One hundred years ago this month (after her annual August vacation), Grace Kingsley was already getting ready for the busy fall season:
Those picture fans who love luxury along with their pictures have got something to look forward to now. When the Kinema reopens in October they won’t know the old place. It will not only be called the Criterion, but it will be all fitted up with the most luxurious lounges—lounges from which no pictures could possibly be bad to look upon.
But the best of it is that they won’t have to look at any bad pictures. Only the best are to be booked, and just by way of proving it, the initial picture will be Charlie Chaplin’s The Woman of Paris, starring Edna Purviance, which the comedian directed, and to the appearance of which all the critics and fans are eagerly looking forward.
Readers already had been told about the film; a glowing review of it was in the paper the week before in the Times’ new weekly magazine, The Pre-View. The writer (probably editor Hallett Abend) promised “now comes a photoplay which smashes the old conventions and—what is more important—gives something better in place of what has been smashed.” He gave a plot summary:
It is the story of a girl from a small town in France who misunderstands the man whom she is to marry. She goes to Paris and becomes the mistress of the richest and gayest bachelor of the capital. Then she meets her sweetheart, who has become an artist. The old love revives, and there is some shooting.
He admitted that it was “a chestnut as a story” and “cheaply melodramatic,” however both Romeo and Juliet and Treasure Island were melodramatic and they were still Art. What made A Woman of Paris great was its naturalism: “there has never been a film made that I know of which was so little ‘stagy’…if Mr. Chaplin makes ten pictures like this he will have done for screenland what Ibsen did in humanizing the stage with the cream of his plays—and this sort of revolution is what screenland must undergo.” That was a lot to promise!
Over the following weeks the Times helped build anticipation for the premiere. At the end of the month, an article had more details about the five week long theater renovation: management was installing 500 “luxurious loge chairs” to make it the most comfortable auditorium in the country, along with new projection equipment, and entirely new decoration. In late September they said the total cost was $75,000 and the decor was in a Byzantine style:
the ceiling has been transformed into a great dome of massive squares, brilliantly illuminated…Rich tapestries adorn the walls, while the stage is framed in flashing colors of the rainbow.
Surprisingly, the 1850-seat house hadn’t sold out by then, even though the guest list for opening night included nearly every star, director, and studio head in town as well as city officials like the mayor, fire chief, police chief, and judges. People were even traveling from England, Paris, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco to attend.
As usual, Kingsley didn’t get to attend the premier; her boss sent himself. (I do wonder what she thought of the movie, but she didn’t tell.) Edwin Schallert admired the film just as much as the Pre-View writer had:
The caviar of picture entertainment—that is Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris. It is the sophisticated film drama of the year. It is so full of novelty and subtlety that it will perhaps open a new epoch for the photoplay technician, and intrigue and mayhap delight the taste jaded by too much routine.
The really tremendous thing about Chaplin’s picture—for it has a tremendousness of a kind—in its simplicity and directness….Chaplin’s debut as a director of a serious drama justifies all the expectations for real seriousness.
Altogether, Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris is going to prove one of the big events of the year in a community that is as picture-wise as Los Angeles.
Schallert reported a bit about the opening night: “the usual madness that distinguishes a premiere was increased…The crowd thronged and surged around the doors of the theater on Grand Avenue, and even blocked traffic down the street.” He even thought that the militia should have been called. He also mentioned the prologue, which Chaplin himself had written and supervised:
The prologue is like no other prologue, the music, everything that spells the personality of the comedian…It really has a place as an introduction to the picture, really sets the atmosphere, and is a bit high-brow in the amount of the French language it introduces besides.
Woman opened in New York on October 1st, and the reviewers there admired it just as much (I didn’t find any bad ones). Moving Picture World titled their round-up “Critics unanimous in praise of Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris.” The L.A. Times reporter in New York, Helen Klumph, said:
Everyone hailed the picture as a masterpiece of direction—as a great advance in technique—but there were a few bewildered individuals who wondered what the story meant, if anything. It is the first picture I have ever seen that was apparently devised by an adult mind for people of intelligence. It gives motion pictures what they most need—a touch of sophistication.
However, she anticipated that there were commercial problems with the movie, quoting an upstate exhibitor who said his local women’s club would blacklist him if he showed it. Schallert had also mentioned “some of the picture is a little too subtle to have a wide popular vogue, unless I mistake its effect. A Woman of Paris is really for the intelligentsia.”
Lower than hoped for ticket sales was why Chaplin didn’t abandon comedy to be a ‘serious’ director. Woman had a respectable run in Los Angeles of seven weeks. But this was at the same time that a huge hit like The Covered Wagon was playing in its seventh month. Before the opening Chaplin gave an interview in which he said:
“My future production activities will be largely guided by the manner in which the public receives my latest picture, A Woman of Paris….Does the public want truth in motion pictures? Does the public want the stereotyped happy ending? Does the public feel willing to accept an unhappy ending?
Somehow I have faith that the public is not stereotyped, but is and always has been ready for genuine truth and realism.”
That worked out exactly as you might expect. By October 24th Kingsley was already reporting, “Charlie Chaplin is going to make another laugh picture. Whether so much seriousness as was displayed in A Woman of Parisgot on his nerves, or whatever, he has decided to put aside his idea of playing a serious role and will appear in one of his old-time joy-bringers.” He did that, and it went awfully well for him: his next movie was The Gold Rush (1925), which is now regarded as one of the best movies ever made. However, Woman still has admirers. Wes D. Gehring called it “a misunderstood masterpiece” and wrote a whole book about it.
“Chaplin Stages Show,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1923.
“Criterion to be Most Comfortable,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1923.
“Critics Unanimous in Praise of Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris.” Moving Picture World, October 20, 1923, p. 680.
“Her Art Embraces All Roles,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1923.
Helen Klumph, “Highbrows Are For It,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1923.
“Premiere of Chaplin Film,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1923.
Edwin Schallert, “Chaplin Film Notable,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1923.
Edwin Schallert, “Chaplin Opens New Epoch,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1923.
“Speak, Vox Populi!” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1923.
“Theater Ready for Woman of Paris Opening,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1923.
Grace Kingsley's Hollywood 