ON LOCATION : A Big Picture on the Little Tramp : With $30 million to spend, Richard Attenborough has opted for the epic approach to a film on Charlie Chaplin--the poverty in London, fame in Hollywood, the troubles over girls and politics

It wasn’t so long ago that La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles was nothing but a long line of citrus groves. It was a warm, slow-moving, peaceful street, and not a lot happened there.

Then in January, 1918, a young man called Charles Chaplin--who had arrived in Los Angeles just four years earlier from a seedy part of London, and rapidly became the biggest name in silent movies--opened his own movie studio on La Brea. The street would never be the same again, and from that point onward, the entire city of Los Angeles was transformed into a mythical land, known worldwide as Hollywood.

If you embark, then, on a movie about the life of Charlie Chaplin, you’re essentially telling the story of Hollywood. If, like producer-director Richard Attenborough, you’re also British, then you’re an outsider telling Hollywood its own history. And that means you’d better get it absolutely right.

This is why Attenborough is shooting a scene in his film, “Charlie,” just outside Fillmore, a dusty little town between Magic Mountain and Santa Paula, and where the director is turning an alarming shade of pink under the sun’s hot glare as shooting slowly progresses. Citrus groves stretch into the distance as far as the eye can see; oranges, lemons, grapefruit and persimmons grow abundantly here. We are 60 miles north of La Brea, which is how far one must travel out of Los Angeles to see how it looked only three generations ago.

Fifteen years after Chaplin’s death, the first major feature film is being made about the man who immortalized the Little Tramp, and the Chaplin Studios--gray colonial clapboard cottages with awnings surrounding manicured lawns--have been lovingly re-created among these citrus groves. Their facade, which suggests a mock Tudor English mansion complete with beams, looks oddly out of place here, yet uncannily resembles the original Chaplin building on La Brea which now houses A&M; Records; for Attenborough, authenticity is of prime importance.

In the scene being shot, it is 1943. Charlie is being persuaded by his half-brother, Sydney, to settle out of court a paternity suit being pressed by an ambitious young actress. They stroll around the fastidiously kept grounds of the Chaplin Studios, which suggest the rigidly controlled aspects of Charlie’s character. They also contrast vividly with the barnyard atmosphere of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios, Chaplin’s first employer in Hollywood, which have been re-created half a mile away.

Attenborough’s choice to play Charlie is 26-year-old Robert Downey Jr., who has to date performed promisingly in a mix of interesting failures (“Less Than Zero,” “True Believer”) and a complete dud (“Air America”).

Vintage Rolls-Royces sit on flatbed trucks, waiting to be called into action. Women extras waft by in gorgeous period dresses. But the scene at Chaplin Studios must wait a few minutes; Fillmore is evidently on a flight path, and light planes continually traverse the skies directly above, adding an anachronistic noise.

Attenborough sighs, and strolls over to a visitor, clutching a poster for a 1951 British film in which he starred, called “Operation Disaster.”

“Someone gave me this today,” he says with a mock grimace. “Because of the title, I suppose. Nice of them, don’t you think?”

Royal Shakespeare Company actor Paul Rhys, playing Sydney, fluffs a line. Downey looks toward the director questioningly. “Oh, bad luck, darling. Bad luck! “ cries Attenborough. His veddy British accent and mannerisms cause wry smiles among the Americans watching, but Attenborough, who celebrates a half-century in film this year, commands a degree of loyalty and enthusiasm from working colleagues that is rare on film sets. “I think his greatest attribute is leadership,” says Downey. “Here’s this guy, more than twice my age, spry and still working at eight o’clock at night. He’s just dogged. “

He will need to be. With more than $30 million at his disposal, Attenborough has opted for a sweeping epic approach to Chaplin’s life. The film begins with Charlie’s early days in London, and the abject poverty that led to the workhouse.

It covers Chaplin’s uniquely rapid rise in Hollywood to the stardom that made him one of the world’s most famous people; his four marriages and his penchant for teen-age girls; his leftist sympathies, which attracted the suspicion and wrath of the FBI and eventually led to his being barred from America in 1952. “Charlie” ends with a bittersweet coda when he emerges from exile in 1972 to accept an honorary Oscar. And while it relates this extraordinary story, “Charlie”--befitting its central character’s comic genius--has to be funny too.

In keeping with its grand-scale ambitions, the film is being shot in London and at Chaplin’s Swiss retreat in Vevey in addition to California. Attenborough also mulled over some expensive names, Dustin Hoffman among them, to play Chaplin.

Eventually he veered away from superstars and settled on Downey, who must play Chaplin from age 19 to his death at 83. But Attenborough is content to gamble with a relative unknown in a huge role; he worked the trick to good effect before in his 1982 film “Gandhi,” which won eight Oscars, including best film, best director for Attenborough and best actor for the tyro Ben Kingsley.

“If you have a box-office name, then the persona, the baggage that that actor brings is significant,” he mused. “If you want to convince an audience they’re witnessing somebody’s life demonstrated by a particular performance, a life that people know about, then if you bring in someone with other connotations you start at a disadvantage. By finding someone like Robert or Ben, with their relative lack of familiarity on screen you bring an opportunity for suspension of disbelief. Whereas if you start off by saying--well, I’m sure Mr. Redford would dye his hair. . . .” He shrugs and smiles impishly.

Attenborough was also mindful that Charlie Chaplin became a Hollywood star at 24 or 25. “He and Mary Pickford literally took over Hollywood when they were still in their 20s. And for the bulk of this movie, Charlie is under 30,” says Attenborough. “This is a story about young people, not old buggers like me. You can’t have him played by some middle-aged star. So what do you do?”

What you do is take out insurance by surrounding Downey with seasoned pros in brief but telling roles. Kevin Kline plays the dashing Douglas Fairbanks, with whom Chaplin and Pickford formed United Artists; Dan Aykroyd is Mack Sennett; Diane Lane plays Chaplin’s third wife, the formidable Paulette Goddard.

Most intriguingly, Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie’s eldest daughter, plays her own grandmother, the disturbed Hannah; his mother’s gradual descent into madness provided a melancholy counterpoint to Charlie’s soaring career.

“Geraldine had a considerable voice in whether we could use the (Vevey) house,” recalls Attenborough. “Her approval and advocacy of the film was important. It’s not a hagiography and it’s not sycophantic--but I didn’t wish to gratuitously offend members of the family. So it was wonderful that she participated. And boy, was she professional.”

During Geraldine’s filming stint in California, Attenborough screened about 20 minutes’ worth of assembled rushes for her. “I was very anxious she would find Robert’s looks to be right,” he noted. Geraldine was amazed, and told Attenborough: “Nobody could ever convince me they were playing my father. But that was Daddy.”

Since Chaplin’s death in 1977, any number of attempts have been made to make a film of his life. “Some of the scripts we received were absolutely terrible,” confides Pamela Paumier, who handles the rights to Chaplin films, books and the Little Tramp likeness from a Geneva office. “And some of them came from very big names in the film industry.” Paumier has flown to California to observe some of the filming of “Charlie” and emphasizes that Chaplin’s widow, Oona (who died last year), wanted Attenborough to be the one to make the film: “She knew with him there wouldn’t be any exaggeration.”

As Attenborough tells it, he was ideally placed to approach the Chaplin family for permission. “I met them all on vacation in the south of France, and I became near to them in the 1970s. His daughter, Annette, worked for me as a production assistant on ‘A Bridge Too Far.’ Then I got to know his other daughter, Vicky, and her husband.”

So when his associate, Diana Hawkins, suggested he make a Chaplin film and then wrote a story outline based on his autobiography and journalist David Robinson’s “Chaplin,” Attenborough was able to sit down and write a letter that started “Dear Oona.” Pamela Paumier recalls that Oona had greatly admired “Gandhi”: “She knew the story would be safe with Dick. She knew what kind of filmmaker he was.”

Attenborough has honored his side of the bargain by investing in classy talent behind the camera. Sven Nykvist, cinematographer to Ingmar Bergman, is director of photography. British production designer Stuart Craig, who won Oscars for “Gandhi” and “Dangerous Liaisons,” will guarantee that “Charlie” has a sumptuous look. Editor Anne Coates, whose Oscar was for “Lawrence of Arabia,” will dictate its pace. Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick scoured a dozen U.S. cities for period dresses in mint condition rather than make her own.

The writers involved in “Charlie” have hardly been less distinguished. Bryan Forbes turned in a first long draft with enough material for a six-hour TV miniseries; novelist William Boyd, who may receive major credit, carved out the basic working script. Tom Stoppard gave it a once-over, and William Goldman, who among his other credits wrote the 1977 film “A Bridge Too Far” for Attenborough, gave it some final polish and edge.

It may be, then, that Attenborough will get it right. But will “Charlie” succeed at the box office when it opens next Christmas? Attenborough can’t tell; his last epic, 1987’s “Cry Freedom,” about South African activist Steve Biko, did well overseas but failed at the U.S. box office. “I thought with a folk hero like Biko the story would have romped through,” he shrugs.

In Hollywood, the prognosis for “Charlie” is unclear. Universal Pictures, who originally put up the money, backed out suddenly a year ago, just weeks before production started. The studio cited budget reasons, but Attenborough insists: “I don’t know what was at the back of it. At one point they wanted a major star, which I felt was madness and not possible--but then they were content with Robert. We didn’t see eye to eye on the screenplay--but there was no impasse.”

Conspiracy theories about Universal’s pull-out still abound on the set; one holds that the studio suddenly went cold on big-budget movies after losing a packet on Robert Redford’s pricey disaster, “Havana.” Another points to the famed memo from Disney’s Jeffrey Katzenberg urging financial restraints on film budgets.

Eventually Carolco, the folks who brought you “Terminator 2,” stepped into save “Charlie,” with help from European backers. Even so, do the 15- to 24-year-old crowds who make up the majority of moviegoers care about Chaplin? True, every other theme park seems to feature a tiresome mime dressed as the Little Tramp; but might not the core audience be a little vague about the real man’s significance? Not according to Carolco’s research; its marketing men actually found that the main anticipation for “Charlie” was among the young. “They knew the name, knew the Little Tramp, wanted to know more about his story and thought Robert Downey Jr. was a fabulous choice,” Diana Hawkins reports triumphantly.

Next day at the Park Plaza, a 1920s vintage hotel and former Elks headquarters situated opposite L.A.’s MacArthur Park, Downey is by turns incredulous and flippant about playing Chaplin. “The film’s about a lot more than Charlie,” he ponders. “It’s about what Joseph Campbell would call a hero’s journey. And at the end of the journey, Charlie’s at peace with himself.” He grins slyly. “It’s like Siddhartha. With great costumes.”

Downey has worked--and played--at the Park Plaza before. “I shot some scenes from ‘Less Than Zero’ here,” he recalls. “And there used to be this club called Power Tools that I used to come to. 1985,” he adds dryly, “was a blur in these lobbies. It was, like--hey! I love you! Get in my car! I look back on it now, and it’s so passe. When you’re in the middle of that scene, you think that’s really it. When you look back on it, it’s laughable.”

In an upstairs room draped with flags and sumptuously decorated for a victory party marking the end of World War I, 100 extras in glamorous evening wear sit at dining tables and sip ginger ale, which passes for champagne. At the top table, publisher William Randolph Hearst entertains Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford--along with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who gives the stars a lecture about “social responsibility.” Downey as Charlie responds by acting bored, making his knife and fork do a little dance on the table top. This scene marks the start of the FBI’s relentless surveillance of Chaplin, which culminated in a smear campaign branding him as a Communist, and his being refused permission to re-enter the United States.

Attenborough takes time to explain the scene in detail to the extras. “There are undercurrents beneath this atmosphere of joviality, relief and triumph,” he says patiently. “This scene will work if it’s filled by all of you. It’s you who will make this evening.” Seemingly a little dazed at his taking time to expound on their role, the extras applaud him when he is done.

“Every one of those people went away feeling better about themselves,” said an admiring Downey later. “It seemed like a little thing for Attenborough to do--but me, I went away feeling better about the whole industry.”

Sven Nykvist is another Attenborough fan. “I’ve wanted to work with him from his earliest films,” he said. “And “Charlie” was perfect, because Chaplin’s films were the first films I saw. Actually, they were the first films I was permitted to see because my father was a minister (in Sweden) and he disapproved of movies.”

The lure of Chaplin’s name has brought a clutch of enthusiasts to the set. Among them today is David Totheroh, grandson of Chaplin’s long-time cinematographer, Rollie Totheroh; he proudly shows pictures of his grandfather with the great man. Totheroh hung around the set so long that he was asked to play an extra in a sequence depicting the making of Chaplin’s classic, “The Gold Rush”; in another scene, the grateful Totheroh got to play his own grandfather’s assistant.

With him is Bonnie McCourt, a free-lance book publicist and Chaplin fanatic. “My dream is to see a Chaplin museum in Los Angeles,” McCourt says.

Not everyone feels that way about Chaplin, Pamela Paumier admits. “There will be people opposed to this film. There are people opposed to anything to do with his name,” she says. “Even now, he still arouses strong feelings.”

For his part Attenborough does not buy the notion of Chaplin as a fellow traveler. “He’s what we would call an old-fashioned liberal, I would have thought,” he said. “He certainly didn’t subscribe to the Communist Party, he never attended cell meetings, but he did campaign for Russia in World War II. Still, there were in every other democratic country great movements supporting Russia and the second front. He said of himself that he was politically naive. He did stand to the left of center, but I don’t think he took his commitments that seriously.”

The other area that brought Chaplin widespread public disapproval was his proclivity for younger women. “We don’t dodge that at all,” says Attenborough. “Yes, he did marry four times and yes, he did enjoy seducing and making love to young women, teen-age women. But I don’t think he was utterly promiscuous. In a lot of these relationships, he was absolutely faithful.” A serial monogamist, then? “If you like.”

The script takes the view, “which has ample evidence from a number of sources,” according to Attenborough, that while he was still a young man in England, Chaplin fell in love with a 16-year-old dancer named Hetty Kelly. “If things had turned out differently, he might have married her,” says Attenborough. “Instead, she remained in England, he went to America and she married. What we’re saying is that his yearning for Hetty opened up all sorts of cravings in terms of sexual satisfaction.”

If this is so, then the script also hints that Chaplin also found the answer to his cravings in his last wife, Oona O’Neill, whom he wed in 1943 when he was 54 and she was just 18. Moira Kelly, the actress who plays Oona, also plays the small role of Hetty.

“Oona transformed his life,” Attenborough recalls. “I’ve never seen such a couple. Their eyes never left each other. But what possessed Charlie, what drove him, was his work. When he philandered was the times he wasn’t working. He damaged relationship after relationship because of his obsession with work and it eroded his other marriages too.”

Back in the hotel foyer, Downey rambles on a little about visiting London with David Robinson (a consultant on “Charlie”) and dialogue coach Andrew Jack, absorbing the atmosphere and listening for Cockney accents. Then he blurts out: “I sit on the set and look at myself in a mirror, and . . . there’s a certain amount of denial. I have this impostor complex, you know? Like any minute someone’s gonna tap me on the shoulder and say”--he lapses into immaculate Cockney--”orl right Robert, we fahnd yer out, you can get off ‘ome now.” I can’t fully acknowledge I’m doing this, that Attenborough’s investing all this time, energy and money into me pulling this off. I keep looking and going, no, that’s not me.”

It is, of course. Attenborough says coolly: “He’s an extraordinary boy. He’ll be a world figure as an actor within a few weeks of the film opening.” Certainly Downey can speak like a true son of Lambeth. “Robert has a good ear,” says Andrew Jack. “In his early scenes, he talks in strong Cockney, then changes into much better speech. Then later a slight American influence came into Chaplin’s speech. It’s tough to get right.”

In part, “Charlie” is an essay on fame; Chaplin was arguably the prototype of all modern celebrities, and his career soared and dipped in classic fashion. Attenborough, a leading British actor for many years, is by no means as famous as Chaplin, but has known the dubious pleasures of celebrity for more than half his life.

“The point came when my wife and I couldn’t go shopping,” he says. “We brought crowds to a halt. And I came to hate it. I empathize with Chaplin, who had to deal with it far more, and we’ve attempted to inject that into the script. No modern figure ever compared with Chaplin--not the Beatles, not Sinatra.”

The shooting style of “Charlie” will also acknowledge history. “The early scenes are in black-and-white,” says Stuart Craig. “Even films in the ‘20s and ‘30s were mostly shades of gray. So color seeps in chronologically.” Sven Nykvist has kept all the action in early scenes tightly within the frame, using long shots just like silent movies. “We don’t use tracking shots until the story goes into the 1920s, and we don’t use zoom lenses until the story goes into World War II,” says Attenborough. “I hope without being fully conscious of it, people will feel film history is developing as they watch.”

Perhaps they’ll feel that way about Downey’s career, too; he has, after all, been handed the role of a lifetime. Chaplin, as Attenborough points out, was handsome, pricelessly funny, the greatest actor ever, according to Olivier, and the greatest dancer who wasn’t actually a dancer, according to Diaghilev. Quite a character to portray, Downey agrees with a rueful smile: “My only worry is--what do I do after this?”