_Woman of the Sea_-- More Info

In the back of Jeff Vance's new book is an excerpt from the Richard
Meryman interview with Chaplin which was not included in the selection
published in _Life_. In this excerpt Chaplin is asked directly about
the film:

RM: You gave the idea of _A Woman of the Sea_ to Josef von Sternberg,
didn't you?

CC: Yes. After _A Woman of Paris_, Edna [Purviance] wanted to make a
picture on her own, and I said fine, as I was getting to where I
wanted another character for my films. So von Sternberg used to hang
around, and I said, well, I've got an idea. If you can make a picture
with Edna it would help me out, and he said he would. I had a sketchy
idea. I'd been up to Carmel, Monterey, and Seventeen Mile Drive--very
beautiful coastline, rugged, with the waves coming up--and I started
to think of all sorts of gags. Edna was getting a little robust and
bosomy, and I thought she'd make a wonderful fisherman's wife . . . .
So Sternberg said, "Don't tell me any more, that's enough." In those
das we didn't have a script, just the story. But he came back with the
most perile, infantile story of a man from the city with a
moustache--the heavy--hanging around and peeking through fishermen's
nets, looking at Edna. And Edna played this infantile woman just
walking around. I said, that's not a fisherman's wife! I wanted to see
a woman with a squint and the ocean in her eyes. We lost about $60,000
in cost.

RM: Do you still have the film?

CC: No, I burned it. I didn't want it around. I was completely at a
loss about the whole thing, and it depressed me.

So it appears that the story was both Chaplin's and Sternberg's, and
that Sternberg's contribution, which was most of it, was not at all
what Chaplin had in mind. Chaplin wanted a comedy; Sternberg made a
melodrama. Grierson's account was correct. This is also consistent
with Rollie Totheroh's comments in the interview with Tim Lyons, in
which he recalls that Chaplin suggested adding humorous touches to
Sternberg, but Sternberg had an odd sense of what was funny (that is,
it wasn't funny).

Connie K.

Constance Kuriyama wrote:

>So von Sternberg used to hang around,
>and I said, well, I've got an idea. If you
>can make a picture with Edna it would
>help me out, and he said he would. I had
>a sketchy idea. I'd been up to Carmel,

Chaplin contributed the setting but
Sternberg wrote the story.


>Chaplin suggested adding humorous
>touches to Sternberg, but Sternberg had
>an odd sense of what was funny (that is,
>it wasn't funny).

Sternberg never did have much of a
sense of humor and the comedy scenes
in his films were weak and sappy at times.

Yet he was not just "hanging around.:

Chaplin had set him up with Mary
Pickford to do a script about a blind
girl called BACKWASH. Pickford
thought it was too strange and decided
not to do it. Then Sternberg got two
directing jobs at MGM and was
fired from both. Chaplin stepped
in with A WOMAN OF THE SEA and
delivered the coup de grace that
put Sternberg back in the ranks of
assistant directors.









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"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
__William Faulkner