I first met Charles Chaplin at a dinner given by Ralph Block. My first book had been published.

Chaplin had read some of the reviews. When we parted that night he asked me to call on him and was kind enough to tell me that he liked me.

Several days later I telephoned the studio. Chaplin sent his limousine for me. He was very kind during that first private interview. I was ill at ease. We parted, I think, with a feeling of reserve on both sides. I was not natural that day. Nor was I ever quite natural in all the months that I was to be associated with the comedian. I have always regretted this fact.

Paul Bern is ever on the alert to be kind, as hundreds in Hollywood besides myself can testify. He secured me a position with Chaplin. My salary was small, but it was a fair wage, considering what little work I had to do. It was agreed upon between the comedian and myself that he was to sign certain articles which I was to write from time to time. His name had value in the magazine world. After signing two articles he refused to sign more. Feeling the inadequacy of my position, and hoping daily against hope, I remained on the job.

Konrad Bertovici, the writer of gypsy romance, once wrote an article on Charles Chaplin for Harper's Magazine. In it he did me the honor to call me Chaplin's secretary. He described my entering the room and laying a paper on the great jester's desk. No attention was paid to me.

Mr. Bertovici was sadly mistaken. My principal duty with Charles Chaplin was to receive my weekly check. I was merely one of the sad jesters in the court of the King of Laughter.

The time arrived to select a leading lady for "The Gold Rush." Dozens of screen tests were made of ambitious young ladies. I often accompanied Chaplin’s higher salaried yesmen to the projection room, where we watched the faces of these inane beauties upon the screen.

An ordinary-looking Mexican girl arrived one morning. She had played some years previously in "The Kid." Chaplin was not yet at the studio. The girl was about to depart, when lo -- the little jester met up with his destiny. A screen test was made of the girl. Several of us agreed privately that it was the worst yet made. The girl did not photograph.

Chaplin watched her features on the screen the next day. In silence we watched him.

He rose from his chair.

"That's the girl," he exclaimed. A fearful silence filled the little room.

I walked to my office and allowed the yes-men to argue the great question. Something -- perhaps a mood -- as he had, and rightly, no respect for my judgment, compelled Chaplin to join me a few minutes later. He entered the room as tragic as Hamlet, hands held behind his back, a frown on his face, as though his next decision would rattle the stars from the sky.

"What do you think of her, Jim?" he asked.

Having been hungry, and knowing that he would choose the girl he preferred anyhow, I parried with, "I don't know, Charlie. She may be all right.''

The rug on my office floor was vivid red. Chaplin began to pace up and down, up and down, hands still behind his back. His good-looking face bore the same fearful frown. Now and then I would glance at him and then let my eyes rest once more on the scarlet carpet.

Suddenly the door opened. The Mexican girl entered. She was cheaply dressed, but her eyes flashed, her teeth were even, her body was so round and supple that one soon forgot the ugly black dress which clothed it.

Chaplin smiled benignly, as gracious and charming a smile as I have ever seen.

She stood before him and asked, "Well, what is it, Charlie? Am I hired?" The comedian looked at her and then down at his spats, which, actor-like, he always wore.

I watched their expressions. The keen, fine face of the actor, mobile and finely molded, was a face that would be noticed in any gathering. The girl watched him, round-eyed, round-faced, full of life. I saw in her then everything which Chaplin did not see--a young woman who seemed to me devoid of spiritual qualities.

Chaplin answered at last, "You're engaged."
The girl leaped into the air with joy. Together they walked out of my office---to a troubled destiny for the man and a fortunate one for the girl. She afterward had the fine fortune to marry the comedian and garner for herself many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If his marriage was a farce, his divorce was tragic. As Lita Grey Chaplin she brought him as much misery as it is possible for a misunderstanding young lady to bring to genius.

Just why he remembered Miss Grey from her childhood days and insisted upon making her his leading lady might be worthy of a master of irony like Chaplin himself. He has undoubtedly been away from it long enough to smile - until he remembers the fortune it cost him. And then, if he weeps, he is but human.

It is my opinion that Chaplin does not like intelligent men as companions.

Elmer Elsworth, one of the most whimsically humorous and highly intelligent men I have known, worked wiht him for many months. Chaplin once remarked to me that Elsworth was "a real highbrow."

In London, four years later, I asked Burke if he had ever received the photograph.

" Not yet," he answered.

Chaplin has often been called "a maker of directors." During my term with him he had as his

lieutenants Charles Reisner, now a successful director; Edward Sutherland Henry, the ponderous restaurant keeper, and Harry d'Arrast. Monta Bell, the famous Paramount director, had but recentty left him to begin his brilliant career. Bell was in many respects the shrewdest and most able

opportunity and sold himself to Warner Brothers to direct "Broadway After Dark." It was an immediate success and Bell's future was assured. I tried at many different times to get Chaplin to comment on the film. He would not.

It had seeped through Hollywood that Bell had been partly responsible for "A Woman of Paris." Chaplin heard the news and made no comment.

One of the most surprising qualities about him is his kindness and tolerance toward those who have been none too kindly to him. His attitude toward life is far from gentle, however. People interest him a great deal, though he has no love for them in the mass.

In all the months I was with him he expressed no love for the beauty of nature. I called his attention to a gorgeous sunset. He looked with narrowed eyes and said no Word. He once, in a whimsical mood, spoke of the fog of London and wished that he might die in it. He told how it draped the buildings and hid their ghastly ugliness.

Once, long after I had gone, three men sat at a table with him. Being citizens of Hollywood, two of them evidently thought the shortest road to his heart was in disparaging me. Chaplin listened for some time, saying nothing. At last he said, "he can write," and the subject was changed.

His mind is ever in a furore. As restless as a storm, it is always charged with wonder. The vagaries of the human brain interest him a great deal. The Leopold-Loeb case kept him enthralled. He often expressed pity for the Chicago anarchists done to death as the outcome of the Haymarket riot.

One brave fellow in the early morning before his execution sang so that the entire prison could hear: "Maxwelton braes are bonnie,/Where early fa’s the dew –/It was there that Annie Laurie/Gae me her promise true."

Chaplin often talked of this incident. Whenever he did, his voice was soft.

When not working, which was half the time, it was his custom to telephone from his Beverly Hills mansion each day and request that certain of his employees be sent to him. If the order came late in the evening, we considered it from "the little genius," our pet name for him.

One Saturday afternoon I was called for, and upon arriving was told that I was to accompany him to dinner that night. He had suddenly grown tired of two other men and had suddenly desired my company. I saw that he was in a dark mood and, sensing tedious hours ahead, I looked about for a means of protection.

Leaving the mansion to go on an errand in Hollywood, I had the good fortune to meet Lita Grey at the studio. Knowing that if she should "accidentally" drift into the Montmartre, Where I guessed we would go for dinner, that he would probably invite her to dinner and send me home, I asked her to come to the restaurant. She agreed to make it appear accidental. The plan nearly worked.
At eight o'clock that night Chaplin took me to the Montmartre. As we walked nonchalantly toward his accustomed table, he stopped suddenly. For there sat the two men of whom he was tired.

Chaplin turned about, saying "No more privacy than a shoe clerk," and walked with me out of the restaurant. We went to another restaurant. It also was crowded.

His Japanese chauffeur followed us in the car.

Chaplin decided to do to the Ambassador Hotel.

Once there, we remained at the same table for over five hours. I was completely talked out.

At last a Spanish girl began to flirt with him. My heart beat fast. If she would only come to his table, he might excuse me. I praised the girl's beauty for an hour. She danced every now and then, while the comedian's eyes followed her. Finally, in desperation, I said, "Why don't you chat with her, Charlie? She's very lovely."

And the little genius answered, "I'm not in the mood, Jim. It's lovelier just to watch her."

He took me home early in the morning.

Lita Grey arrived at the Montmartre on time. She found the two men at the table. We had come -- and gone.

He is the greatest inarticulate ironist on earth. The petty platitudes of lesser men do not conceal from his keen eyes the great truth that life is a bitter business and that mankind does a goose step to the grave. He has the first-rate man's sense of futility.

My ingratitude to Chaplin has long been a byword in Hollywood. It has been said that I arrived here a tramp and was befriended by film people, subsequently biting the hands that fed me. This is not true. The two men who made the early days easier for me in Hollywood were Paul Bern and Rupert Hughes. Both are still close to me. My second book was dedicated to Rupert Hughes, my last to Paul Bern.

Until this moment I have never troubled to answer any man's charges. My old grandfather used to say, "Kape your head up, Jimmy. Ye've the blood of a wind-rovin' Dane." And so through all the melee of words I have always smiled, and thrown another brick. If it missed, I threw another one.

"Payple respect ye more whin they’re a little afraid," my grandfather used to say. He was a ditch-digging man of the world, doomed to canker out his life in the saloons of a miserable Ohio town. There was always in his big and turbulent and troubled old head a slight feeling of contempt for everything and everybody. He early inculcated in me that feeling, and begged me to try like the devil to compel life to make way for me. I obeyed the magnificent, mud-bespattered old brigand, and I put him in a book just as he was and sent him to the far corners of the world. If I whimpered in explaining myself now, he'd kick a board out of his coffin.

Charles Chaplin and I quarreled over a matter which the intervening years have taught me was my fault. I was entirely to blame. But growth is not given to Irish mortals in a day.

Long after we had separated, I was invited to the home of Frank Dazey, with whom I was writing a play,

When I arrived, Mrs. Dazey said to me, "Jim, I know you'll be a good fellow, as Charlie Chaplin is coming. Marion Davies telephoned and asked if she could bring him. I knew you would understand."

Always self-conscious in company, I wondered how I would act. The newspapers at the time were full of news concerning our quarrel.

Chaplin arrived soon afterward. He was charming as sin. Never in all his life had he been more considerate with me. In the presence of all the guests, he put his arm about me. A sublime actor, one can never be sure when he is in or out of a role. Cynical of most things, I still believe that he was sincere that night. If not, he was charming, which is just as well.

Later in the evening a charade was played. Charlie picked me for his side. In choosing a word, he said, "Let's pick one of four syllables." And then with pantomime and a look of deep concern, he said, "Lord, I don't know any."

The game over, many of the guests chatted in the living room. Wondering if he had changed I began to talk upon a pathological subject. Soon he drew his chair near mine and we talked for a long time. As of old his powerful mind wondered at subjects probably never to be understood

Since meeting him at the Dazey home I have seen him but once.

At the time of his greatest trouble, I met him walking in the gathering dusk down Sunset Boulevard.

His cap was pulled low over his eyes. His shoulders were drooped. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. His chin was buried on his chest.

There was no one within a block of us. My first impulse was to say, "Hello, Charlie," and put my arm about him.

I was positive that he would have welcomed me. And yet I hesitated, for some unaccountable reason.