Tried to beat the rain today, so I saw your Shoulder Arms this afternoon at the Trio Theatre in Hollywood—I cannot tell you how good it was—everybody was thrilled, although there were not many people there. I know you were just a “wee” bit discouraged, but please forget that, as it is wonderful and very pathetic when you did not receive a package. A “bump” came to my throat as it did with everyone else around me— Just one thing I did not like especially—when the German shook your hand in the trenches and you accepted it—this might not be liked in foreign countries. Of course no one else noticed it, but I being one of your most true and sincere critics tell you this.

I am happy to know you are married now. Please give my congratulations to Mildred.

Always

Edna

Shoulder Arms was released in October 1918, during the height of the flu pandemic. Across the country, local health departments ordered people to stay in their homes. If they had emergency errands to run, they faced fifty-dollar fines should they fail to wear white cotton breathing masks. Sporting events were canceled. Tumbleweeds rolled down theater aisles.

Into this marketplace came a comedy about the European War in which, at the end, the Little Fellow woke up. Morgenstern, the First National executive who had signed Chaplin’s million-dollar contract, needed to breathe into a paper bag as he considered the disaster to come.

“Advertising Aids” went to cinemas. “You could offer a prize to the best-equipped soldier.” And “Essay contests: funniest story you know about the war.” And “Hire real soldiers to march before the theater; encourage patriotism.”

On the first day of release, in Omaha, when the Stella Theater failed to open promptly, doors were torn from their hinges in the stampede to enter the house. In Chicago, police were called to contain the audiences, who so badly manhandled them that they each needed a bottle of Omega Oil to recover. In Los Angeles, the lines were so long for the evening shows that people began to appear early, as much as an hour beforehand, and queue on the sidewalk, cotton masks in place, careful not to stand too close to their neighbors.

When Shoulder Arms played in Manhattan, the managing director of the Strand Cinema encouraged people to throw caution to the wind. He wrote to Motion Picture World, “We think it a most wonderful appreciation of Shoulder Arms that people would veritably take their lives in their hands to see it.” The letter appeared next to his obituary, for, immediately after posting it, he himself dropped dead of the flu.