Mabel's Strange Predicament
It’s 1914, and Hollywood star Mabel Normand has just
helped new boy Charlie Chaplin to develop his “Tramp”
character. She is wondering if she’s done the right thing.
I gave him everything – even the walk.
He’s too priapic for his baggy britches!
Arriving here still tarred with charred old cork,
this fraud who jawed of Avignon and Sitges
while knowing neither, has the crew in stitches.
Dexterity is not the same as grace:
he’s shaping up for all-time rags-to-riches,
the parasite who rose without a trace:
but we can see beneath the comic carapace.
He’s carrying himself now like a star.
If glibness were the same as eloquence,
I haven’t any doubt that he’d go far.
The talent, if untutored, is immense.
I wish he’d just – when not before the lens –
acknowledge what’s been done for him. That loud
theatricality I tamed. The sense
of something intímate, less harsh, less proud,
I think I gave him. But his eyes are on the crowd.
He’s trying to direct us. We’re his bitches.
That script he wrote permits him to molest
some seven women, like as if his itches
are there to be indulged. The man’s obsessed.
I nurtured him and now, at his behest,
I’m served up as his plaything. I’m incensed!
The cuckoo kicks the babies from the nest,
but still the mother feeds him. My defence?
A woman’s love survives a man’s incontinence.
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