ist jetzt mehr thelonicas Fund als meiner, aber ich fasse mal das naechste Kapitel zusammen… ich weiss ehrlich gesagt gar nicht, wo die Hoffnung herkam, dass es viel ueber Chucks Mutter Gladys Thompson zu entdecken gibt… Ok, sie war in spaeten Jahren Vizepraesidentin des West African American Club von Los Angeles… aber ansonsten hatten wir nicht viel… bis gestern, als sich nach mittlerweile jahrelangen Recherchen tatsaechlich eine Autobiografie auftat, die mit dem folgenden Satz endet:
Gladys, wonderful Gladys, still calls me “Skipper” and still scolds me if she catches me going out in damp weather without a coat.
Was tat Gladys Thompson also ohne ihre Kinder 1936 auf einem Schiff von Southhampton nach New York… wahrscheinlich arbeiten, sie hatte ja auch bei der Abreise „Maid“ als Beruf angegeben… da lag es nahe, die Listen der Passagiere durchzugehen, den Luftfahrtpionier und Wernher von Braun Uebersetzer Henry White etwa, der mit seiner Familie an Bord war, das 17 jaehrige Schriftstellerinnentalent Sonya Schulberg, die in Scott Fitzgerald Briefen kurz erwaehnt wird, und ihre Mutter (Familie, Bruder Budd gruendete spaeter nach den Riots den Watts Writers Workshop)… der Diplomat Vinton Chapin, der Juwelier Paul Lackritz, Lita Grey, die geschiedene zweite Frau von Charlie Chaplin… Gladys Name taucht hier als einer von 60 in einer offensichtlich ziemlich exklusiven Gesellschaft auf… Jetzt sind in der Regel die Namen von Haushaltshilfen nicht leicht zu ermitteln… aber Lita Grey hat tatsaechlich in ihrer ersten Autobiografie „My life with Chaplin : an intimate memoir“ von 1966 sehr ausfuehrlich ueber die Zeit in den mittleren dreissiger Jahren berichtet, in denen Gladys Thompson ihr als festangestellte Ersatzmutter, Aufpasser, beste Freundin und Zugehfrau fuer 60$ pro Woche zur Seite stand, unter anderem bei einer nicht ganz einfachen Englandtournee, bei der beide ihre Kinder in Amerika liessen (Grey versuchte sich als Saengerin)… Grey hat spaeter diese Autobiografie als weitgehend erfunden zurueckgezogen und eine zweite geschrieben – aber das duerfte wohl eher die Passagen ueber Charlie Chaplin betreffen, als die ueber Gladys Thompson…
Hier sind die relevanten Passagen aus dem Buch bis auf den letzten Satz oben. Absatz heisst, dass es von einer spaeteren Seite kommt, daher ist es in der Regel ein harter Bruch, relevante Passagen hab ich fett gemacht…
Mama took the children back to California when living out of suitcases proved too much for her. I was sorry to see them go, but I was lucky in finding Gladys Thompson, an immensely warm and understanding young Jamaican [eigentlich war es Barabados] whom I hired as a dresser and who became a surrogate mother and life-long close friend. Gladys called me “Skipper” and toured everywhere on the circuit with me, chiding me when I took one tiny drink too many but never failing to be right beside me when anything, of large consequence or small, made me falter.
Why couldn’t I stop crying for days after he left? The gin bottles were beside my bed and I drank myself into one stupor after another, despite Gladys’ worried scoldings that I was trying to kill myself. Finally she was able to get me into a tub, and the bath revived me. I had a
Aside from the vanishing $625,000, I discovered by simple arithmetic that I was occasionally paying out more than I was earning in vaudeville. I paid an average of $28 a day for hotel rooms, food and incidental expenses for Gladys and me; Gladys received $60 a week; my road manager got $250 a week; my agent got a straight ten per cent of my salary; my two pianists were paid $250 each a week. I paid the railway fares not only for Gladys and the pianists and myself, but for the pianists’ wives as well. I paid for insurance, publicity, new stage gowns, new special material, train freight for the scenery for my act; tips, medicine, taxes, everything, everything, everything.
Liquor depressed my appetite, both for food and for men. I would gobble pretzels and peanuts as though famished at impromptu get-togethers after the curtain came down, but in my hotel room or a café I would hope- fully order a meal and then, when it was delivered, get bored with the business of chewing. Gladys would shake her head and complain that a bird couldn’t live on what I ate. I would pour another drink, laugh and tease her. “What’re you afraid of, Gladys, that I’ll wind up on Skid Row? I’ve got the constitution of an ox. Anyway, if I don’t eat I don’t get fat, right?”
cigarette, and play a subtraction game called What Happened to the $625,000? I would get the irresistible urge to make a long distance call to my babies and my mother, and on reporting this urge to Gladys, would be advised against it because my words were slurring. I would say, “Okay, I’ll wait,” and then place the call immediately. Sometimes I would call and Mama would say the children were spending the weekend with their father and then ask, “Why are you drinking?’ Other times I would call and talk with each of the boys for an hour or more, de- lighting in what fine young men they were, biting my lip to keep from crying, “Come to me, children! Come and let your mother love you!” Mama would get on the line and ask me what I was doing in the East, what I was trying to prove, why I drank, why I wouldn’t come home where I belonged.
Gladys and I sailed for England early in 1936. What had finally persuaded me to make the trip was that New York had begun to oppress me. Steady drinking had led to trembling, stomach quivers and hangovers so unendurable they could be conquered only by a quick brace of bracers. Somehow I managed to place the blame for the horrid things happening to me on the city noises, the always unexpected explosions of sound. I couldn’t bear the steady ratatatatat of street drilling outside my window, and this seemed reason enough not to move from my room, where I could drink all the more, in hope that liquor would soon deaden the sound.
of a ship made me feel as though I were in a safe, warm cocoon. I drank, but only with my meals, and only champagne. I spent hours blanketed cozily in my deck chair, reading or chatting with Gladys. I ate everything put be- fore me. To my relief, I was able to sleep without any struggle or disturbing dreams.
When the ship’s captain, a suave William Powell type, sought me out and invited me to be his guest at the screening, I became suddenly panicky at the prospect of sitting in a large room, filled with strangers who knew who I was, and watching Charlie. I couldn’t even give the captain an answer. I ran to my cabin and ordered Gladys to tell him I was ill and to offer my apologies. The second she was gone I dug out the bottle of Scotch I’d sneaked under a row of underwear while packing and more or less forgotten till now. I tore off the seal and finished the last drop before I sank into sleep. When we reached Liverpool, Gladys had to shake me and shout at me before I could come fully awake.
What I couldn’t admit to anyone, even Gladys, was that the peculiar symptoms that had begun in the States were intruding now in full flower. My sense of taste was so off that I had to keep looking to see what I was eating— what I ate. My sense of color was so distorted that blue was pink, black was green. My sense of hearing, hypersensitive in New York, was even more disturbing here in London: the unexpected sound of a common pin dropping on a glass dresser top could literally make me flinch.
But the most frightening thing was what had happened to my sense of smell. Every natural odor had become strange and ominous. When I hadn’t enough to drink— or too much, which was now, oddly, the same thing—there were moments when I associated all smells with poison. They—whoever They were—were after me. ‘They were putting something in the very air I breathed to poison me. I carefully avoided confessing any of this to Gladys, for some still safe corner of sanity reminded me that the fears were unfounded, that I was anxious, that I was having brief hallucinations that could be chased away, that if I had just one more drink—well, two—all this strangeness would disappear and the world and I could get up on our toes again. I still wasn’t bothering to count the number of drinks I poured into myself, secretly fearing that if I did I would be scared silly by the amount. Not that amounts
After each midnight show Gladys would renew her nightly campaign to steer me back to the Dorchester for a warm bath and a good sleep, but Gladys didn’t understand that I needed the chance to unwind. There were always invitations to go to bottle clubs—liquor was served nowhere else in London after midnight—and I would accept them. As long as I was in the crowded, smoky company of new-found friends and admirers who liked me for myself, or at least treated me as if they did, I could handle my nerves and the intermittent hallucinations. Grueling anxieties inevitably started clutching at me the moment I returned to the suite, but heady from compliments and tired from work, I would toss off a couple of quick night- caps and go under until three or four o’clock the next afternoon.
The Café DeParee engagement closed with my rallying to some form of workable sobriety only at show time. Gladys had taken to hiding every bottle she could find from me, but I was always too clever for her; I always knew more caches than she did. We toured the provinces to good, friendly English audiences, but by now I was a trained animal act, simply going through the paces, hear- ing the applause but, like Mildred, not much caring whether or not it came.
We returned to London before embarking on the tour through Scotland, Gladys was hotly insisting that the tour be cancelled: “What do you need it for, Skipper? You’re dead tired. You’re close to a walking skeleton as it is. You’ll collapse for sure if you don’t give yourself a long rest.”
The night before Easter Sunday I went into my usual deep alcoholic stupor, but I shot up in bed a few hours later with my heart pounding so hard I was sure it was about to leap out of my chest. I ran to Gladys, crying, “Quick—the hospital! I’m dying! I’m choking to death!”
She hurried out of bed to find her clothes while I paced wildly like a caged animal, the palpitations building, every nerve end screaming. I couldn’t wait. I raced out of her room, out of the suite, and punched the elevator button in the corridor. I couldn’t wait for the elevator, either. I found the stairs and ran down one flight after the next, three and four steps at a time, tripping and picking myself up to keep running. I raced through the hotel lobby and plunged through the revolving door until I was out on the damp, cool street, noticing no one and to hell with the fact that I was wearing only a nightgown. Although it was the middle of the night a small crowd gathered, wanting to help, but I could do nothing except pace frantically and scream, “Gladys! Gladys! Oh, God, Gladys!” at the top of my lungs.
She came out, throwing a coat over me and scolding that I’d catch my death of cold. Someone summoned a taxi for us. We got in, and after Gladys ordered the driver to take us to the nearest hospital, she put her arm around me, saying soothingly, “It’ll be okay, Skipper, it’ll be okay.” The palpitations were like drum beats, and I was shaking violently. Because of Easter there were only interns on duty at the hospital. One intern grabbed my arm as I tried to hurry past him, and he and another one led me to a private room as Gladys followed, telling them everything she knew that could have brought this inexplicable attack on. I fought them as they pinned me to a white table, crying that I was choking to death, begging them to protect me because everybody was trying to poison me. The gave me some sedation, which began to take effect almost immediately. I don’t know how long I was on the table, but I was relatively calm when one of them told Gladys, “It’s emotional exhaustion. She’s been overstim-
Gladys was all for that, but I wasn’t. Feeling much better, secretly afraid of what a doctor might tell me, I got up, smiled my most winning smile and said, ““Would you nice young gentlemen kindly leave while a lady gets dressed? I’m well now. I could lick my weight in wild- cats—honestly.”
They argued, Gladys the loudest. I was persistent and I won. Gladys, clucking her protest, took me back to the hotel, where I found I was indeed ready for restful sleep. What did strange doctors know of the physical and emotional history of Lita Grey Chaplin? Sure, those palpitations had been a warning from my worn-out system; I didn’t need strange doctors to tell me that. And I would heed the warning, I promised. I would go to sleep—but in a hotel bed I was comparatively used to, not a hospital bed in which someone once might have died.
The warning impressed me for the several days it took to make the final arrangements for the Scotland tour. I drank nothing except the red medicinal liquid one of the interns had prescribed as a sedative, and my nerves behaved better than at any time since I’d left the States. Gladys was still against the trip. I kept pointing out that I had licked the hooch, that work would be the ideal tonic. She had to admit, at my prodding, that I did have some healthy color back in my cheeks.
Not very much. Wine and beer could hardly be called alcohol, so I took care of my thirst—or hunger, when I was brave enough to be explicit with myself—with wine and beer. Gladys wasn’t terribly happy, but even she had to agree that this ‘was still teetotaling compared to the way I’d been assaulting myself before.
Gladys threatened to hit me, to quit, to find a doctor and bring him. Then, the night before the Glasgow trip, I couldn’t stop vomiting. As I knelt at the toilet bowl, light-headed, dizzy, my stomach aflame, I nodded and raised my right hand. ‘““My word,” I vowed. “Next time you catch me with a drink, Mother Gladys, you have my permission to shoot me straight between the eyes.”
This crazy fantasy repeated itself over and over during the ride. “What’s going on, Skipper?’ Gladys asked. “You’re sure acting funny.”
Gladys and I were shown to a dim, damp room with one closet, two bureaus and a single bed. She unpacked while I changed to a robe, hopeful that a bath would settle me enough to allow me to open that night in some recognizably civilized condition. I carried a few of the nine or ten magazines with me to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I clapped the magazine shut, got out of the tub and into my robe and hastened back to the room. ‘Well, that was fas—’ Gladys began cheerfully, and then stopped as I stalked toward the underwear she’d laid out on the bed. “Something wrong, Skipper?”
I dressed as fast as I could, in the first clothes I could find, and stormed out of that cell of a room. The damp air outside hit me hard on the face, but I walked on as though I had some vital destination. Ah, I’ve done it, I thought. Why didn’t I go all out and call her a nigger? Who’s Gladys Thompson, anyway? The one human being who’s stuck by me and with me, who’s listened and comforted and mothered and never once said “I told you so,”
I entered the first pub I came to. It appeared to be a man’s pub, not the type that catered to a family trade, but when I ordered a double Scotch I wasn’t turned away. The drink helped, and the second double helped to narcotize me even more, but my inner bell was still working, and it refused to let me order a third. I paid up and went back to the hotel room, which was empty. So, Gladys was gone. I didn’t bother to check whether her possessions were there or not. I simply sat on the bed, and lacing the fingers of both my hands over my knees, I mourned for the good things I could have done, the good person I could have been.
Gladys came in. I was ashamed to look at her, ashamed even to speak. “You all right, Skipper?” she asked. “I ran down hunting for you. Give me the devil if you want, but you shouldn’t go traipsing around in this weather without a coat.”
When we arrived in New York Gladys helped me down the gangplank. Lou Irwin and a friend, Adrian Droeshout, were there to meet us. I kissed them both, apologized for my surely shocking appearance—I weighed less than a hundred pounds now—and told them how grateful I was for their concern. Lou explained that all the arrangements had been made for me to go right to the Neurological Institute, where I would get sympathetic and expert treatment.
They hailed a cab, and Gladys got in front with the driver. The back seat was roomy, but I felt hemmed in between Adrian and Lou, as though they had seated us this way so I couldn’t escape. As soon as we were arranged in the cab, after much slamming of doors—harsh .sounds that keyed me up even more—Adrian offered me a cigarette. I stiffened in fright and suspicion. “What did you put in it?” I demanded.
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