Discover Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin Newsletter: Charlie Chaplin and Sadakichi Hartmann


www.discoverchaplin.com	Volume III, Number 4


	About Charlie's acting in the film, Hartmann writes: "As good as ever-a great specialist in the art of self-production. It is amazing with what ease, volatility and technical finesse he performs all this nonsense-he does it apparently without effort. Only great comedians like Wyndham, Coquelin, Haase, had that light persuasive touch. The 'macaroni eating' scene, the prize-fight and the escape from the police are exemplary as this sort of, may we say, hokum histrionism. In the cinema it cannot be accomplished without endless calculation and correction, and that probably explains the long time of making it."		Interestingly, Hartmann has been in the news again lately. The New York Sun just published an article on April 14th entitled "King of the Bohemians: Past & Present." Hartmann was born in Japan of a German father and Japanese mother in 1867 and then unceremoniously disowned "and shipped to a Philadelphia great-uncle" in 1881. Self-educated, he began writing news articles as a teenager, one of which followed a lunch with poet Walt Whitman. His first play, entitled Christ was banned and burned publicly after Hartmann was arrested for obscenity. So, in 1916, he decided to move to California and try his luck there, even landing a small role in Douglas Fairbanks's The Thief of Baghdad as the Court Magician. But Hartmann became known mostly for his poetry and criticism-of art, of photography, and even of film, for it turns out that he wrote an extensive review of Charlie's City Lights, just as Charlie himself was writing about Hartmann in "A Comedian Sees the World." Published in the March 1931 issue of The Curtain, Hartmann begins by writing "Does this effort come as a final test whether the silent cinema can compete with the Talkie? I hardly think so. The unprofessional outside is not aware of such a problem. It seems that there will always be room and patronage for the silent, when it is well done. The average bulk of the public will tire just as quickly of the Talkie, and in a few years, look around for something else."

This review only gives a slight impression of the sort of persona Hartmann projected to the world. Probably John Barrymore's characterization of Hartmann gives the most apt impression a cartoonist's portrait of Sadakichi Hartmann

of his eccentricity. Barrymore described Hartmann as "a living freak [...] sired by Mephistopheles out of Madame Butterfly." Hartmann's 1920 play The Last Thirty Days of Christ, however, offers a bit more self-generated evidence of this, with passages such as a recounting of Jesus and the disciples crossing the river Jordan:

" 'Onward,' commanded short-legged Peter, just at the moment when he made a misstep that enveloped his stalwart form to the neck. With only his nose and shining eyes and raised arms above the foam he looked so ridiculous that Mattheus could not resist the temptation of squirting water at him.
This infuriated the son of Mary so, that unmindful of getting his clothes wet he threw himself on his stomach and began with one arm and legs to beat and kick the water, producing such an uproar in the wet element that the former custom officer lost his bearing and disappeared in the churn, to rise again with his hair dripping, and spitting and blowing like the veritable embodiment of a river god" (51).

It was this work that caught Charlie's attention, although it seems certain that their paths had crossed on many other occasions. Charlie mentions Hartmann by name in "A Comedian Sees the World." In a discussion on Jesus and his various authorial interpretations with biographer Emil Ludwig in Nice, Charlie writes

" 'The one that was the most beautiful to me," I replied, "was The Last Thirty Days of Christ written by Sadakichi Hartmann. In his conception, Christ was both the mystic and philosopher, a lone figure, misunderstood even by his disciples" (Part III).


	Gerith von Ulm in the book Charlie Chaplin: King of Tragedy (1940), from information supposedly provided by Charlie's valet Toraichi Kono, describes Hartmann "as a friend to whom his own gifts of mind and heart make obeisance," an artist "whose work a hundred years from now will be handled reverently. Charlie knows of the battle against illness and poverty of this great mind embittered by his struggle against almost insurmountable odds and of his fearless battle against mediocrity in the face of these odds" (281). Von Ulm notes also that Chaplin believed Hartmann's Last Thirty Days of Christ to be one of the greatest satires ever written, but only by sheer persistence was the author able to get Charlie to buy a copy. Hartmann's books were notoriously expensive because they were all self-published. So even in the 1920s, one of them would cost anywhere from ten to twenty-five dollars (In contrast, Charlie's My Trip Abroad originally retailed for $1). Von Ulm includes verbatim one of Hartmann's many begging letters to Charlie, which provides additional evidence of his own particular brand of eccentricity: Dear Chaplin Lend me your ear! I talked with Kono this afternoon and I do not know whether he was serious or joking. At any rate I don't know whether or not you ever saw the books I left last Monday evening. Kono was inclined to make fun of the price. Of course I do not expect him to know anything about first editions. The copies in question are almost impossible to get, they belong to my own private set and I sell them only because . . . As I hoped to get rid of them this week, will you if you do not want them by chance give orders to return them by special messenger at my expense as I may have an opportunity to dispose of them on Sunday. Sincerely, Sadakichi Hartmann (282)