Einstein, his wife & Charlie Chaplin

At the premier of Chaplin's film City Lights, January 1931

From "The Day we Found the Universe"
(Image from the book titled above)

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Dinesh ^club

Charlie Chaplin. He is of an agreeable exterior. He has a neat figure, admirably proportioned; his hands and feet are well shaped and small. His features are good, the nose rather large, the mouth expressive and eyes fine. His dark hair, touched with white, is waving and abundant. His movements are singularly graceful. He is shy. His spirits are ebullient. In a company in which he feels himself at ease he will play the fool with a delightful abandon. His invention is fertile, his vivacity unfailing, and he has a pleasant gift of mimicry: without knowing word of French or Spanish he will imitate persons speaking in one or the other of these languages with a humurous accuracy which is widely diverting. He will extemporize dialogues between a couple of women in the Lambeth slums which are at once grotesque and moving. Like all humour they depend on a close observation, and their realism, with all its implications, in tragic; for they suggest too near an acquaintance with poverty and squalor. Then he will imitate the various performers in a music hall of twenty years ago or the amateurs at a Cabman's benefit in a public house on the Walworth Road. But this is mere enumeration: it omits the unbelievable charm that graces all his actions. Charlie Chaplin will keep you laughing for hours on end without effort; he has a genius for the comic. His fun is simple and sweet and spontaneous. And yet all the time you have a feeling that at the back of it all is a profound melancholy. He is a creature of moods and it does not require his facetious assertion: "Gee, I had such a fit of the blues last night I didn't hardly know what to do with myself" to warn you that his humour is lined with sadness. The does not give you the impression of a happy man. I have a notion that he suffers from a nostalgia of the slums. The celebrity he enjoys, his wealth, imprison him in a way of life in which he finds only constraint. I think he looks back to the freedom of his struggling youth, with its poverty and bitter privation, with a longing which knows it can never be satisfied. To him the streets of southern London are the scene of frolic, gaiety and extravagant adventure. They have to him a reality which is well-kept avenues, bordered with trim houses, in which live the rich, can never possess. I can imagine him going into his own house and wondering what on earth he is doing in this strange man's dwelling. I suspect the only home he can ever look upon as such is a second-floor back in the Kinnington Road. One night I walked with him in Los Angeles and presently our steps took us into the poorest quarter of the city. There were sordid tenement houses and the shabby, gaudy shops in which are sold the various goods that the poor buy from day to day. His face lit up and a buoyant tone came into his voice as he exclaimed: 'Say, this is the real life, isn't it? All the rest is just sham.' ~ Page 183

7 years ago. Edited 18 months ago.

Dinesh ^club

Albert Einstein -- In 1913, living in Prague, he is becoming increasingly remote from his wife, Mileva. He stops telling her about his research, his discoveries, his concerns. And she says nothing and puts up with it. They are getting on just as badly as Hermann Hasse and his wife in Bern and Arthur Schnitzler and his wife in Vienna, to name but two other couples. Anywy, in the evening Einstein goes to coffee houses and bars all by himself and drinks a beer. . . . On a visit to the city he had fallen in love with his recently divorced cousin Elsa. He writes her terrible things about his marriage: he had and Mileve no longer sleep in the same room, he avoids being alone with her under all circumstances, she is an ‘unfriendly, humourless creature,’ and he treats her like an employee when regrettably he is unable to fire. . . . Page 62

18 months ago. Edited 18 months ago.

Dinesh ^club

On 25 September 1913 Charlie Chaplin signs his first film contract with Keystone Studios. He received $150 a week during the shoot for his debut film, Making a living.~ Page 199 Excerpt from the Book “1913” ~ Florin Illies - author

18 months ago.

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