Chaplin and his Little Fellow

"A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure." - Charlie Chaplin

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We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin — a little fellow trying to do the best he could.

Walt Disney told the story about how the Mickey Mouse character was inspired by Chaplin's films. Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin

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I just came across this photo on Corbris. It was taken on Chaplin's 84th birthday. I find Oona fixing his hat very lovely :)

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A good review of City Lights

The below page is a good review of City Lights and summary of its context and making process. Its conclusion reads:

"More than techniques or method, the magic of Chaplin’s work occurs onscreen when his elements of comedy, sentimentalism, choreography, and music come together. As the Tramp’s every gesture equates to an involved dance, his music underscores the ballet, his movements orchestrated with far reaching humanism that transcends demographics. Perhaps because Chaplin constructed City Lights from such personal origins, any viewer, no matter their language or country or moment in time, will be taken by the film, as the story’s simplicity and the presentation’s complexity render a poignant whole, in turn proving the effectiveness of silent filmmaking—the power of images. By tapping into real, basic, and universal emotions, Chaplin’s reach goes beyond cinema’s usual confines and leaves his work as one of cinema’s purest definitions of timeless filmmaking."

http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/citylights.asp

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Chaplin clowning in front of the camera. This is an excerpt from this documentary

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Chaplin's A Burlesque on Carmen was a burlesque not only on the opera but also, and perhaps mainly, on the movie Carmen (1915) by Cecil B. DeMille. Chaplin used the set, costumes, intertitles ... very similar to DeMille's movie and some of Chaplin's gags were built by 'mocking' the other film. The photos below are some scenes in the 2 films, photos 1 and 3 belong to DeMille's and 2,4 Chaplin's.

The original version of A Burlesque on Carmen was a 2 reel short. However after Chaplin left Essanay, the company used the outtakes to extend the short to 4 reels and sold it as a feature. Chaplin was very angry with this and sued the company but he lost the case.

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A cute photo of Chaplin and a parrot (source) According to Georgia Hale, when he was in Hollywood he used to have a parrot named Pet (not the one in the picture), which would greeted him “with a warm ‘Hello Charlie’ every evening on his return home”

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Chaplin with Paulette Goddard and her mother during their journey to the orient in 1936.

Source

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Chaplin playing dog, Switzerland 1953.

Source

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Happy birthday to Douglas Fairbanks, who was probably Chaplin's closest friend in Hollywood.

Below is a recollection from Mary Pickford of their friendship:

I think that the most moving and human memory I have of Charlie is his grief over Douglas’s passing in December 1939. I had called him in Los Angeles from Chicago … never dreaming that he would come to the phone … To my great surprise Charlie answered the phone himself … We talked about an hour. Charlie reminisced warmly and volubly about the happy days the three of us had spent together. I realized then, perhaps as I had never before, how very deep the friendship of Charlie and Douglas had been.

“I’ve lost the inspiration and incentive to make pictures, Mary,” he said.

“You mustn’t say that, Charlie. Douglas would be furious with you.”

“You know how much I depended upon his enthusiasm. You remember how I always showed my pictures first to Douglas.”

“Yes, Charlie, I can still hear Douglas laughing so heartily he couldn’t look at the screen. Remember those coughing fits he’d get at that moment?”

“More than anything else I remember this, Mary: whenever I made a particular scene I would always anticipate the pleasure it would give Douglas.”

It all came back to me how Douglas used to treat Charlie like a younger brother, listening patiently and intently, hours on end, to his repetitious stories, which frankly bored me to extinction. Charlie had a way of developing his scenarios by repeating them over and over again to his most intimate friends – testing them privately on people he had faith in. Only then would he put them on film … I heard a catch in Charlie’s voice.

“Mary, I couldn’t bear to see them put that heavy stone over Douglas.”

(An excerpt from “My unpredictable partner” by Mary Pickford)

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chaplinfortheages reblogged this from a-little-tramp and added:

Yes this is Jackie Coogan, you can see the set of “The Kid” in the background.

chaplinfortheages said: Yes it is him…very cute…do you mind if I share this on my facebook page?

Thank you for the confirmation. And yes pls feel free to use it on your FB page. This is not my photo anyway ;)

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I think the kid in this picture is Jackie Coogan, but I am not sure.

Soure

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Another post to celebrate Chapin's birthday: A collection of clips from his movies against the song "Charle Chaplin" by Swiss group Peter, Sue and Marc.

This song was the band's entry at Eurovision final in Germany in 1978 and was placed 3rd (Wikipedia)

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Happy birthday to Chaplin! He was born 124 years ago today (16th April 1889)

In the photo above, he was celebrating his 77th birthday on the set of A Countess from Hongkong (source: http://kootation.com/)

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A bronze statue of Chaplin in Hollywood (source)

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"Huge lineup for the Charlie Chaplin movie City Lights in Glasgow, Scotland, 1931"

Photo and caption from Moments in Time Facebook page: link

Alexander Woollcott, a critic of New York Times, wrote about the enthusiasm for City Lights when it was released in 1931: 'In the town where I happen to live, during the week after its first showing, no one talked much of anything else. A couple of our banks had closed their doors and a few of our judges were hastily leaving town, but as men met on the street the first word between them would be "Have you seen it?" And the question needed no elaboration.' (The Essential Chaplin, Richard Schickel)

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chaplinfortheages said: Beautiful sentiment what you wrote, and I agree…I like the gif, trust me I wish I could figure out how to do them, they are a big hit o.n tumblr.

Thank you you are very kind to say that you like my terrible gif :)

By the way, if you ask me, I think the book The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies by Gerald Mast can be an interesting read. It gives some new insights (in my view) into Chaplin films (there are also parts on Keaton and Harold Lloyd). The part I wrote about Charlie feeling unnatural being an angel is from that book.

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A scene in The Kid. The Tramp dreamed that the place where he lived turned into a heaven and he got himself dress and wings like an angel. But he kept scratching his new wings. I admitted that at first I only thought this action is just another antics of the Tramp, but scholar Gerald Mast pointed out that this implies that the Tramp felt “unnatural” being an angel. This makes sense to me. The Tramp is only human, with all the bad and the good of a human being and perhaps that’s why people like him so much.

PS: sorry for the bad quality of the GIF. I am not really a tech guy.