I don’t know if Charlie Chaplin could actually play a keyboard, but here he is at the organ of the Million Dollar Theatre. Standing next to him is Sid Grauman. These days we most closely associate him with his Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. But before he opened it and its neighbor, the Egyptian, his first venture was the Million Dollar Theatre at 307 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 1917, three years before this photo was taken, and was one of the first of the truly grand movie palaces built in the US. Grauman had his offices there, and I’m sure many of Chaplin’s movies played the Million Dollar, so I’d imagine they were good pals.

Jay R. from Facebook says: “They were friends from when Chaplin was touring with Karno.”

A Facebook account called “Aircraft, Airmen & Nose Art of the 379th BG” posted this: “Chaplin could play but never learned to read or write down music. There was a story where he would get people who could transcribe what he played into sheet music. It was something he kept very secretive. He once hired a young composer, and they met in a big city apartment in an area not many would travel to. The composer was in one room and Charlie in another to hide his identity. Charlie would play as the composer went about writing down the musical notes and then later writing the parts for various instruments in an orchestra. The composer came with nothing and left with nothing because Charlie feared he might steal his work. It wasn’t until the work was finished that Mitch Miller met his boss and he wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment until he signed off on a legal document that the work was Charlie’s and he was paid to transpose it for an orchestra. Charlie was the first person to write, direct, star and compose the music for an Academy Award winning movie.”