumie’s big airy apartment atop the Ambassador. Blumie played the piano, Peggy sang, I danced, and Charlie returned to reality — the world of his creative imagination. He recalled his youth with comic pantomimes. He acted out countless scenes for countless films. And he did imitations of everybody. Isadora Duncan danced in a storm of toilet paper. John Barrymore picked his nose and brooded over Hamlet’s soliloquy. A Follies girl swished across the room, and I began to cry while Charlie denied absolutely that he was imitating me.”
Soon enough, their romantic idyll came to an end. In “Charlie Chaplin Remembered,” Brooks wrote “And then, as fluidly as they had taken form, those exquisite Chaplin days dissolved. Peggy went on the road with the Ziegfeld Follies, I began my first film role in The American Venus at Paramount’s Long Island studio, Charlie returned to Hollywood, and the Ambassador apartment was left alone with Blumie.”
In the 1978 recording, Brooks spoke fondly, even reverentially, of Chaplin, calling him “brilliantly intelligent.” Brooks stated, “The day he left I was living at the Marguery [hotel] down the street on Park Avenue. On the day he left he sent me a very nice little note and a check for $500*****. Charlie said ‘I’ve taken up all your time.’ I never thanked him. He was a damn decent guy. Anyone who knew him or worked with him… loved him.” Even though Brooks admired Chaplin, she did not love him. In 1978, Brooks stated, “Even during our affair, he knew that I didn’t adore him in the romantic sense, and he didn’t mind at all.”
Brooks knew the rules of the game, and was discreet about those with whom she had had an encounter. After Chaplin died in 1977, she described the comedic actor as a “sophisticated lover” and told Kenneth Tynan, “I had an affair with him for two happy summer months.” [More about the time Brooks and Chaplin spent together, including more about the fun had in A. C. Blumenthal’s apartment, can be found in the biography by Barry Paris.]
Brooks and Chaplin, apparently, never saw one another gain, except for one close encounter at a party in 1928. In an unpublished 1962 audio recording, Brooks recounted the time Chaplin first met Garbo. “One night I was invited to a party there [the home of Arthur Hornblow, Jr.]. I strolled in about six. Garbo was sitting on the edge of a chair with her shoes off. She doesn’t have big feet, she has nice slim feet to suit her height. With her shoes off leaning back with her head thrown back and being very aloof, that was 1928. She had just made her great triumph, got her new contract. She hadn’t gotten too grand. She was sitting there. I don’t know what I was doing. I suppose I was sucking on a drink somewhere. Suddenly Chaplin appeared. I saw him spot Garbo. He had never met her. He was wild to meet her. He came prancing over to her like a lovely little poodle. And he did all his tricks and he danced around the chair and she sat with her head thrown back just looking at him with that beautiful look — that ‘you can’t interest me’ look and finally he looked at her and walked away with his little tale down and never came back. I don’t think she ever saw him again. But with all his conquests he had been mad to meet her. This was the big occasion. And she really gave him the brush.”
In the 1962 recording, Brooks summed-up their time together. “I met him in 1925 when I was in the Follies and just about to go into movies. I was a spoiled beauty at the time. I wasn’t interested in Charlie. I didn’t want anything from Charlie. I was busy with my own life. He was there for the opening of The Gold Rush. It was an enormous success…. We would go to the theater and applause so that everyone would look at us and look at him. He was just miserable. He spent most of his time in a penthouse apartment atop of the Ambassador hotel, with me and my best friend who was also in the Follies, Peggy Fears, and her husband to be A.C. Blumenthal. And there we would have a great deal of fun. And there is where I learned all I ever learned about acting.” Later, Brooks revised herself a bit, telling Kenneth Tynan “I learned to move in film from watching Chaplin.”
In a reflective mood, Brooks told Tynan, “Ever since he died, my mind has gone back fifty years, trying to define that lovely being from another world. He was not only the creator of the Little Fellow, though that was miracle enough. He was a self-made aristocrat. He taught himself to speak cultivated English, and he kept a dictionary in the bathroom at his hotel so that he could learn a new word every morning. While he dressed, he prepared his script for the day, which was intended to adorn his private portrait of himself as a perfect English gentleman.” In the 1978 recording, Brooks also noted, “Don’t forget that computer mind of his. It was always taking things from the outside and formatting them inside and creating. He wrote a picture every day. I never knew him on a single day when he didn’t stop talking about a film. Each one was different, and he had it completely in his head. He would act it all out, the important parts. There was always a part for the girl he liked at the time.”
Might one of those parts been meant for Brooks? Some newspapers and some gossip columnists thought so. One article, “Broadway All Agog! Wichita Beauty May Become Charlie Chaplin’s Leading Lady,” ran on the front page of the Wichita Daily Eagle, Brooks’ hometown newspaper. The October 15, 1925 article, a reprint of an exclusive which appeared in the New York Daily Mirror the day before, began, “Broadway is all a-twitter yesterday over what seems to be a blossoming romance between the gallant Charlie Chaplin and Louise Brooks, Follies beauty, and pronounced by Flo Ziegfeld to be one of the most beautiful girls in America…. Louise Brooks, Follies beauty and new cinema ‘find,’ it is reported, has become most friendly with the gray-haired comedian. They are seeing New York together, it is said. Their evening usually begins with a first night Broadway opening….” Along with the tittle-tattle, the original October 14 article reported “There are those who wonder if she will return to the coast about the time Charlie does and be his leading woman in his oft-postponed comedy.” While merely speculative, the article suggest Chaplin was still in New York at the time it was written — though not when it was published. [David Robinson’s outstanding Chaplin biography contains a chronology which places the actor back in Los Angeles on October 15.]
Other papers also took notice of the reported affair, even after Chaplin returned to Hollywood. Gossip was passed off as news then, as it is now. In early November, a syndicated story from Central Press Photos was published in newspapers across the country, sometimes on the front page. “Chaplin, Living With Wife, Brands Rumors of Follies Romance False” ran in papers in Seattle, Washington, Lincoln, Nebraska, Waco, Texas, and Scranton and Allentown, Pennsylvania. In Pomona, California and Medford, Oregon, it ran on the front page! [See above.] The text beneath Brooks’ portrait reads, “Stories linking the names of Charles Chaplin, screen comedian, and Louise Brooks, Follies beauty, in a romance, are being indignantly denied in Los Angeles, where Chaplin is living with his wife and their son, Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. It is stated, however, that Miss Brooks may be the comedian’s leading woman in his next picture.”
Reports of a romance between Charlie Chaplin and Louise Brooks first began to creep into the press as early as September 23, when James W. Dean ran a bit in his nationally syndicated column which noted, “Saw Charlie Chaplin and he seemed gay in the company of Louise Brooks, a young chorus dancer.” Variety also got into the act on October 14, when a bit in its “News from the Dailies” column stated, “A caption under a picture of Louise Brooks, Follies girl, in a morning tabloid says that the attentions Charlie Chaplin recently lavished upon her have set Broadway’s tongues a-wagging.”
Such reports slowly began to fade until word broke in late November that Brooks was suing photographer John Di Mirijan over the publication of “nude” photographs of the aspiring actress. A November 30th story in the New York Daily Mirror, headlined, “Follies Girl, Now in Films, Shocked by Own Pictures,” stated “Louise Brooks, late of the Follies, has startled Broadway with an injunction suit to restrain John De Mirjian, theatrical photographer, from further distribution of nude portraits which he has made of her. The tiny bit of symmetrical perfection who so enthralled Charles Chaplin on his last visit that they were seen together everywhere, is now a budding moving picture actress, which explains many things, among them her desire to turn back the leaves of the volume of her life that include some scores of pictures in the ‘all together’.”
With tongues still wagging about her friendship with Chaplin, Brooks felt the need to address some of the nastier gossip. “Miss Brooks wants it clearly understood,” the article continued, “that her rise has been solely through her own efforts. She resents the report circulated at the time Chaplin was here to the effect that they promised to become more than just good friends. She admits that they saw a great deal of each other, but that she was only acting in the capacity as his guide about the supper clubs.”
Other newspapers took notice, and as with the earlier reports of an affair, stories about the “draped nudes scandal” went viral were syndicated across the country. In early December, the Wichita Daily Eagle ran a syndicated article about Brooks titled “Wichita Beauty Sues New York Artist.” The short article recounted the few developments in the story to date, and conflated gossip of an affair with the risque photos likely taken earlier in the year. The article states, “It was one of these photographs which the New York Mirror says attracted Charlie Chaplin, who is said to have paid a lot of attention to the Wichita beauty. It was even rumored that Charlie would offer his hand and name to Miss Brooks as soon as he divorced his present wife.” Having realized the fallout her brief dalliance with Chaplin was causing, the young actress distanced herself as best she could. The article ended on a sour note. “Miss Brooks has just made public a statement in which she says she is not now, nor never was interested in ‘that Chaplin person’.”
Here is one of the rarest bits of Brooksiana / Chapliniana you are likely to see… a four panel comic strip referencing not only the scandal over Brooks’ revealing photos, but also her reported affair with Charlie Chaplin. It appeared in the New York Graphic, a tabloid published by Bernard Macfadden.
There is something of an odd addendum to the story of Charlie Chaplin and Louise Brooks and their “two happy summer months”. In the early 1940s, some eighteen years after events described in this piece, word was starting to break about an affair Chaplin had with another young actress, Joan Berry. Consequently, Chaplin was the subject of an F.B.I. investigation due his potential violation of the Mann Act, as well as his alleged communist sympathies – something Brooks dismissed in the aforementioned audio recordings. The F.B.I. went about collecting information about the famed actor. And surprisingly, Brooks was mentioned in Chaplin’s F.B.I. file. One page of which is shown below.
The passage from the above document referencing Brooks reads: “With reference to the individual mentioned in VON ULM’s book as ‘MAISIE” xxxxxxxx advised he thought it was Louise Brooks. He said she was very young at the time and later married EDDIE SOUTHERLAND (sic), who is a Director in pictures at the present time.” The work mentioned in the F.B.I. document is Gerith von Ulm’s 1940 book, Charlie Chaplin: The Birth of Tragedy. I got a hold of a copy, and read the passage which mention “Maisie.” I wonder who it was that guesses or conflated Brooks with “Maisie” – and why they did so.
Nevertheless, I was surprised to see Brooks’ name in Chaplin’s FBI file: I find it surprising that Brooks was mentioned at all in 1943, as her career had fizzled out and she was pretty much forgotten and living in near obscurity at the time. Brooks had been out of films since 1938, and had returned home to Wichita, Kansas in 1940, where she lived in her parents house until January of 1943, when she relocated to New York City in the hopes of finding work in radio. Compared to her heyday in the late 1920’s, Brooks was rarely if ever mentioned in the press. (I have come across only about a half-dozen mentions of Brooks in 1943, with most of those coming from columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.) The fact that she was mentioned in this FBI document leads me to believe that whoever it was that mentioned Brooks might have known her and known of her affair with Chaplin. Does anyone have an informed guess as to whom the person “advising” the FBI might be? Inquiring minds want to know!
In his 1964 book, My Autobiography (which Brooks read and both liked and disliked), Chaplin had little to say about the few weeks he spent in New York City following the premiere of The Gold Rush. He did not mention Louise Brooks, and seemingly, never spoke about the actress except once. In the 1998 documentary, Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu, composer David Diamond spoke about the time he asked Chaplin about Brooks. Diamond, who lived in Rochester, was a mutual friend of Brooks and the famed comedian. When Diamond asked Chaplin about Brooks, his response was a wistful, “breasts, like little pears.”
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* According to the Barry Paris biography, Louise Brooks met Edna Purviance in the days following The Gold Rush premiere. Though the circumstances of their meeting are unknown, it suggests Brooks may have attended the premiere (she raved about the film, and spoke about the swarm of fans who waited to get in to see it). The fact that Brooks and Purviance met also suggests that Brooks and Chaplin may have met at or soon after the premiere.
** A September 4th bit in the New York Daily News mentioned “Charley Chaplin paid an incognito visit to the Hippodrome this week to hear Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.” The bit did not mention if he was accompanied by anyone.
*** For more about Blythe Daly and an account of her having bit Chaplin’s lip, see the Barry Paris biography of Louise Brooks.
**** I have tried, and am still trying, to identify the Hungarian restaurant visited by Chaplin and Brooks. The actress stated that it was on the Lower East Side, which is in the Bowery district. Brooks also stated that the restaurant was on 14th avenue, which is a major thorough fare, not a “narrow” street as she describes. I will speculate and suggest 14th avenue may have been their original destination (it was the location of Lüchow’s and other eateries), until the group they were with were sidetracked and ducked into another restaurant. I believe there were two Hungarian restaurants located just a few blocks away from east 14th on two parallel streets which intersect the larger avenue. Those two restaurants were located at 176 Eldridge St. and 207 Forsyth(e) St. The search goes on….
***** Five hundred dollars was a considerable amount of money in 1925. Today, with inflation, Chaplin’s $500 gift would come to more than $8,700. Brooks was never bitter about her relationship with Chaplin, and, she even criticized herself for not having acknowledged the gift.
SOURCES
A handful of different sources were used in the writing of this piece. Primary among them were Louise Brooks’ two-page article, “Charlie Chaplin Remembered,” which appeared in the Spring issue of Film Culture in 1966, as well as Kenneth Tynan’s famous profile of the actress, “The Girl in the Black Helmet,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 1979, and the Barry Paris biography of the actress, which was published in 1989. Also valuable were my transcripts of two audio recordings of Brooks dating from 1962 and 1978, which were uncovered by the author a few years back. The excerpts included above mark their first publication. In addition, I looked at various issues of various New York newspapers, including the New York Daily News, from August and September of 1925, and found a few bits of useful, undocumented information. I even looked at issues of Uj Előre, the Hungarian-language newspaper published in NYC, in hopes of finding an advertisement or clue which might lead me to find the name of the restaurant Chaplin and Brooks ducked into, but to no avail.
The map shown below marks the location of the theaters, hotels and restaurants mentioned on this page — except for the Lido and Montmarte nightclubs (whose location I have not yet been able to determine), and the unknown Hungarian restaurant located on the Lower East Side on or near 14th Ave. If you have information on any of these latter locations, please CONTACT the Louise Brooks Society. The text of this webpage is © 2023 by Thomas Gladysz.