The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
This is the first in a series of blogs about the haunting of the house my family moved into during the spring of 1974.
That true haunting would provide the emotional and psychological underpinnings of my upcoming novel Chapel Street, which will be published by TouchPoint Press in July of 2020. My surviving sister Jeanne, after reading the first draft, called the novel a cartoon version of the actual events. She did not mean that as an insult. She simply meant that the events in the book were highly exaggerated. True. Sadly, I do not possess the necessary skill as a writer to adequately convey the terror that the nightly footsteps, bangings and occasional appearance inspired. However, she could see the real people, places and events behind the fictional story.
Jeanne and myself
I do not know how long the series will be. As terrifying as the events were at the time I experienced them, I should be able to relate my own memories in a relatively concise manner. The question is whether I will also be including the tales and remembrances of my family members. Expect these blogs to trickle out over months, not weeks.
As people close to our family know, we rarely discussed the haunting in any detail with outsiders. In fact, we rarely discussed it among ourselves either. Our reticence had four main reasons.
The first was fear. We believed it could come to you if you talked about it. Prior to the writing of the book, I never knowingly experienced the presence of the entity away from the house, but my mother did. I do not doubt her. However, I suspect her relationship with the presence was different than mine. She was an owner of the house. Technically speaking, my siblings and I were merely residents. For reasons I will explain later, I believe that bound them together differently.
Secondly, we learned that talking about the entity -- or worse, with it -- empowered it. I (incorrectly) dismissed the haunting as a low grade nuisance until a direct attempt was made to communicate with the entity in the mid-1980s. Then the activity shifted dramatically into full blown poltergeist territory. This fear of talking to it led to a fear of talking about it.
The third reason was the fear of being considered insane. Although the entity could manipulate physical reality, i.e., move furniture and turn lights on and off, and physically manifest itself, the tools of its attack were primarily psychological and spiritual in nature. It became apparent that its goal was to isolate us and drive us individually into madness and suicide. As a result of these tactics, I like to say there wasn't one haunting. There were seven individual ones.
The final reason was guilt. For one reason or another, some of us felt responsible for the haunting or its continuance, and, therefore, the aftermath. Until recently, I thought I was the only one. I wasn't.
Guilt, more than anything else, inspired my book Chapel Street. I pointedly resolved never to write about the haunting of our home on St. Helens Avenue. I make no mention of it in my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. That said, after a recent meeting with my family about the haunting, I now look at some of the events in that book in a different light. I now believe I was being manipulated by the entity long before I became aware of it in any direct sense.
However, my resolution never to write about the haunting gave way after my mother asked me whether I thought the entity was responsible, in part, for the suicide deaths of my sister Laura and my brother Mark. I confessed I considered that possibility, despite the fact that neither of them died in the house. My sister shot herself about a mile away in the basement of her own home on Roselawn Avenue. My brother hung himself even further away at a construction site next to a motel where he was staying in Flint, Michigan. It seems mad to believe that the entity could stretch its hand that far. But could it have planted something in them -- and the rest of us -- that made it inevitable?
Anyone who has lived in the shadow of suicide makes a companion of guilt. You always blame yourself for not doing, or knowing, enough to help. That's only natural.
But did we truly miss a spiritual cause for their actions?
I wonder.
Mark, Laura and Jeanne at Hamlet Avenue
Poor Mark always seemed doomed. He spent the last years of his life in and out of institutions as he battled mental illness. His death was not a shock. However, the death of my sister Laura was. In retrospect, I think we, as a family, settled too quickly into the least painful narrative possible concerning her death without considering all of the circumstances. Looking into the haunting has given me the opportunity to reconsider those deaths. I am not saying that my siblings were not responsible for their own actions. They were not murdered. However, did we -- I -- miss some early warning signs -- supernatural or otherwise? Time to finally ask some questions.
A fellow author I respect said my work seems death obsessed. I can't disagree. Nor do I apologize for it. Death is perhaps the most important subject we, as human beings, must deal with. The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with Godwas a suicide book. It dealt with my one intentional attempt at suicide, from which I was miraculously spared, and my sister's successful attempt. Chapel Street is also a suicide book. It deals, in a fictional manner, with other unintentional and unsuccessful suicide events and my brother's sadly successful one. Chapel Street might be fiction, but the horror that inspired it is real enough.
And, I fear, it is not over yet.
Mark, mid-90s
Final Notes.
The address of the house is not currently 21 St. Helens Avenue. That was actually the address of the house when it was originally built, but the street name and number changed over the years. Forgive me if I refrain from giving the actual address to preserve the privacy of the current residents.
Also, I really hate the word haunting. That word conjures up in the popular imagination images of ghosts -- the spirits of deceased human beings. I firmly believe the entity in the house was not human but rather demonic in nature. Most of my family members agree with that assessment. However, some believe there was more than one entity. Some believe one of the entities was a female human spirit. I'll let you listen and judge for yourself later.
My novel Chapel Street was inspired by the haunting. You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
A couple weeks ago I had a great time shooting the author photo for my upcoming novel Chapel Street.
I loved the photo my old friend Bryan Barnes took for my previous book The Promise: Or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. That book, my memoir, was set predominately in the Hamilton neighborhood of northeast Baltimore, Maryland. That's where we shot the photo, standing across the street from St. Dominic Church with my back against the intersection of Harford Road and Hamilton Avenue. In my youth, I considered that intersection to be the very center of the universe. So it was the ideal setting for the photo.
Yours Truly, in his native Hamilton
I was tempted to keep that photo for my second book. I have certainly gained more than a few pounds and gray hairs since it was taken. However, I wanted a new photo that spoke the uniquely to the book. I really had two choices. I could take a photo against the marble-stooped rowhouses of Chapel Street in East Baltimore, which was once the center of the Bohemian immigrant community. That's where the backstory of my novel takes place. Or I could take a photo in one of the cemeteries my heroes frequent during the book.
Whenever possible, I try to use real locations in my writings. I feel it keeps things grounded. Three cemeteries are visited in my novel: Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery, Baltimore Cemetery and Eternal Faith. The first two cemeteries are actual places. The third one, Eternal Faith, is based on Gardens of Faith Cemetery, where my most immediate family members are buried. However, I changed the name of that location because a number of nefarious things happen at that cemetery in the book, and I don't think the owners would appreciate the association. (Who knows? Perhaps the legal department at TouchPoint Press will make me change the names of the other cemeteries, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
I ultimately felt Most Holy Redeemer would be the best choice. All of my maternal immigrant ancestors are buried in the cemetery. Also, when I contacted Bryan about the possibility of shooting the photo in a cemetery, he suggested Most Holy Redeemer on its visual merits, without realizing its connections to my book.
Below are my three favorite photos from the shoot at Holy Redeemer Cemetery. The first two were taken by Bryan:
A close-up
A wider shot
This third photo was taken by Bryan's partner in crime Megan Luckeroth:
I can't wait until I find out which photograph TouchPoint Press uses for the book.
Barry, standing above the logo, wearing suspenders.
I've done a lot of cool things.
I've written books. I've written movies. I've worked on dozens of television series. I've labored on politicals, from the local level all the way up to presidential campaigns. I've also edited literally thousands of commercials for clients of every variety. I've cut celebrities and/or put words in their mouths. I even managed to make a nice income in the process. However, I doubt any of that would have happened without the skills and discipline I learned very early in my career at the advertising agency Smith Burke & Azzam.
Nowadays, I always try to teach at least one section of screenwriting at my alma mater Towson University every semester. When students ask me what they should do after college, I always recommend getting a job at an advertising agency. To me, it was like working at a small movie studio or television network. You get the opportunity to participate in the creative process from the origination of a concept, through pitching, production and post. You get to learn about marketing, too. You can't beat that. I still apply the lessons I learned working at Smith Burke & Azzam.
How did I break into advertising? Easy. Nepotism. My mother was the office manager at SB&A. When the powers-to-be needed someone for a day or two to perform a mindless, repetitive task, she immediately thought of her unemployed, college graduate son would be perfect.
What was that task the changed the trajectory of my life? Signing Barry L. Smith's name on thousands of new business letters they were sending out.
Yes, I got my start in the business forging Barry's name.
They must have liked me because I soon found myself at the agency practically every week doing something or other until they finally hired me full time. I worked in the mailroom, the accounting department, media, and the creative department. I worked in every department except Account Services, which dealt directly with the clients. Once, when I remarked upon that fact to agency partner Joe Burke, he replied, "That was not an oversight, Sean." Oh well. They liked me enough to hire me full time not once, but on five separate occasions! (Any time we lost a major account, there would be a bloodbath. I tended to be one of the first to go, but I would usually be back, in at least a freelance capacity, within a couple of weeks at most.)
In addition to offering me the chance to work on some really cool projects, I also got to meet some very smart, funny and talented people at the agency. There were some real characters, and Barry was one of the most memorable.
I don't know if Barry was the first Texan I met, but he was definitely the first classic Texas wheeler-dealer I met. He had a genial Texas drawl, but he wasn't the kind of Texan who went around in spurs and string ties. In fact, he was the first person I met who had a tailor come into the office and pick out clothing for him every season. Instead, he was one of those proud "Everything is bigger in Texas"-kind of Texans. In fact, he used to lament how tame SB&A was compared to some places he worked at in Texas.
Barry was a rainmaker by trade. A new business guy. His job was to go out and get new accounts and he was good at it. I think the highpoint of his career at SB&A was when he somehow nabbed the Playboy account, which was quite an accomplishment for a small agency in Baltimore that wasn't really even in the pitch. He always exuded confidence. When you were on his side, you always felt you were going to win. Of course, since he was a Texas wheeler-dealer, discerning exactly what side Barry was on wasn't always clear. Smith Burke & Azzam itself was born when Barry and his initial partners, Joe Burke and Gene Azzam, lifted the Roy Rogers account from their then employer W.B. Doner. I wasn't surprised when I saw that most of the stories involving Barry on the internet involve lawsuits of one kind or another.
Of course, those legal battles were way above my pay grade. Despite the relatively small size of the agency, which seemed to fluctuate between eighty and a hundred employees, I did not have much direct contact with Barry. He seemed to spend much of his time out of the office doing what he did. My first real direct contact with him seemed as worrisome to him as it did to me.
Barry had bought a new high-end BMW and needed to get it cleaned. I was delegated with the task of taking it to the detailer. I met Barry beside his car in the cramped parking garage behind our offices at 326 North Charles Street. He handed me the keys. I got behind the wheel and discovered to my horror that the car was stick shift. I had driven stick before, but three on the tree, not four (or was it five?) on the floor. There was no way I was going to tell Barry L. Smith that I had never driven that kind of stick before. So I gamely started the engine and shifted gears, but I let go of the clutch too soon and car lurched forward before stalling out. Barry didn't say anything. He just studied me as I started the car again. And, again, I mistimed the clutch and his luxury car lurched forward and stalled. Then he finally walked over and tapped on the window. When I lowered it, he asked with some concern, "Sean, are you sure you know how to drive my car?" "Yes, sir," I lied. Fortunately, this time when I started the car, I got it moving successfully until he was out of sight.
To many of us entry level kids new to the industry, Barry became a legendary figure. Since he was the head of the agency, he was, metaphorically, our father in the business. A couple of us took to calling him Dad amongst ourselves. His exploits, both real and rumored, were endlessly gossiped about and probably exaggerated in the process. Working for Barry was like working for Mad Men's Don Draper, aside from the fact that Draper was a creative and Barry was an account guy. It was fascinating for me, a young and much too naive kid, to watch.
My deepest dive into the world of Barry L. Smith came during one of his weddings. He was marrying his former secretary Shelley. It was his fourth wedding. Her first. Barry hired me to film the wedding because he said I was the type of guy who would ask the guests, in his words: "Why do you think Barry is marrying her when he's already getting the milk for free?" I took that comment as license to ask the guests precisely those kind of questions. And, surprisingly, many of them answered with indiscreet candor! Barry loved the final result. (Shelley less so.) He only chided me because he heard I had cut a tactless comment someone had made in order to protect the person. Barry just said, "Sean, it wasn't your job to protect people."
I kept a copy of the wedding tape. It saddens me to watch it, less for what anyone said or did than for the fact that too many people in it have passed away. Now Barry himself has joined them.
One final Barry story. Barry had left the agency. I don't remember the politics of the move, but he still kept an office there for a while. He was soon hired as a consultant for a hotel chain to help them pick an advertising agency. SB&A was one of the agencies invited to pitch the account, along with four other agencies from all around the country. After the pitches, Barry hired me to make five VHS tapes of each pitch. It was very illuminating. I had worked on many of SB&A's pitches, but this time I got to see how four other agencies handled the same opportunity with the same company. When I gave him back the tapes, Barry asked if I had watched them. I said I had. He asked me what I thought and I told him. Then Barry gave me his breakdown of each pitch, and what had worked and what hadn't. It was a real masterclass in pitching from an old pro.
Barry's former company, and my then employer SB&A, did not win the pitch. The hotel chain went with another agency, which had also hired Barry as a consultant for their pitch. So Barry was working as a consultant for both the hotel chain and the agency that won the account. That made some people suspicious. It made the trades, but Barry angrily denied that his actions were unethical. Why? Because he had offered his consulting services to all of the contending agencies. He couldn't help it if the one that hired him won....
Classic Barry.
Smith Burke & Azzam became Gray Kirk & Evans. I was gone from the staff before they acquired the venerable Baltimore agency VanSant Dugdale and became GKV. Barry ended up on the client side at Choice Hotels, which became their biggest client. Since I frequently worked for GKV in a freelance capacity, I still lingered in Barry's shadow for a while longer. The last news I heard about him was the most shocking: He had gotten religion and started attending a mega church somewhere in the Southwest. Good for him! I was even approached about editing a public service announcement he was putting together for them, but the job fell through. Too bad. I would have liked to have worked with that Barry.
I doubt Barry would mind me promoting my book after my tribute to him. In fact, he'd probably give me an amused half smile. So here goes. Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined, or, as Barry might say, how I ended up with neither the milk nor the cow.
I have edited many music videos for my local musical heroes over the years, but The Sunday Cannons were the first group to call upon my acting skills in this video for their 1988 album Red to the Rind.
The Sunday Cannons featured two old friends of mine, Mike Lane and Ed Neenan. I knew Mike from high school. We were both eccentrics from Archbishop Curley High School. I met Ed Neenan later in the film program at Towson University, then called Towson State University. I had no idea they knew each other or that either of them were in a band until I saw Mike Lane loading some amps into the studio at Towson's radio station with Ed. They told me they were in a band called The Click. They were going to record in the studio that evening.
Running across them proved very fortuitous. As I relate in my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, I was at perhaps the low ebb of my life at the time after my break-up with my high school/college sweetheart. I was in a genuine suicidal funk. Soon after seeing them outside the station, I was invited to a party thrown by Tom Brandau, another fellow student in the film program. Mike and Ed both attended the party. Near the end of the party, Mike and Ed took out their guitars and started playing Beatles songs. Every girl in the place gathered around them. Wow. I was impressed.
The guys invited to a gig they had at a bar in Towson the following week. The place was mostly empty but I was really impressed with The Click. They scattered some tasty originals in a mix of college radio hits. I was a movie guy. I did not follow contemporary music, aside from the Top 40 songs I picked up via osmosis. They gave me my first exposure to folks like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe.
At the break, I approached Mike to discuss the affect he and Ed had on the girls at the party once they took out their guitars. I asked Mike if any guy could get any girl if he played the guitar. He looked around the empty bar before turning back to me and said, "I'm alone now, ain't I?"
That comment notwithstanding, I went home and dug my mother's acoustic guitar out of a closet and started playing obsessively -- despite the fact that the neck was a little bent so it was very difficult to keep in tune. Soon I was writing songs which proved to be emotionally therapeutic. Playing and writing definitely helped pull me out of my funk. In fact, I soon started my own band, The Atomic Enema, with my friends Jim Jackson, Mike Mazziott and, the true talent of the organization -- Nick Mazziott. We never rivaled The Click, but we all had a blast bashing our instruments and assaulting ear drums.
Director Tom Brandau with the band
The Sunday Cannons was a follow-up band to The Click. It featured Mike and Ed, and Click drummer Matt Maschal. Dean Morekas, the bass player for The Click, was the odd man out in the new group. Don't know why.
The music video below was not actually intended to be a music video. The band brought in Tom Brandau to shoot a commercial for their album Red To The Rind to run on late night television. However, they shot enough footage of the song Friends Become Flowers to actually make a music video afterwards. In the commercial, and the video, I play Mr. Melon Head. For some reason, the music of the band inspires me to tear off my head and throw it to the ground, revealing that I was also Red to the Rind.
Tom Brandau directed the video. He was assisted by other Towson alums. Chris New shot it and Wayne Hipley edited it. Stewart Stack kindly provided the studio and the resources of Serious Grip and Electric to the production. It was a lot of fun. I was delighted they invited me to participate, and I am happy to see it resurface again.
Everyone is still playing and working. Mike Lane followed his musical muse to Minnesota where he now plays jangly guitar pop with his talented wife Kiki in The Lanes. Ed plays post-punk pop rock with his band E. Joseph and the Phantom Heart. I am happy to hear that Matt Maschal, the veteran drummer of The Click and The Sunday Cannons, has been gigging with Ed too. Director Tom Brandau is now the head of the film department at the Minnesota State University, Morehead. And me, well, I'm still red to the rind. Just don't ask me to take off my head to prove it.
Rick Bakos, 35, lives an isolated life. Already damaged by the death of his father when he was a young boy, Rick spent a grueling decade trying in vain to help his suicidal older brother Lenny. Nor could he maintain a relationship with his long-time girlfriend Gina Holt because of pressure from his overly possessive mother Alice, who eventually took her own life as well.
In an attempt to understand the suicidal tendencies of his family, Rick became an avid genealogist and a volunteer for a genealogical website called RestingPlace, which records graves all around the world. Sadly, competition from another volunteer, Tombstone Teri Poskocil, threatens his status as the top contributor in the Baltimore, Maryland area.
Seeing a request to photograph a grave, Rick races to Eternal Faith Cemetery to beat Teri to the punch. Instead Rick finds himself drawn to a vault decorated with a ceramic photo of the deceased Betty Kostek. Her eyes draw him forward. He photographs the grave and picture before fleeing the cemetery. After some inexplicable misgivings, Rick posts the grave and the photo to the website.
That night Rick starts dreaming of his late brother Lenny. Each visit brings him closer to madness and suicide. Teri, who was also drawn to the grave of Betty Kostek, experiences similar dreams of her late uncle Charlie, who also killed himself. Rick and Teri team up to discover their pairing wasn’t a coincidence. Their great-grandparents were next door neighbors on Chapel Street nearly a century earlier. So were Betty’s grandparents.
The two of them find themselves bearing the brunt of a multi-generational demonic curse that has decimated the families of Chapel Street. With the help of two priests, they must break Betty’s spell before they die by their own hands.
This is a bucket list moment for me. I was a voracious reader as a child, and, very early in life, I felt the nascent desire to become a writer. And, to me, writers were people who wrote books. Novels, in particular. So when Chapel Street comes out, I will have finally achieved my first goal as a writer.
I am also very happy that the book is being published by TouchPoint Press. Publisher Sheri Williams took a leap of faith with me regarding my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. It was an oddball choice. Think about it: I am mainly known as a screenwriter, but I only devoted about three paragraphs describing my movie career. Instead, I detail a very personal spiritual journey most people would find out of the ordinary. I am grateful Sheri took a chance on me.
TouchPoint Press is also a natural home for my novel since, in a very real sense, Chapel Street is a parallel narrative to my memoir.
Let me explain.
Family members and close friends who read my first book asked why I didn't talk more about my doomed brother Mark Brendan Murphy, who killed himself in a rather public manner in Flint, Michigan, in 1999. Two reasons. One, Mark wasn't as much a factor in the narrative thrust of my first book as my late sister Laura Lee Murphy Valenti, who shot herself in 1994. Two, I was planning to discuss Mark, and my complicated relationship with him, in another nonfiction book.
Mark Brendan Murphy
Other Murphy family insiders asked why I didn't discuss The House in my first book.
By The House, they meant the large Victorian home my family bought in the summer of 1974. From the beginning, my sisters said the house was haunted. I was mostly oblivious or highly skeptical of their claims, aside from hearing our spooky old Church pump organ play a single note on its own once. However, after my mother and a friend of hers tried to communicate with the entity in the mid-1980s, we quickly entered full blown poltergeist territory.
Those stories were also outside of the narrative thrust of my first book. And, frankly, I never intended to write about those events for two reasons. One, we learned the hard way that talking to or about the entity seemed to empower it. For that reason, we never even discussed our own experiences in any detail among ourselves despite the fact that our family hasn't lived in the house for over a decade. Two, I didn't think I had the writing skill to articulate the terror and dread inspired by the sometimes subtle/sometimes not to so subtle actions of the entity.
I would have never written about any of this until my mother asked me this question: "Do you think the thing in the house had anything to do with Mark and Laurie's deaths?"
My answer was a firm: "Yes."
I had always considered that possibility and I wrote Chapel Street to explore my thoughts on the subject. This novel is fiction, but everything is undergirded by emotional and spiritual reality. However, in some ways, the book is less an exaggeration of the events than I thought.
After reading a draft of Chapel Street, my sister called a meeting of my surviving siblings who had lived in the house during the peak of the haunting to openly discuss the events for the first time. This was only a preliminary discussion, but it chillingly underlined my contention that the entity intended to drive us all to our deaths. My brother Mark hung himself. My sister Laura shot herself. My father drank himself to death in a manner I view as a slow-moving suicide. (I can't blame him. I would probably do the same thing if I lost two children like he did.) I discussed my own close call with suicide in my first book. However, I discovered there were other attempts as well as direct actions by the entity which would have appeared to be suicides had they been successful.
It was indeed a house of blood.
The previous owner of The House was found dead
on a landing beneath this stained glass window.
I will probably write again about the link between Chapel Street and the real events that inspired it, but I still have to process the information I just learned.
You can never really predict how the audience will react to the book. I believe fans of the genre will love it. And I was already able to generate interest in a film adaptation. Regardless, like my first book, the writing process itself proved beneficial to me. It helped me deal with some of my unresolved issues regarding the "haunting" and my relationship with my late brother. Psychological healing, courtesy of TouchPoint Press.
I hope you all enjoy the book when it is published. I don't have a date yet, but it will be released in hardcover, paperback and digital formats. If you enjoy it, rest assured I already have sequels and prequels in mind.
Thanks, Sheri, for taking another chance on me!
Sheri hasn't asked me to take down this sneak preview of Chapel Street yet, so take advantage of it while you can:
Charlie Chaplin was the first true international superstar.
Full stop. Period.
There have been a multitude of great performers before him. No doubt about that. We can still read reviews of the great Shakespearean actors and operatic singers from yesteryear. We cannot, however, see them. Neither could the bulk of the people of their own time. Unless you lived in a large cosmopolitan city, you couldn't dream of seeing or hearing one of those great performers.
Until the movies came along.
Movies gave people all around the world, regardless of class, economic status or religion, to view the same performance. Chaplin was not the first movie star, however, he connected with the audience in a way no one else ever had -- or ever would.
Why? I credit the simplicity of his main character. Chaplin developed his famous Tramp persona in his second film Kid Auto Races at Venice. The primitive, short film shows a tramp disrupting a documentary crew filming kiddie car races in Venice, California. In this film, Chaplin addresses the camera head on and builds a relationship with the audience that would last for the rest of his life.
The Tramp proved to be a truly universal character. Everyone could identify with a carefree drifter unwilling to submit to authority and who was only too happy to puncture pomposity whenever he saw it. Using only pantomime to express himself, no language barrier separated Chaplin from the global audience. His films played equally well in Polynesia as they did in America and Europe. He understood the power of silence. He successfully resisted making a true talking picture until 1940's takedown of Hitler, The Great Dictator.
But, aside from his own personal success, Chaplin was a key innovator in the advancement of screen comedy in general. When Chaplin entered the movie business in 1913, screen comedy consisted primarily of the broadest possible knockabout slapstick humor. That's how he began, too. However, as each ensuing contract gave him more freedom to follow his muse, he expanded the boundaries of screen comedy, adding heart and tackling formerly taboo subjects.
To me, the most pivotal period of Chaplin's development as a filmmaker took place during his twelve film contract to Mutual between 1916 and 1917. Mutual gave him the resources to build his own studio and total freedom to do as he pleased. He also assembled a highly-talented troupe of actors. Most importantly, he hired the imposing Eric Campbell, who, in my opinion, would prove to be the best comic heavy in film history. Sadly, Campbell would die in a car accident at the age of thirty-seven in December 1917, two months after the final Mutual film was released. (To compound the tragedy, Campbell's wife had died unexpectedly of a heart attack in July 1917, and his only daughter was seriously injured in a car accident on her way to buy mourning clothes.)
Eric Campbell
Chaplin was also aided by Edna Purviance, 1895-1958, a delightful leading lady he had hired during his previous contract with Essanay. (She retired from acting in 1927, but Chaplin kept her on the studio pay roll for the rest of her life.) He was also assisted by Albert Austin, 1881-1953, who had come to America with him in the Karno troupe and Henry Bergman, 1868-1947, who would remain working with Chaplin both on and off screen until his death in 1947.
Edna Purviance
Now a little background on Chaplin, for the uninitiated.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 in London, England. He endured a childhood with enough poverty and hardship to make Charles Dickens blush. His father disappeared and his mother would be sent to an insane asylum. Chaplin was sent to a work house twice before the age of nine. Both of his parents had theatrical backgrounds and he followed them on the stage. It proved to be his path out of poverty. At the age of nineteen, he joined the comic Fred Karno Company, which brought him to America.
In 1914, Chaplin was signed to Keystone Studios by Mack Sennett, the then king of silent comedy, for $150 a week. He made thirty-six films, mostly primitive one-and-two-reelers, during that year. By the time his contract was up, he had already achieved international stardom. Chaplin jumped ship to Essanay in 1915 for a salary of $1250 a week and a signing bonus of $10,000. Quite a raise. He made fifteen films for Essanay. These films showed growth from the Keystone period, as Chaplin attempted to tell more complicated stories and incorporate pathos. In 1916, he went to Mutual for $10,000 a week and a $150,000 signing bonus. The contract was ultimately worth $675,000, making him one of the most highly paid people in the world.
Chaplin called the Mutual period the happiest time of his life. The joy is evident in all of the films, and so is the ambition. The technical quality of the film making progressed in all categories. He added more humanity to the Tramp, as well as the characters he interacted with. The Tramp began to subtly change. Originally, the character seemed to be a tramp by choice. A free spirit. Now, he began appearing as a victim of circumstance. This gave the persona more depth, and allowed Chaplin to deal with social issues never before dealt with in comedies.
I first became familiar with the films in my youth. I collected Super 8mm films and began buying the Mutuals from Blackhawk Films. They would put out a catalog every month and usually featured at least one of these films at half price. I still consider them the epitome of silent short comedy, along with some films by Keaton, Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy.
I always wanted to do a Robert Youngson-style documentary about Chaplin at Mutual, highlighting the little innovations throughout. I wrote a script, but never found public domain copies of the films of suitable quality. Perhaps one day I will find the prints and make the film.
Until then, here's my list of the films from weakest to strongest:
The Firemen, the second of Chaplin's Mutual comedies, is probably my least favorite of the bunch. It is a typical occupational comedy, where a comedian is placed in a certain job and wrings the comic potential from the tools of the trade.
It's not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination. There are laughs, and Chaplin does milk some simple gags, like the incessant butt-kicking, more successfully than he did at Keystone or Essanay. (For example, in a Keystone comedy, if someone bent over, someone else would automatically kick them in the butt. Here, if you bend over you will still get kicked, but Chaplin makes a little more of it. He will consider the butt, address it as it were, before he makes his kick. It is a small step to be sure, but every step is important.) Chaplin also attempts some backward motion gags, but they are obvious and not very funny.
Overall, the film suffers because it does not reach the standard Chaplin would set for himself with his later efforts.
Chaplin plays an apprentice to tailor Campbell. He is fired for burning the pants of a customer. The customer was a count, and, finding the invitation to a swanky party, both Chaplin and Campbell go and impersonate the Count and vie for the hand of Miss Moneybags, Edna Purviance.
Likable, but nothing too fresh or new. Impersonation and mistaken identity are common themes in Chaplin's oeuvre. How else would the tramp be able to mix with the rich and pompous? The film features simple slapstick that could have just as easily played in one of his Essanay shorts. It is, however, elevated by higher production values and better performances from his cast.
Chaplin has various misadventures while working in the property department of a movie studio. For some reason, this film turned out to be the last of the Mutual shorts that I saw. I really looked forward to seeing it, thinking Chaplin would make the most of the studio location.
Sadly, if only because of my sense of anticipation, I was a bit disappointed. I didn't find it as funny as the bulk of the other Mutual shorts. Despite a location rich in potential, I found the funniest moments in this film to be some of the smallest ones, –like Charlie trying to steal bites from Albert Austin's lunch.
Still, the film retains interest as a behind the scenes view of motion picture production circa 1916. (A superior and more concise view of the world of producing silent films can be found in Singin' In The Rain as Gene Kelly walks through a silent studio.) To me, the most interesting thing about this film is Chaplin's hostile attitude toward the striking union workers. If he had made this film later in his career, the radical unionists might have been the good guys!
A floorwalker, Lloyd Bacon, and manager, Eric Campbell, rob the safe of a department store. Before they can leave with their ill-gotten gains, the floorwalker knocks the manager out and steals his share. To evade detectives, the floorwalker induces a look-alike tramp, Charlie Chaplin, to trade places with him. When the detectives arrest the real floorwalker, Chaplin is left with a suitcase of money and one small problem: Campbell wants the money and revenge.
The Floorwalker was the first of Chaplin's films for the Mutual Company. Itis more heavily-plotted than most of his earlier shorts. It uses Chaplin's common plot device of mistaken identity which he frequently employed from 1914's Caught in a Cabaret to 1940's The Great Dictator. This time he doesn't reach as high - merely to the ranks of the employed.
The gags are good, in particular Chaplin makes excellent use of an escalator, although the film isn't as funny as many that will soon follow. Still, The Floorwalker remains one of my favorite Mutuals, if only for the sentimental reason that it was the first full-length two-reeler I bought in Super 8mm when I was a kid.
Well worth a look, but not the best introduction to Chaplin.
Chaplin plays a drunk who spends the entire film trying to get into his house and go to bed. In a comic experiment, Chaplin appears alone in this film, aside from Albert Austin, who briefly appears at the beginning as a cab driver. Chaplin draws the humor from his interaction with various objects around the house, most humorously with a hostile Murphy bed.
Is this comic experiment successful? Yes, for the most part. It is a funny short, but, in my opinion, nowhere near his funniest. Still, one must admire Chaplin's boldness. When one watches this film, one sees a talented film maker testing the limits of his skills. Bravo.
Charlie plays an assistant at a pawnshop with a eye for the owner's daughter and a skill for making mischief. The Pawnshop is perhaps the least plotted of Chaplin's Mutual films. Charlie thwarts Eric Campbell's plan to rob the business, but little screen time is devoted to that story.
This is a situational, or should I say, occupational comedy, where Charlie and his talented cast and crew try to make the most of a particular setting. The best sequence comes when customer Albert Austin arrives with a clock to pawn. Charlie hilariously and inventively destroys the clock in his attempt to discern its value. This "business" - the ability to wring comic potential from simple everyday items - is a lost skill among modern comics. Chaplin was a master at it, and this film serves as a good example why.
In The Vagabond, Charlie plays a street musician who rescues a girl, Edna Purviance, from a gypsy camp. They set up their own little camp and Charlie soon falls in love with Edna, but before long a rival soon appears in the form of a painter who asks Edna to model for him. A wealthy woman sees the painting in an exhibit and, as a result of a birthmark, recognizes Edna as her daughter who was stolen away as a child. The mother and painter come and sweep Edna up away from Charlie. However, as they drive away, she suddenly demands that they go back and get Charlie, who gets into the car with them and they all live happily ever after.
The Vagabond, the third of Chaplin's films for Mutual, is probably the least humorous of the series, but it is also one of the most interesting. It is essentially a melodrama, and serves as an important creative building block toward his heartfelt feature triumphs that would follow in the twenties and beyond. A film like this was a riskier proposition back in the age of slapstick when comedy was comedy and drama was drama. Today, this is not the first place to look for Chaplin the laugh-getter, but an interesting curio to examine when studying Chaplin's growth as an artist.
Charlie plays a waiter with a penchant for roller skating in this very funny short.
There isn't much of a plot in this film, but it generates a great many laughs nonetheless. The scenes featuring Charlie as a waiter are amusing enough, particularly as he mixes a drink, but Chaplin really shines in the skating scenes. Although he was always an agile and physical comedian, few of films display his skills as fully as The Rink. (W.C. Fields called him "a damned ballerina.") Chaplin was so good on skates that one regrets he didn't put them on more often, although he did so to great effect in Modern Times.
In The Adventurer, Charlie plays an escaped convict who briefly manages to enjoy the good life after rescuing a drowning rich woman before the police find him again.
The Adventurer is the last of Chaplin's films for the Mutual. Lacking any attempt at the pathos and social commentary that Chaplin injected in some of his previous Mutual shorts, this chase comedy almost appears to be a throwback to his rough-and-tumble roots at Keystone. However, there is one major difference, this film is much funnier than anything he did at Keystone. While I do not consider this to be his best short, it is arguably his funniest. The chases that bookend the film are hilarious. The middle is hilarious too. The film is a laugh fest through and through. If this film doesn't put a smile on your face, check your pulse.
Charlie, an alcoholic, goes to a health spa for the water cure. He does so, however, only half-heartedly since his luggage is filled almost entirely with alcohol. Once at the spa, he flirts with the always-delightful Edna Purviance and battles with the always-menacing Eric Campbell, who finds himself at a slight disadvantage in this film since his character suffers from gout.
This film, Chaplin's tenth under his twelve-film Mutual contract, doesn't quite scale the heights of his previous one, Easy Street, but remains one of his most consistently funny shorts. A revolving door is used repeatedly for great comic effect, but the highlight of the film is the massage sequence where Charlie desperately tries to avoid the rough treatment masseur Henry Bergman deals out.
Charlie interestingly abandons his normal tramp persona for this film. Although he felt rich drinkers were ripe targets for comedy, he felt that alcoholism in the working class was a serious problem which wasn't suitable for comedy. (Don't ask me for attribution, but I know he said that somewhere.)
Chaplin plays an immigrant on a ship bound for America. While on the ship, he helps a fellow immigrant, Edna Purviance, whose mother had been robbed. Chaplin meets Purviance later at a restaurant where they are spotted by an artist who hires them to be models. Chaplin uses the advance to buy a wedding license for them.
The Immigrant is generally considered to be one of Chaplin's finest shorts. That is true. It is one of his funniest, too. However, I do not consider it as finely-structured on the whole as many of the other Mutual films. The Immigrant feels like two separate one-reelers, featuring some of the same characters, strung together. We have a shipboard reel and a restaurant reel. The only common characters from both segments are Chaplin and Purviance. (I don't count members of the stock company who appear in both segments as different characters.) The film also suffers from the lack of a consistent heavy throughout.
This weak story structure slightly hampers the overall effectiveness of the short, but doesn't detract too much from the comedy. The first segment has some of the more elaborate gags, like eating dinner on the wave-tossed ship, but I prefer the more subtle humor of the second half as Chaplin tries to figure out how to avoid the wrath of his tough waiter when he discovers he doesn't have any money to pay for his meal.
Much political hay is made of Chaplin kicking the immigration officials after the ship passes the Statue of Liberty. Leftist supporters look at it as an early example of his "heroic" anti-totalitarian political sentiments, while critics take it as a nasty, early anti-American statement. I believe both groups are guilty of wrongly transposing the political sensibilities of the late-forties and early-fifties back into the teens. Robinson's excellent book Chaplin: His Life and Art thoroughly examines the issue and shows that Chaplin intended no political message.
Charlie, however, would have plenty of time for politics later!
Easy Street starts with Charlie as a poor, destitute tramp. After attending a storefront revival service, and meeting the always delightful Edna Purviance, he decides to turn his life around. He quickly gets a job as a policeman and he finds himself assigned to Easy Street, the worst neighborhood in the city ruled by tough Eric Campbell. Using his own unorthodox tactics, Charlie eventually subdues Eric and the neighborhood and they all live happily ever after.
Easy Street is easily the best of the Mutual comedies. It is a very funny short. This is the film I show when I want to introduce someone to Chaplin or silent films in general. The gags are inventive, and they are extremely well-played by his regular company of Mutual performers. Chaplin himself is at his best in this film, but where would he be without Eric Campbell, the best heavy he ever played against.
But there is more to Easy Street than laughs. It is unusually mature for a silent comedy of its period. Chaplin usually presented his tramp character as a happy-go-lucky figure - a vagabond by choice, not circumstance. This film starts with the tramp as a down-and-out character, much in need of the new beginning he gets at the mission. In perhaps his first attempt at social commentary, Chaplin provides an unblinking view of the ills of the society of the time. The most graphic example is the drug addict shooting up with a needle. People often have a misconception of silent comedies being simply quaint. That isn't quaint.
This is a must see.
After Mutual, Chaplin signed an even richer deal with First National which gave him more freedom and even ownership of his films. However, he would only make three more two-reel comedies. As his budgets rose, economics (and his own inclinations) required him to turn instead to feature length films. The Kid would be his first true feature as a writer, director, producer and star. When he left First National for United Artists, a company he founded with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, Chaplin would devote himself to features only.
Chaplin would enjoy an amazing run with features despite bucking the tide of talkies. However, his popularity rapidly fell in the 1940s after a scandalous paternity case and suspicions that he was a communist sympathizer. Having never become a citizen, Chaplin was eventually forced to leave the United States, but he returned in triumph to receive an Oscar in 1972.
And, of course, no blog would be complete without some self-promotion. So feel free to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.
