Chaplin while Filming
Chaplin at Keystone: The Tramp is BornBuilding on traditions forged in the commedia dell’arte which he learned in the British music halls, Charles Chaplin brought traditional theatrical forms into an emerging medium and changed both cinema and culture in the process. The birth of modern screen comedy occurred when Chaplin donned his derby hat, affixed his toothbrush moustache, and stepped into his impossibly large shoes for the first time at the Keystone Film Company. The comedies Chaplin made for Keystone chart his rapid evolution from music hall sketch comedy artiste to master film comedian and director.
It would be easy to mistake the story of how Chaplin stumbled into his first motion-picture contract as the plot of a Chaplin comedy, were it not true. Alfred Reeves, manager of the Fred Karno theatrical company touring in America, received a telegram at the Nixon Theatre in Philadelphia on May 12, 1913, which read, “IS THERE A MAN NAMED CHAFFIN IN YOUR COMPANY OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT STOP IF SO WILL HE COMMUNICATE WITH KESSEL AND BAUMANN 24 LONGACRE BUILDING BROADWAY.” (1)
Reeves, believing the telegram must be referring to Chaplin, showed it to him. When Chaplin discovered that the tenants of the Longacre Building were mostly attorneys, he imagined that his great-aunt, Elizabeth Wiggins, had died and left him an inheritance. He immediately arranged a day trip to New York City.
Chaplin was disappointed to discover that the telegram had been sent by Adam Kessel Jr. and Charles O. Baumann, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company, who wanted to sign him as a comedian with the Keystone Film Company. Keystone’s lead comedy player, Ford Sterling, was intending to leave to start his own company, and they needed a replacement. An official of the New York Motion Picture Company and Mack Sennett, who ran Keystone, had both seen Chaplin in one of his tours and recognized his potential for film comedy. Chaplin was lured to accept the Keystone offer by the large salary: $150 weekly for three months raised to $175 weekly for the rest of the year; which was more than double his Karno salary of $75 a week. In September 1913 he signed his first film contract for a period of one year with the Keystone Film Company, beginning December 13, 1913. (2)
Chaplin had considered appearing in motion pictures before he received the offer from Keystone, wanting to purchase the motion-picture rights to all of Fred Karno’s sketches and make films of them. Ironically, Chaplin actually believed that making movies would help his stage career. He had seen some Keystone films and was not particularly impressed. “I was not terribly enthusiastic about the Keystone type of comedy, but I realized their publicity value. A year at that racket and I could return to vaudeville an international star,” he had surmised. (3)
Motion-picture comedy began with a simple comic situation, in the Lumiére Brothers’ L’Arroseur arrosé (Watering the Gardener, 1895) in which a boy steps on a garden hose as a gardener waters a lawn, cutting off the water, only to step off just as the gardener peers quizzically at the nozzle and is doused with the restored flow of water. Soon the chase developed as the essential element of comedy. In Europe, Pathé Frères, the great French film company, made trick and chase films. America lagged behind Europe in the development of film comedy, and Chaplin was not the first comic star of the cinema. Foremost of the Europeans was Max Linder of France, a gifted artist who had been making films since 1905 for Pathé, and cinema’s first international comedy star. His style and technique influenced Chaplin. Linder’s character was a resourceful and gallant boulevardier who ingeniously managed to extricate himself from the many predicaments that confronted him. Other star comedians, such as Polidor and Rigadin (Charles Prince), were popular as well prior to World War I when continental Europe rather than American production dominated even American screens. Chaplin was not even the first comic film star in America. That distinction goes to the fat and genial John Bunny, who had made a successful series of comedy films from 1910 to 1915 for the Vitagraph Company. However, from its inception, Keystone consistently produced the best American comedies of early silent film.
The Keystone Film Company was presided over by Mack Sennett, frequently billed in his lifetime as “the king of comedy.” Irish Canadian-born Sennett worked as a boilermaker before failing as an actor in burlesque and musical comedy. He joined the American Biograph Company in New York City in 1908 as an actor and there learned film craft from the leading American film director, D.W. Griffith. By late 1910 Sennett was scenarist and director of many of Biograph’s comic productions. Two years later, Kessel and Baumann hired Sennett as production chief of their new comedy studio in California, the Keystone Film Company.
Keystone was based in the former Bison Studios at 1712 Alessandro Street (now Glendale Boulevard), in the Edendale district of Los Angeles, near present-day Echo Park. Relocating to the West Coast, Sennett brought his principal players from Biograph to Keystone: Mabel Normand (with whom Sennett had a long and tense intimate relationship), Fred Mace, and Ford Sterling. The original Keystone players were quickly augmented by Roscoe Arbuckle (known as “Fatty“), Chester Conklin (known as “Walrus”), Mack Swain (called “Ambrose”), and others. At the time Chaplin joined Keystone, the company was producing twelve one-reel comedies plus one two-reel comedy a month. Sennett directed the first unit while Henry “Pathé” Lehrman—a former streetcar conductor whose nickname derived from his fraudulent representation of himself to D. W. Griffith as associated with Pathé Frères—directed the second unit.
Sennett possessed an intuitive, almost uncanny understanding of film comedy. He was the creative force behind the Keystone Cops (a madcap mockery of the police force), the Sennett Bathing Beauties, and custard-pie fights in motion pictures. In Sennett’s films, frantic pacing of broad slapstick comedy took precedence over characterization and story. Although crude and obvious, these comedies also were simple and joyous affairs, brimming with ebullience and vitality. Keystone rarely deviated from certain types of comedies: those set in parks (filmed in Los Angeles’ Echo Park or Westlake Park), those staged against the background of public events (such as parades), and those filmed exclusively at the studio or in a combination of studio and location filming. A situation typically led to some sort of rally or chase, explosion, or the principal characters falling into a lake. The world of the Keystone comedies embraced the innocent mischief of the comic strips—hurling bricks, hitting rivals or police officers with mallets, kicking someone in the backside—and was populated with pretty girls, virago wives, and men with grotesque moustaches and beards.
Chaplin arrived at Keystone in early December 1913 and took a room at the Great Northern Hotel in downtown Los Angeles (he would later relocate to the Los Angeles Athletic Club). Sennett was startled to find Chaplin to be young because he had played older men on the stage. The actor was intimidated by the Keystone lot and its players:
Sennett took me aside and explained their method of working. “We have no scenario—we get an idea then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy.” This method was edifying, but personally I hated a chase. It dissipates one’s personality; little as I knew about movies, I knew that nothing transcended personality.” (4)
Chaplin’s first film was aptly titled Making a Living, in which Chaplin plays a “sharper;” he is an impoverished gentleman dressed in a top hat, frock coat, and monocle, with a drooping moustache of a typical stage villain and reminiscent of his Karno characters Archibald Binks in The Wow-Wows and the drunk in A Night in a London Club. The action of the film involves the sharper’s efforts to usurp the girlfriend and job of a news photographer (Henry Lehrman). Chaplin was accustomed to months of rehearsing and refining a comedy sketch with Karno. He quickly discovered that at Keystone, subtlety always gave way to speed. Inevitably, friction developed between Chaplin and Lehrman, who also directed Making a Living. Chaplin wanted a character-driven film with a slower pace, while Lehrman insisted on fast knockabout. He was further confused by why scenes were shot out of narrative order. He had no previous film experience and had always rehearsed and performed his theatrical work in the proper sequence. Chaplin was devastated when he saw the final product and discovered what Lehrman had edited, recalling: “Although the picture was completed in three days, I thought we contrived some very funny gags. But when I saw the finished film it broke my heart, for the cutter had butchered it beyond recognition, cutting into the middle of all my funny business.” (5)
Despite Chaplin’s low opinion of the film, Making a Living was well-received when it was released on February 2, 1914. The Moving Picture World, an important trade magazine, wrote “The clever player who takes the role of the nervy and very nifty sharper in this picture is a comedian of the first water, who acts like one of Nature’s own naturals…People out for an evening’s good time will howl.” (6)
The second film Chaplin made at Keystone, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, was the first film in which Chaplin donned the costume and character of the Tramp. (However, Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal., Chaplin’s third film, was the first Tramp film to be released.) Sennett evidently brought Chaplin into the cast of Mabel’s Strange Predicament as an afterthought, wanting him simply to enter a hotel lobby set and provide some comic business. He told Chaplin, “Put on a comedy makeup. Anything will do.” (7) Chaplin recalled in his autobiography:
I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did not like my get-up as the press reporter in Making a Living. However, on the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a derby hat. I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born. ( 8 )
Encouraged by the laughs his Tramp was receiving, Chaplin explained the character to Sennett, “You know this fellow is many-sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, and a polo-player. However, he is not above picking up cigarette-butts or robbing a baby of its candy. And, of course, if the occasion warrants it, he will kick a lady in the rear—but only in extreme anger!” (9) And thus, nearly spontaneously was born the most celebrated character in the history of motion-picture comedy.
In Mabel’s Strange Predicament, the Tramp is introduced, slightly tipsy, in the lobby of a hotel. In a typical Keystone plot, he becomes involved with a young woman (Mabel Normand) in a bedroom mixup. Later, the Tramp encounters Mabel in the corridor of the hotel dressed in her pajamas as she has managed to lock herself out of her room. The favorable reaction to Chaplin’s character by the seasoned Sennett company was a major victory for Chaplin, and Sennett allowed Chaplin’s first scene to go the entire 75 foot length (approximately one minute) without any editing, not the usual method at Keystone. Moreover, Chaplin’s Tramp character was reworked into the film’s scenario to appear in nearly all of its scenes from beginning to end.
Sennett was pleased, and so was Chaplin. He later explained, “As the clothes had imbued me with the character, I then and there decided I would keep to this costume whatever happened.” (10) Yet Chaplin was not entirely accurate. Although he used the costume for the majority of the Keystone films, he frequently deviated from it as well.
The Tramp character was influenced by tramp comedians of the British music hall as well as real-life tramps Chaplin had encountered in his childhood. A distinctive costume that fostered immediate recognition was traditionally an integral part of the success of a circus clown or music-hall comedian. The particular mixture Chaplin concocted—derby hat, toothbrush moustache, whangee (a type of bamboo) walking stick, baggy trousers, tight cutaway coat, and oversize boots (Chaplin’s actual shoe size was five; he originally wore size fourteen boots as the Tramp for a splay foot-walk)—was, when combined, his own creation.
Motion picture audiences first saw the Tramp on the screen in Chaplin’s third film for Keystone, Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. (also directed by Lehrman), which was filmed on the Sunday afternoon of the following week in which Mabel’s Strange Predicament was filmed; but Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. was edited and delivered to exhibitors first. Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal., a Keystone “event” comedy, was a split reel film (five hundred feet or less, and running approximately seven minutes) reportedly filmed in forty-five minutes to take advantage of a children’s car race at the oceanside resort of Venice, California. The plot, such as it is, is quite simple: the Tramp makes a nuisance of himself while a camera crew attempts to film the event. Although quite primitive, the film is historic not only because it represents the first appearance of the Tramp on screen, but also because it manages to record the first audience’s reaction to the character. The audience, of course, is the throng of spectators at the race who begin to notice this peculiar fellow causing trouble with a “camera crew.” At first the audience does not know what to make of the Tramp, then they begin to smile, then titter, and then laugh at his antics. In those brief moments of discovery, recorded for posterity, a comedic revolution was born. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author Walter Kerr observed:
He is elbowing his way into immortality, both as a “character” in the film and as a professional comedian to be remembered. And he is doing it by calling attention to the camera as camera. He would do this throughout his career, using the instrument as a means of establishing a direct and openly acknowledged relationship between himself and his audience. In fact, he is, with this film, establishing himself as one among the audience, one among those who are astonished by this new mechanical marvel, one among those who would like to be photographed by it, and—he would make the most of the implication later—one among those who are invariably chased away. He looked at the camera and went through it, joining the rest of us. The seeds of his subsequent hold on the public, the mysterious and almost inexplicable bond between this performer and everyman, were there. (11)
The genius of the Tramp character is that he is so human and familiar—he is one of us. It is remarkable that when directed by Sennett to find something funny to wear, Chaplin invented spontaneously that day in 1914 a symbol of all downtrodden and resilient humanity.
Chaplin took every opportunity he could to learn the business of making films and in his first efforts went beyond what was expected of him. He believed he could be creating the scenarios and directing his films better than Keystone directors Lehrman, George Nichols, and even Sennett. When he was assigned to take direction from Mabel Normand for the two-reel comedy Mabel at the Wheel, and Normand would not take his suggestions for his character’s comedy business, Chaplin confronted her and refused to work on the film for the rest of the day in protest.
According to Chaplin, Sennett at that point was on the brink of discharging him, but a telegram from the front office arrived clamoring for more Chaplin pictures. Sennett mollified Chaplin and Normand, and they completed Mabel at the Wheel amicably. Chaplin then asked to direct his own films, volunteering to deposit $1,500—his entire savings—as a guarantee if it could not be released. Sennett agreed and promised Chaplin a $25 bonus for each picture he made as a director. From his first films as director, Twenty Minutes of Love and Caught in the Rain, to the end of his year at Keystone, Chaplin directed many of the films in which he appeared, the notable exception being Tillie’s Punctured Romance. (12)
Chaplin’s Keystone films greatly differed from the gentle, sophisticated comedy that would be the hallmark of his later work. Yet, Chaplin injected into the Keystone comedies an acute understanding of character and movement that he had refined during his years in the British music halls, and a style of comedy that was polished yet appeared spontaneous at the same time.
Within weeks of the Tramp’s first appearance, the public had embraced him. Orders for the Chaplin Keystone films grew tremendously. It would only take a few months for Chaplin to be recognized as the most popular comedian in motion pictures, although his great fame and global stardom would not flower until after he signed with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in early 1915.
Once Chaplin had control over his own films, he began to enjoy his work at Keystone: “It was this charming alfresco spirit that was a delight—a challenge to one’s creativeness. It was so free and easy—no literature, no writers, we just had a notion around which we built gags, then made up the story as we went along” (13) he recalled in his autobiography. Most of the films were made in a week. A park, a hotel, a café, a dentist’s office, a bakery, a racetrack, backstage of a theater, or even a motion picture studio were the simple backdrops against which Chaplin’s inspired comedies unfolded.
Chaplin reprised his famed, fall-down drunk from his Karno days on several occasions at Keystone (Mabel’s Strange Predicament, Tango Tangles, His Favorite Pastime, Mabel’s Married Life, The Rounders). Chaplin’s years with Karno also prepared him well for the considerable athletic prowess required to perform the pratfalls and physical clowning of the Keystone comedian.
In the Keystone films, Chaplin imbues the Tramp with some of his famous traits: the waddling shuffle, the way he rounds a corner (making a sharp turn and skidding, holding one foot straight out and balancing on the other foot while holding his hat), his iconoclastic nose-thumbing (known as “cock a snoot”) at propriety and authority, and his twitching moustache. He can be seen drop-kicking a cigarette over his shoulder or laughing at the camera, behavior that would appear in subsequent films. The Tramp’s reactions to a situation were often more interesting than the situations themselves.
The New Janitor, a one-reel comedy, is the first appearance of pathos in a Chaplin film. Chaplin later recalled:
I can trace the first prompting of a desire to add another dimension to my films besides that of comedy. I was playing in a picture called The New Janitor, in a scene in which the manager of the office fires me. In pleading with him to take pity on me and let me retain my job, I started to pantomime appealingly that I had a large family of little children. Although I was enacting mock sentiment, Dorothy Davenport, an old actress, was on the sidelines watching the scene, and during rehearsal I looked up and to my surprise found her in tears. ‘I know it’s supposed to be funny,’ she said, ‘but you just make me weep.’ She confirmed something I already felt: I had the ability to evoke tears as well as laughter. (14)
Dough and Dynamite, a two-reel comedy directed by Chaplin, is one of the most successful Keystone films. Charlie and Chester Conklin are waiters at a bakery/café who are forced by their ill-tempered employer to man the ovens when the bakers go on strike. The film is filled with wonderful comedy touches, such as Charlie balancing a tray of bread loaves on his head and making doughnuts by flinging dough around his wrists like bracelets. In both characterization and structure, Dough and Dynamite is much finer than other comedy films of the time. According to Chaplin, the film took nine days to film at a cost of $1,800; because he went over his prescribed budget of $1,000, Sennett withheld his $25 directing bonus. Yet, the film grossed more than $135,000 in its first year. (15)
Tillie’s Punctured Romance is Hollywood’s first feature-length slapstick comedy. It was designed to star the famous stage comedienne Marie Dressler and was based on Tillie’s Nightmare, the 1910 Broadway hit that gave new impetus to her already impressive and lengthy career. Despite Chaplin having only a supporting role in the production, Tillie’s Punctured Romance benefited him more than anyone else when the film was released; nearly every motion-picture producer pursued him, wanting to sign him to a contract.
Directed by Mack Sennett and filmed in approximately forty-five days, Tillie’s Punctured Romance was tremendously popular when released, and Chaplin was singled out for his considerable work in making the film a hit. Chaplin, however, did not think much of the film. In his autobiography he dismissed it: “It was pleasant working with Marie, but I did not think the picture had much merit.” (16)
Chaplin’s personal life during his time at Keystone was almost nonexistent; he worked long hours, six days a week. Keystone player Peggy Pearce was apparently his first known love in Los Angeles. He met her, he remembered, in the third week at the studio and described her as his “first heart-throb.” However, Chaplin recalled, “At that time I had no desire to marry anyone. Freedom was too much an adventure. No woman could measure up to that vague image I had in my mind.” (17)
Chaplin’s last Keystone releases as actor/director were the sophisticated two-reeler His Prehistoric Past and the simple one-reel park film Getting Acquainted; both proved to be a strain on his concentration with so many business propositions required his attention. “I suppose that was the most exciting period of my career, for I was on the threshold of something wonderful,” (18) Chaplin later wrote. When Keystone sought to renew Chaplin’s contract, he announced to Sennett that he wanted $1,000 a week. Sennett responded that that was more than he earned himself, to which Chaplin replied, “I know it, but the public doesn’t line up outside the box-office when your name appears sic as they do for mine.” (19). The producer was unwilling to meet his demands. Sennett’s “fun factory” was indeed a factory, and Chaplin’s films only a part of its product. Sennett was willing to lose one key comedian after another, always hoping to replace them with someone good who would not disturb the economic equilibrium of the production line.
Chaplin refined Keystone slapstick and film comedy in general by slowing down the frantic pace of the films, giving them a rudimentary structure, and establishing a strong character, which he accomplished by drawing on his knowledge of stagecraft and pantomime. At Keystone he developed film technique and comic pacing for motion pictures that he would employ in some form or fashion for the rest of his career.
Although Chaplin’s relationship with the leader of the Keystone “fun factory” was often rocky, Sennett was a man of great enthusiasm if the work was good (a trait he shared with Fred Karno), and he afforded Chaplin the validation he needed. Ultimately, when Sennett gave Chaplin control over his own films, the men worked well together. Chaplin also admired Sennett’s belief in his own taste, a quality he instilled in the actor that helped to stimulate his creative imagination.
Chaplin’s tenure at Keystone is important because it marks the birth of the Tramp. More than just a great character, the Tramp embodies the heroic age of cinema. To many, he was film. As Lewis Jacobs wrote in 1939, “To think of Charlie Chaplin is to think of the movies.” (20)
An extraordinary aspect of Chaplin’s popularity is that he quickly became the most popular comedian in America and soon after throughout the world. It is staggering to consider that not only was there no radio, television, or internet to publicize or advertise the Tramp, but also the Keystone Film Company never credited its players by name on the films themselves or on its posters during Chaplin‘s tenure. To draw a crowd, many exhibitors merely cut out a cardboard figure of the Tramp and placed it outside the cinema with the phrase “I am here to-day.” (21)
Chaplin said, “All I need to make comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” (22) He was confident in his own ideas. However, despite the advances in film comedy he made at Keystone, his Tramp character was far from fully formed. It would take several years for Chaplin to develop the emotional range that would mark his mature art. Yet this art began at Keystone. As Mack Sennett remembered, “it was a long time before he abandoned cruelty, venality, treachery, larceny, and lechery as the main characteristics of the tramp. Chaplin shrank his tramp in gradually diminishing sizes and made him pathetic—and loveable.” (23)
After completing over thirty-five films for Keystone of various lengths—split reels, one-reelers, and two-reelers, plus the feature film Tillie’s Punctured Romance—Chaplin emerged triumphant from his first experience in motion pictures. Without knowing his name, audiences embraced him as the most popular character in film comedy. Not a bad beginning for a young vaudevillian who thought he was summoned to a lawyer’s office to receive an old aunt’s inheritance.
Notes
Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (London, 1964), 145.
Chaplin’s contract with the Keystone Film Company, signed September 25, 1913, survives in the Chaplin Archives.
Chaplin, My Autobiography, 146.
Ibid., 151.
Ibid., 153.
“Comments on the Films: Making a Living,” Moving Picture World 19, no. 6 (February 7, 1914): 678.
Chaplin, My Autobiography, 154.
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 155.
Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (New York, 1975), 22.
The New York Motion Picture Company cut negative record and the Keystone Film Company releases list credit Joseph Maddern with the direction of Twenty Minutes of Love. However, in August 1914 Chaplin sent his elder half brother Sydney a list of twenty films in which he had appeared indicating six of them as “my own.” The earliest of the six was Twenty Minutes of Love, suggesting it as his directorial debut. Chaplin’s 1924 article “Does the Public Know What it Wants?” gives further confirmation that Chaplin considered Twenty Minutes of Love as his directorial debut. (Chaplin, “Does the Public Know What it Wants?” Adelphi 1, no. 8 (Jan. 1924): 702.) However, Chaplin wrote in his autobiography that Caught in the Rain was the first film he directed. Historians may never know with absolute certainty which film was Chaplin’s first as a director. Chaplin’s contribution to Twenty Minutes of Love may have been confined to story or comic business. Maddern may have provided supervision to Chaplin’s apprentice effort. It is suggestive that Chaplin remembered in his autobiography that the popular tune “Too Much Mustard” gave him the image for Twenty Minutes of Love and to which he choreographed situations.
Chaplin, My Autobiography, 164.
Ibid., 165.
Ibid., 167. Surviving documentation suggests production of the film occurred circa August 29-September 11, 1914. For a detailed discussion of this film, see Rob King, The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (Berkeley, CA, 2009), 91-96. Harry M. Geduld’s Chapliniana Volume I: The Keystone Films (Bloomington, IN, 1987) remains the most comprehensive evaluation of all Chaplin’s work at Keystone.
Ibid., 168.
Ibid., 167.
Ibid., 163.
Ibid., 169.
Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York, 1939), 226.
Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (New York, 1924), 41.
Chaplin, My Autobiography, 169.
Mack Sennett (as told to Cameron Shipp), King of Comedy (Garden City, NY, 1954), 180.
The Chaplin Keystone Comedies: Notes on the Individual Films In addition to release dates (premiere date in the case of Tillie’s Punctured Romance), the dates the cut camera negatives of individual films were completed and dispatched to Keystone’s parent organization, the New York Motion Picture Company, for the striking of positive prints (for distribution through the Mutual Film Corporation with the exception of Tillie’s Punctured Romance as noted below), are listed to document when the films were made versus when they were released to the public.
Making a Living
Finished and shipped: January 14, 1914
Released: February 2, 1914
Scenario: Reed Heustis. Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Henry Lehrman
Length: One reel
In his first comedy, made from January 5-9, 1914, Chaplin has not adopted his famous character or costume. His character is a dubious dandy who aspires to be a newspaper reporter; he sports a top hat, frock coat, monocle, and drooping moustache. (He later adopted a variation of this costume for Professor Bosco—a flea-circus proprietor—in his abandoned First National comedy The Professor). The character and costume also harkens back to Chaplin’s time with Fred Karno. Indeed, he infused the part with bits of business he had learned from Karno. Nevertheless, director Henry Lehrman (who plays the rival), cut Chaplin’s best comedy bits. “Henry Lehrman confessed years later that he had deliberately done it,” Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, “because, as he put it, he thought I knew too much.”
Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal.
Finished and shipped: January 17, 1914
Released: February 7, 1914
Scenario: Reed Heustis. Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Henry Lehrman
Length: Split reel
Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. is enormously important as the comedy in which audiences first saw Chaplin’s Tramp character. It is also invaluable as it affords an opportunity to examine the reactions of Chaplin’s first audience—the spectators at the car race—to the comic antics of the Tramp. Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. was filmed at the second annual “Pushmobile Parade,” a children’s car race, held on Sunday January 11, 1914 in Venice, California. The improvised film (allegedly filmed in a mere forty-five minutes) has as its comic situation the Tramp managing to get in the way of the motion picture cameraman who is attempting to film the event. At first the spectators do not know what to make of the funny little man. Is he really a nuisance? As the action continues, their puzzlement changes to genuine amusement. Unlike other screen comedians, Chaplin immediately positions himself as one with his audience.
A split-reel film (running 500 feet or less), Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. was originally released with the educational film Olives and their Oil.
Mabel’s Strange Predicament
Finished and shipped: January 20, 1914
Released: February 9, 1914
Scenario: Reed Heustis. Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mabel Normand
Length: One reel
This is the first film in which Chaplin wore the Tramp costume (Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. was photographed after Chaplin had filmed his first scene in Mabel’s Strange Predicament and—because of its split-reel length—was finished and shipped for distribution before Mabel’s Strange Predicament). This assertion is confirmed not only by Chaplin’s memories, but also by the recollections of Hans Koenekamp (the film’s cinematographer) and Chester Conklin (who plays the husband). Chaplin’s character is described as “a drunken masher.” In his very first scene, Chaplin was savvy enough to create so much comic material that it would be difficult to cut in editing. (Sennett had been reluctant to let most shots run more than ten feet. Chaplin’s opening shot ran approximately 75 feet.) Chaplin asked Sennett, “If it’s funny, does it really matter?” Sennett agreed with Chaplin. Mabel’s Strange Predicament was not only Chaplin’s first film as the Tramp, but also his first effort to create his own type of film comedy.
Mabel’s Strange Predicament is the first of several Keystone comedies in which Chaplin reprises in some form the comic drunk he had perfected for Fred Karno. Mack Sennett was surprised by Chaplin’s youth upon their first meeting as he expected him to be much older. This prompted Chaplin to adopt the disguising moustache. It is worth noting that Chaplin also chose to apply age makeup—accentuating his nasal-labial fold lines—in an effort to appear older. It would not be repeated beyond this one film. The film’s hotel mixup situation—with Mabel Normand locked out of her room dressed only in pajamas—was engagingly provocative for the time and anticipates similar situations Chaplin constructed for Caught in the Rain and A Night Out (1915).
A Thief Catcher
Finished and shipped: January 29, 1914
Released: February 19, 1914
Scenario: Unknown. Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Ford Sterling
Length: One reel
The Thief Catcher is a Ford Sterling comedy that features Chaplin in a brief appearance as a Keystone Cop. Production on this comedy took place from January 15-26, 1914; Chaplin’s scene was filmed after the completion of Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. and Mabel’s Strange Predicament, but before Between Showers.
In 1915, with Chaplin’s great fame at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, The Thief Catcher was reissued and billed by several cinemas as a Chaplin comedy. For reasons that remain unclear, A Thief Catcher was deemed an erroneous entry in Chaplin’s filmography by H.D. Waley, Technical Director of the British Film Institute, who published his pioneering research in 1938. The American film historian, Theodore Huff, subsequently created his important Chaplin filmography based on Waley’s work. Huff’s Charlie Chaplin, published in 1951, was the standard biographical work on Chaplin for decades. Subsequent Chaplin filmographers have followed Huff in many respects, despite the knowledge that Chaplin himself recalled over fifty years after he had left Keystone that he had once appeared as a Keystone Cop early in his tenure with the company.
Incredibly, an incomplete 16mm print of the film was acquired by film collector Paul E. Gierucki who correctly identified the comedy as a Chaplin Keystone appearance. Gierucki announced his discovery in June 2010. A Thief Catcher fascinates as Chaplin’s policeman anticipates his early masterwork Easy Street (1917).
Chaplin made several unbilled appearances over the course of his long career. His role as the referee in The Knockout is merely a small comic turn in a Roscoe Arbuckle two-reel comedy. After leaving Keystone, Chaplin appeared as the Tramp in the G.M.. Anderson one-reeler His Regeneration (1915) as well as appearances as himself in Rupert Hughes’s Souls for Sale (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), and King Vidor’s Show People (1928). Chaplin’s most famous unbilled appearance is as a porter in his own dramatic film A Woman of Paris (1923), featuring Edna Purviance.
Between Showers
Finished and shipped: February 7, 1914 Released: February 28, 1914 Scenario: Unknown. Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Henry Lehrman Length: One reel
Between Showers was inspired by a series of torrential rainstorms that soaked Los Angeles. (The large roadside puddle used in the comedy suggests the severity of these rains). As much a Chaplin comedy as a vehicle for Ford Sterling, the comic situation for this violent, improvised film involves a display of gallantry toward a young woman (Emma Clifton) and the ownership of an umbrella. The policeman (Chester Conklin), from whom the umbrella was originally stolen, reclaims his prized item at the film’s conclusion. This was the last Chaplin film directed by Henry Lehrman, with whom Chaplin had a contentious relationship. Already in evidence are several of the Tramp’s distinctive characteristics: the way he rounds a corner (making a sharp turn and skidding, holding one foot out and balancing on the other foot), his iconoclastic nose-thumbing, the shrug of the shoulders, and covering his mouth with his hand when he laughs.
A Film Johnnie
Finished and shipped: February 11, 1914 Released: March 2, 1914 Scenario: Craig Hutchinson Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: George Nichols Length: One reel
The Tramp visits a nickelodeon and falls in love with the pretty “Keystone Girl” (Virginia Kirtley) he sees on the screen. Physically ejected from the nickelodeon for his unruly behavior, he makes his way to the Keystone studios and causes chaos among the many productions. A local fire causes the Keystone crew to take their cameras on location to film the dramatic event. The Tramp follows along and manages to spoil that film as well. The Tramp’s burning desire to be among the movie crowd is finally extinguished at the film’s conclusion when he is doused with water from the fire brigade’s hose.
Chaplin did not believe the film’s director, George “Pop” Nichols, an improvement over Henry Lehrman. Chaplin remembered Nichols in his autobiography as having “but one gag, which was to take the comedian by the neck and bounce him from one scene to another. I tried to suggest subtler business, but he too would not listen. ‘We have no time, no time!’ he would cry. All he wanted was an imitation of Ford Sterling.” Nevertheless, among the film’s precious moments are Chaplin’s improvisations with a revolver. The Tramp’s use of the gun as a toothpick as well as lighting a cigarette from a pistol shot are the beginnings of his use of comic transposition.
The title of the film is a variation of the term “a stage-door Johnny” (a young man who frequents stage doors seeking the company of actresses or chorus girls). The film shares similarities to The Masquerader, His New Job (1915), and Behind the Screen (1916) in the fascinating glimpses they provide of the atmosphere of early Hollywood film studios. Several Keystone personnel (including Henry Lehrman, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Ford Sterling) appear in A Film Johnnie as themselves.
Tango Tangles
Finished and shipped: February 17, 1914
Released: March 9, 1914
Scenario: Mack Sennett Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: One reel
Mack Sennett arranged for his most important comedians—Chaplin, Ford Sterling, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Chester Conklin—to improvise a comedy filmed partly on location at the Venice Dance Hall on Abbott Kinney Pier. The film conveys America’s tango dance craze during the early 1910s. Sterling plays the bandleader, Arbuckle a musician, and Chaplin a drunken patron who all compete for the attention of the hat-check girl (Minta Durfee). Tango Tangles—along with the opening scenes of The Masquerader—provides a precious glimpse of the handsome Chaplin as he looked without comedy makeup and clothes as himself off-screen. Further, Chaplin’s comic bout with Sterling (in his last film with Chaplin) suggests some of the choreography and comic business Chaplin performed as the Inebriate in the Karno sketch Mumming Birds in his encounter with “Marconi Ali,” the Terrible Turk and anticipates the many comic duels in future films such as the bouts Chaplin performs with John Rand in The Pawnshop (1916).
His Favorite Pastime
Finished and shipped: February 19, 1914
Released: March 16, 1914
Scenario: Craig Hutchinson Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: George Nichols
Length: One reel
Charlie’s favorite pastime is drinking at the local tavern. The drunken tramp follows an attractive young lady (Peggy Pearce) to her home where her outraged husband (with whom Charlie has had an altercation earlier at the bar) roughs him up before tossing him out on the street.
Chaplin recalled in his autobiography that Peggy Pearce, who plays the object of the Tramp’s affections in this comedy, was his first serious relationship in Hollywood. It is the only film in which they appear together.
Chaplin used African-American stereotypes/humor less than any of the other great star comedians—Roscoe Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon—of the entire silent-film era. Chaplin once said of African-Americans, “I never laugh at their humor. They have suffered too much to be funny to me.” Although one may see an occasional Caucasian in “blackface” in the background of an early Chaplin comedy, it was the custom of the time; there were few African-Americans actors working in Hollywood in 1914. His Favorite Pastime contains the most extensive examples of blackface and humor at the expense of African-Americans in Chaplin’s work at Keystone.
Cruel, Cruel Love
Finished and shipped: March 5, 1914
Released: March 26, 1914
Scenario: Craig Hutchinson Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: George Nichols
Length: One reel
Chaplin, dressed in a top hat and frock coat (similar to his costume in Making a Living) and sporting a large moustache, plays a gentleman of means in this unusual comedy. The gentleman is a happy and attentive lover until his fiancée (Minta Durfee) ends their engagement after she believes she has caught him in a compromising situation with her maid. A despondent Charlie swallows what he believes to be poison. His butler, however, laughs at his lovelorn employer’s agonies as he knows the glass contains only water. Charlie envisions his future of hell tortured by pitchfork-wielding devils and surrounded by fire. When a letter arrives from his fiancée asking his forgiveness and reconciliation, panic replaces his agony as he calls his physicians to save him. A parody D.W. Griffith race to the rescue follows as the film cuts to the two doctors as well as his fiancée rushing to his aid. When the gentleman discovers he has not ingested poison, chaos ensues as Charlie goes on a violent tirade against his butler and the doctors before the reconciled couple embrace at the film’s conclusion.
The sequence in which Chaplin swallows a glass of water believing it is poison and later drinks a glass of milk as an antidote to the poison anticipates a similar sequence in Monsieur Verdoux (1947).
The Star Boarder
Finished and shipped: March 19, 1914
Released: April 4, 1914
Scenario: Craig Hutchinson Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: George Nichols
Length: One reel
Charlie, as the favorite of the landlady (Minta Durfee), enjoys more of her attention than her husband (Edgar Kennedy) and small son (Gordon Griffith). The mischievous boy secretly records various compromising situations with his box camera and creates chaos when he displays them in a magic lantern show to the assembled residents of the boarding house.
The brief, eccentric tennis match between Charlie and his landlady is notable as it records Chaplin’s awareness of the game that would become an off-screen passion beginning in the early 1920s and continuing until a broken ankle and the first of a series of small strokes in 1966 forced him to retire from the sport.
Mabel at the Wheel Finished and shipped: March 31, 1914 Released: April 18, 1914 Scenario: Mabel Normand/Mack Sennett Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mabel Normand/Mack Sennett Length: Two reels
Chaplin—costumed in top hat, frock coat, and sporting a goatee—was impersonating the “Dutch” (immigrant German) screen character of Ford Sterling, the former Keystone comedian whom Chaplin was hired to replace. The comedy, the first two-reeler in which he appeared, incorporates footage taken at the Vanderbilt Cup road race in Santa Monica on February 26, 1914. The production was an unhappy one for Chaplin. He was in disagreement with director Mabel Normand—who lacked the approach to comedy he had learned with Karno—and disliked the idea of imitating Sterling. The happy outcome of the experience was the promise Chaplin received from Sennett to allow him to direct future films.
Twenty Minutes of Love
Finished and shipped: March 28, 1914
Released: April 20, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Joseph Maddern/Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
Chaplin’s first tentative effort at both story and direction (whether partial or complete direction is subject to speculation) is a simple park comedy. Chaplin recalled in his autobiography that he made the film in a single afternoon. The Tramp’s first scene is memorable: upon seeing a couple kissing on a park bench, Charlie parodies their ardor by embracing a tree. On another park bench, a woman demands a present as proof of her fiancé’s love. The man (Chester Conklin) steals a watch as his gift. Charlie manages to procure the watch from the pickpocket and presents it to the woman himself. Their flirtation and the ownership of the watch creates pandemonium in the park with everyone but Charlie and the girl ending up in Westlake Park lake.
Chaplin recalled in his autobiography how simple little tunes gave him the image for his comedies. For Twenty Minutes of Love “full of cough stuff and nonsense in parks, with policemen and nursemaids, I weaved in and out of situations to the tune of ‘Too Much Mustard,’ a popular two-step sic in 1914.” Chaplin may be referring to story or gags. Chaplin’s claim to both story and direction is supported by the fact that he returned to the same premise the following year with In the Park (1915).
Caught in a Cabaret
Finished and shipped: April 11, 1914
Released: April 27, 1914
Scenario: Mabel Normand/Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mabel Normand
Length: Two reels
Charlie, a café/dancehall waiter, impersonates a foreign dignitary at a garden party in amorous pursuit of a society debutante (Mabel Normand). His true identity is revealed when the society girl and a party of her friends go on a “slumming” expedition at the café where Charlie waits tables. Exposed and spurned, Charlie’s chaotic comeuppance concludes the comedy.
The scenario of this two-reel comedy, and perhaps some of the direction, was shared by Chaplin with Normand. This is one of the few Chaplin comedies that contains pie throwing; a favorite Keystone device. Chaplin would explore in greater depth the comedy’s thematic ideas—particularly class differences and the lowly person aspiring to a higher life—in many of his subsequent films. Situations and themes from this film would be reworked for The Count (1916), The Rink (1916), The Idle Class (1921), and Modern Times (1936) and Chaplin’s use of a canine companion resurfaces in The Champion (1915) and A Dog’s Life (1918).
Caught in the Rain
Finished and shipped: April 18, 1914
Released: May 4, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
Charlie flirts with a married lady (Alice Davenport) in a park, only to be warned off by Ambrose (Mack Swain) her outraged husband. Returning to his hotel after a stop at the local saloon, the drunken Charlie is rebuffed in his pursuit of another attractive young woman. Charlie’s room is opposite that of Ambrose and his wife. The sleepwalking wife enters Charlie’s room. Alarmed rather than delighted, Charlie leads her back to her own room and attempts to return to his own bed without Ambrose’s knowledge. At one point, Charlie seeks refuge on a balcony—only to be “caught in the rain”—and is mistaken by some cops as a burglar.
Caught in the Rain is an important work in Chaplin’s career as it is his first film in which scenario and direction were exclusively his own. Chaplin remembered in his autobiography:
When I started directing my first picture, I was not as confident as I thought I would be; in fact, I had a slight attack of panic. But after Sennett saw the first day’s work I was reassured…Caught in the Rain…was not a world-beater, but it was funny and quite a success.
The film draws upon past successes; Caught in the Rain is not an ambitious effort. The comedy begins in a park (a throwback to Twenty Minutes of Love) quickly moves to a bar (the excuse for Chaplin’s sure-fire drunkard), and finishes with a hotel lobby and room mixup (in the manner of Mabel’s Strange Predicament). Chaplin ends the film with the Keystone Cops for good measure. Chaplin revisited similar situations in A Night Out (1915).
A Busy Day
Finished and shipped: April 18, 1914
Released: May 7, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: Split reel
Chaplin obstructs a camera crew as he did in Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. but this time he is dressed as a shrewish woman whom neither her husband (Mack Swain), the film director (Mack Sennett), nor the local cop can control. A Busy Day was filmed in Wilmington on April 11, 1914 during a dedication ceremony and parade celebrating the Los Angeles Harbor expansion.
A split-reel comedy, A Busy Day was originally released with the educational film The Morning Papers.
The Fatal Mallet
Finished and shipped: May 16, 1914
Released: June 1, 1914
Scenario: Mack Sennett Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: One reel
The Tramp and another man (Mack Sennett) are rivals for the attention of a young woman (Mabel Normand). The competition between the men results in some violent brick hitting and throwing. The two men eventually join forces against another admirer (Mack Swain) with more bricks and a new weapon: a mallet. The comedy concludes with Sennett and Normand walking off together while his rivals having been pushed into a lake.
One of the crudest of the Chaplin-Keystone comedies, it nevertheless fascinates for the extended comic interplay between Chaplin and Sennett. Chaplin revisited monstrous mallets as comic weapons in Laughing Gas, The Tramp (1915), and Police (1916).
Her Friend the Bandit
Finished and shipped: May 22, 1914
Released: June 4, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: One reel
This is the only Chaplin Keystone comedy that appears to be no longer extant. Chaplin plays the bandit of the film’s title who captures Count De Beans (Charles Murray) and commanders his evening clothes and invitation card to and pose as the aristocrat at an elegant reception held by Mrs. De Rocks (Mabel Normand) home. Charlie enjoys himself tremendously until the Keystone Cops arrive. Moving Picture World wrote in their review of the film that Chaplin and Charles Murray “play the chief funny characters of this farce which is a bit thin; but it has the rough whirling of happenings usually found in farces of this well-marked type.” Chaplin revisited ideas from this comedy in such later films as The Count (1916), The Rink (1916), and The Idle Class (1921).
The Knockout
Finished and shipped: May 29, 1914
Released: June 11, 1914
Scenario: Unknown Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: Two reels
Chaplin appears briefly in the second reel of this Roscoe Arbuckle comedy as the overly zealous boxing referee who manages to be on the receiving end of punches in a bout between Arbuckle and Edgar Kennedy. Chaplin clearly contributed much of his comedy material as it borrows from bits in Karno sketches (Mumming Birds as well as another Karno sketch with which Chaplin was familiar, The Yap Yaps). Chaplin enjoyed boxing matches; he attended prizefights in Los Angeles well into the 1930s and would incorporate boxing scenes in his own films The Champion (1915) and City Lights (1931). The interior mansion set used in this film also appears in the later Tillie’s Punctured Romance.
Mabel’s Busy Day
Finished and shipped: May 30, 1914
Released: June 13, 1914
Scenario: Unknown Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: One reel
Mabel (Mabel Normand) is a hot dog vendor who, like a shabby scoundrel (Chaplin), has to trick her way into entry at the racetrack. Chaplin wears his usual moustache and big boots but sports a light-colored derby and frock coat as a comic villain. Charlie pesters several women while Mabel has trouble peddling her hot dogs. Charlie swipes one of her hot dogs—and later her entire franchise—before the film ends with the two consoling each other at the end of a busy, if not profitable, day at the racetrack. A nominal effort, Mabel’s Busy Day was filmed on location at the Ascot Park Speedway in Los Angeles at a special exhibition race on May 17, 1914. The bystanders in certain scenes, gathered for the race, afford the viewer precious glimpses of how the general public reacted to Chaplin’s antics.
Mabel’s Married Life
Finished and shipped: June 6, 1914
Released: June 20, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin/ Mabel Normand Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Mack Sennett
Length: One reel
Mabel and her husband (Chaplin) visit a park where she is subjected to the unwanted flirtations of a cad (Mack Swain). Charlie’s unsuccessful efforts to stop the cad later inspire Mabel to buy a boxing dummy in the hopes that the dummy will make a man out of her ineffectual spouse. Her drunken husband returns home and mistakes the dummy for the cad they encountered at the park and spars with the “intruder.” Mabel finally manages to convince her inebriated husband that his adversary is only a dummy.
Mabel’s Married Life is one of several Keystone comedies in which Chaplin (wearing a top hat instead of his usual derby) appears as a married man. He plays a husband in the subsequent Keystone films The Rounders, His Trysting Places, and Getting Acquainted and is married during the course of Tillie’s Punctured Romance. Chaplin subsequently portrayed a married man with two small sons in A Day’s Pleasure (1919) and a henpecked husband in Pay Day (1922).
Mabel’s Married Life is one of several Chaplin Keystone comedies that prominently features Echo Park Lake, just five blocks south of the Keystone Studios, in Echo Park. The lake and distinctive Echo Park Bridge are still enjoyed and remain essentially the same in the twenty-first century.
Laughing Gas
Finished and shipped: June 26, 1914
Released: July 9, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
Charlie is a dentist’s assistant who blunders his tasks and abuses patients before he makes additional enemies at a nearby pharmacy. Upon his return to the dental office, he substitutes for the absent “Dr. Pain” for a time before a comic mêlée brings the film to its conclusion.
The film owes some of its inspiration to a Fred Karno sketch Chaplin was familiar with but never performed during his career, The Dentist, although dentistry and tooth extraction have been a source of humor since the commedia dell’arte. Chaplin loathed dentists and dentistry and his family have many memories of the difficulties in getting him to tolerate even infrequent visits to a dentist in his later years. Chaplin makes disparaging comments about dentistry in the role of King Shahdov in his penultimate film, A King in New York (1957).
Chaplin’s aggressive mischief dominates the comedy, although the film’s most charming moments involve his gentle flirtations with a pretty female patient; Charlie uses the dentist’s forceps to hold her nose and appropriate a few kisses from her.
The Property Man
Finished and shipped: July 20, 1914
Released: August 1, 1914 Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: Two reels
Charlie is a property man in a vaudeville theater who must contend with the many demands of the various acts—the comediennes “The Goo-Goo Sisters,” the strongman “Garlico,” and the dramatic sketch artistes “George Ham and Lena Fat.” Rehearsal goes poorly as does the first performance and the film ends with Charlie ending an argument by turning on the fire hose and deluging the entire company and the audience.
Chaplin’s first two-reel comedy as director/scenarist/star once again draws upon the Karno sketch Mumming Birds as a source of inspiration (especially the burlesque of terrible stage acts). The Property Man was Chaplin’s first film set in a vaudeville theater/music hall. He would subsequently return to the theatrical world with the films A Night in the Show (1915), A Dog’s Life (1918), and Limelight (1952).
Despite the many elements of crudeness and cruelty in the Chaplin Keystone comedies, commentators throughout the years have cited The Property Man as being especially cruel. The first critical complaint was expressed by Moving Picture World in their review of the film, “There is some brutality in this picture and we can’t help feeling this is reprehensible. What human being can see an old man kicked in the face and count it fun?” Evidently Charlie’s treatment of the elderly assistant property man as well as Garlico’s treatment of Charlie hit a nerve with some audiences, despite the broad caricature of the clowning—and the resilience of the clowns themselves—that Chaplin employs in this comedy.
The Face on the Bar Room Floor
Finished and shipped: July 20, 1914
Released: August 10, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
Chaplin parodies the ballad form poem “The Face Upon the Floor” by Hugh Antoine d’Arcy of the once prosperous painter who, having lost his beloved Madeleine (Cecile Arnold) to another man, becomes destitute in despair and is reduced to drawing her “face on the bar room floor.” Charlie, as the heartbroken and inebriated artist, tells his tale of woe in a tavern as a series of flashbacks. The rendering of his beloved he produces at the film’s conclusion is such an amateurishly bad line drawing that it prompts the patrons of the bar to boot him out onto the street.
One of the least interesting of the Chaplin Keystones in terms of entertainment value, it is nonetheless a valuable artifact as one of Hollywood’s early parodies of a literary work. The film’s flashback storytelling technique is uncommon for Chaplin; he used it in only two subsequent films: Shoulder Arms (1918) and Limelight (1952).
Recreation
Finished and shipped: July 21, 1914
Released: August 13, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: Split reel
A park comedy, filmed in one day, involves the Tramp, his encounters with a pretty young woman, her sailor boyfriend, and cops with everyone landing in a lake.
A split reel comedy, Recreation was originally released with the educational film The Yosemite.
The Masquerader
Finished and shipped: August 12, 1914
Released: August 27, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
Chaplin plays a mischievous version of himself in this splendid comedy. He is first seen in his civilian clothes—and without comedy makeup—entering the Keystone studios. Once he has put on his familiar comedy makeup and Tramp costume, he flirts with two attractive ladies, misses his cue, and twice ruins the scene being filmed. He is eventually replaced and ultimately fired by the director. The crafty Charlie reenters the studio disguised as a charming young woman and is hired at once as a leading lady. Charlie quickly reverts back to his familiar comedy makeup and clothes, reveals his imposture, and is chased about the studio. The film ends with Charlie, having retreated into the studio well, submerged in water and defeated in his masquerade.
The Masquerader is the second of three comedies in which Chaplin appears as a woman; the earlier A Busy Day has Chaplin in crude drag playing a shrewish wife; the later A Woman (1915) further develops what he achieved in this comedy: a brilliant transformation to a soft, feminine, and seductive woman. The Masquerader is also one of several Chaplin comedies, like the earlier A Film Johnnie and the later His New Job (1915) and Behind the Screen (1916), set in a motion picture studio.
His New Profession
Finished and shipped: August 14, 1914
Released: August 31, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin
Length: One reel
A young man (Charles Parrott who would achieve great fame as a comedian as Charley Chase) hires Charlie to care for his wheelchair bound uncle while he spends time with his girlfriend. Charlie places a “help a cripple” sign on the sleeping man in order to make some quick change to buy a drink. He abandons his charge with the first donation and enters the pier bar. A drunken Charlie returns to his work with even less enthusiasm than he had before; the gouty foot uncle nearly rolls of the pier twice. Charlie flirts with the nephew’s girlfriend and the comedy climaxes with a melee involving Charlie, the nephew, his girlfriend, and a couple of cops and concludes with Charlie stealing off with the nephew’s girl.
Filmed on location in Venice and Ocean Park, California, His New Profession anticipates Charlie’s treatment of gout-ridden Eric Campbell in The Cure (1917) and indicates Chaplin’s early interest in the National Police Gazette—a notorious tabloid with crime, sport, theater, and sin in general as favorite topics and illustrated with fine woodcut drawings—which reappears as favorite reading material in The Kid (1921) and is referenced in Limelight (1952).
The Rounders
Finished and shipped: August 21, 1914
Released: September 7, 1914
Scenario: Charles Chaplin Producer: Mack Sennett. Director: Charles Chaplin/Roscoe Arbuckle
Length: One reel
“Rounder,” is an archaic term meaning a drunk (believed to derive from “rounds” of drinks), although the somewhat obsolete meaning of a dissolute person might as easily describe the two main characters of this superb comedy. Mr. Full (Chaplin) and Mr. Fuller (Roscoe Arbuckle) are a couple of disgraceful drunks making their rounds at home and to a café pursued by their angry spouses. They eventually flee to a park and to a rowboat, sinking to the bottom on Echo Park Lake.
This comedy is the only teaming of Chaplin and Arbuckle; their other six appearances—A Film Johnnie, Tango Tangles, His Favorite Pastime, The Knockout, The Masquerader, and His New Profession—did not afford much comic interplay.
