Chaplin gathered them himself, and when the gates opened, he ushered the first shipment out of the dogcatcher’s wagon and into the courtyard. Then he put his hands to his hips, regarding his playpen. His first day in his new studio. He declared that hours upon hours of playing with dogs was crucial. He’d had the idea that his next film would star a dog. Details were sketchy, but some impetus like that—an escalator, a rink, a bakery, and, why not, a dog—was how all his films began.

He went to the pound, day after day, claiming whatever dogs appealed to him. He was looking less for playful spirit, which so many dogs had, than for a sense of focus.

“Fine,” he said to the clubfooted mistress of the pound, upon being handed a fluffy beige spaniel that licked his nose. “But can this one take direction?”

“Of course,” she said.

“And how much is he?”

“Like all the rest. Fifty cents for the license.”

“My brother negotiated a special rate, I believe.”

She limped back to the front desk to consult with her trustees and returned to tell him it was three for a dollar.

So it went, until there were seven dollars’ worth of dogs, twenty-one of them. They seemed to be of a thousand different breeds. At night, when the moon was full, it sounded like wolves throwing a cocaine bash for hyenas. The neighbors, the taste of lemonade fresh in their mouths, could never complain.

His crew, on the other hand, had raised their eyebrows after the first dozen dogs, and at fifteen, Alf Reeves, an old friend from the vaudeville days who had just begun to manage the shop, told him to knock it off, and then Chaplin told him to knock it off first. Since Reeves hadn’t been doing anything, they both burst out laughing, and then Chaplin went and got six more dogs.

All of them were mutts. Chaplin had declared that mutts took direction better than any purebred; besides, they were intrinsically funnier. A purebred Bedlington terrier might be the butt of a joke, as he worked it out, but it would never be the joker. It was like the difference between dropping ice cream on a washerwoman (not funny) and on an empress (hilarious).

He said the dogs could have the run of the studio. The card games were disrupted by Alsatian Chow Chows chasing beagle-bulldogs under the tables, and the billyclubs in the property room were found scattered on the floor, with fresh collie-sized teethmarks. One ancient sort-of poodle, whom no one had recognized as a poodle until her fur began to grow in, took to sleeping on the canvas tarps they used in the carpentry shop when it rained, and no one could bear to move her.