With British author and sculptress, Clare Sheridan and her son, Dick, at the Chaplin Studios, November 1st, 1921

Clare is holding her pet parrot, General Baragan. 

Chaplin and Sheridan had met the night before at a dinner at the home of Goldwyn studio vice president, Abraham Lehr. He had just returned that day from his trip to Europe, which had been, Clare gathered, "one of the big emotions of his life."

The next day Clare and her son, Dick, were invited to the Chaplin Studio where Chaplin screened his most recent film, The Kid, for them in his studio theater:

Charlie has produced an exquisite story. It might so easily have been "soppy" and full of false sentiments--but it is not. It is simple, human and full of pathos.

Dick reacted to it in the most stirring way. When the moment came that the Kid was to be taken from Charlie and put in an orphan asylum, Dick clung round my neck and cried and sobbed. He said "I can't bear it, I can't look till the end." He got so hysterical that Charlie was quite alarmed and had to reassure him by saying that it wasn't true. "It's only a play Dick! It will all come right in the end I" Charlie too was quite affected by Dick's emotion.

Whenever we came to the pathos parts, Charlie tiptoed to the harmonium and played an accompaniment and when the lights went on Dick and I were shamefacedly mopping our eyes! (Clare Sheridan, My American Diary, 1922) 

Photos © Roy Export SAS