Chester Conklin Talks of Early Vicissitudes

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 104, 23 July 1927, Page 23

Chester Conklin Talks of Early Vicissitudes

Chaplin’s First Chance PIONEERS OF THE SCREEN CHESTER Conklin, the screen comedian, was opce a circus clown. Charles Chaplin was one of his early associates in the moving picture world. Mack Sennett, when he first engaged Charlie, thought he had been stung! In New York one day recently Chester Conklin was sitting: in an automobile waiting to be called for a scene of “Rubber Hells/* then being

filmed opposite the Astoria studio. He was minus his walrus moustache and his familiar spectacles, and it can be truly said that he does not look himself without these adornments. He was in a cheery mood. He lighted a cigarette with a new-fangled lighter, and between puffs recalled the

old days when he was a Keystone cop and if he worked he received three dollars a day. Mr. Conklin acted one year with Charlie Chaplin, and Conklin says that Mack Sennett thought he nad been “stung” when he engaged Chaplin at 175 dollars a week.

CHARLIE’S FIRST START “That was in the days before “artificial lights,” said Mr. Conklin, “and therefore we relied upon the sun and worked in the open all the time. Chaplin’s chief work was in portraying a drunk, and he appeared as a drunk in one scene of a picture, then went to another set where did his stunt, and then to another for about the same thing. A picture called ‘Mabel’s Strange Predicament’ really started Chaplin going. “Before that it was thought that all he had to do was to stagger, jump, run and get his feet tangled up in something. He had portrayed a comic Engglish newspaper reporter with a long moustache and he was terrible. In ‘Mabel’s Strange Predicament,’ the principal players were Mabel Norrnand, Roscoe Arbuckle, Chaplin, Ford Sterling and myself. Sterling was the pattern for all comedy. He wore huge shoes. “During a lull in the activities, while Arbuckle and I were playing pinochle, Charlie got the idea of using his worldrenowned costume. I wore baggy trousers and Arbuckle had a small derby hat, and then there was Sterling with his enormous shoes. Charlie, to amuse himself and perhaps other folk, put on my trousers, Arbuckle’s hat and Sterling’s footwear. Then he picked up a piece of black crepe and held it under his nose like a small, thick moustache. He looked so ridiculous that he impressed Sennett as having possibilities. They fixed the moustache on and Charlie played in this make-up. And the first thing we knew was that he had stolen the picture from all of us.” MOUSTACHE IN POCKET Mr. Conklin was asked where his moustache and eyeglasses were. “In my pocket,” replied the comedian, as if it were quite natural to carry one’s moustache in one’s pocket. In telling how came to adopt his disguise, Mr. Conklin said that in the days of his youth he worked for a baker named Scholz, who really had a walrus moustache, or what Mr. Conklin termed “a soup strainer.” “This so*t of moustache, being copied from life, struck me as a good thing to adopt,” said Mr. Conklin. “And it really seemed to fit my face.’’ HE DENIES HIS IDENTITY Mr. Conklin said that without his moustache hardly anybody who does not know him off the screen recognises him as the comedian, and he added that he often had a “barrel of fun” denying his identity. He said that last year he went for a holiday to Alaska, and on the steamship there was a purser who was rather proud of pointing out any well-known person. Mr. Conklin was not in a mood to meet people as a comedian, and therefore when the purser introduced a group of people to him, and stressed the idea that they were meeting a famous film comedian, Mr. Conklin raised his eyebrows and appeared rather annoyed that he should have been mistaken for the picture actor. This distressed the poor parser. And as he sat in the limousine Mr. Conklin was dressed for his role in “Rubber Heels, that of a swindling detective. He wore a ragged overcoat and a taxi driver’s badge. To be sure he would never have been thought to be one of the screen’s most opulent comedians. ONCE A CIRCUS CLOWN In the old days, before motion pictures gained headway, Mr. Conklin was a painted-faced clown with the “A 1 G. Barnes Wild Animal Show.” It was comparatively recently that he became a portrayer of definite characters, and he credits Malcolm St. Clair with having made a great change in his acting. He played a role in Erich von Stroheim’s film version of “Greed,” but in the course of editing that production the character filled by Conklin was excluded altogether. In a film entitled “A Woman of the

World” he was more successful, and since then he has been constantly in demand.

One of his most joyous impersonations was in Robert T. Kane’s production, “The Wilderness Woman.” Not only is Mr. Conklin acting now in “Rubber Heels,” but also in “Cabaret,” Gilda Gray's new picture, which is in course of production at Astoria.