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the Karno Company and tour of America 19
but in another called "The Wow Wows," that he made his American debut on October 3, 1910, at the Colonial Theatre in New York. His act was part of a typical variety show including a dog turn, a quick-change artist, acrobats, and ballad singers. "The Wow Wows" burlesqued a secret-society initiation in a summer camp. According to Variety, "Chaplin is typically English, the sort of comedian that American audiences seem to like, although unaccustomed to. His manner is quiet and easy and he goes about his work in a devil-may-care manner. . . ." With prophetic understatement Variety concluded, "Chaplin will do all right for America."
There is, further, this choice note from the Brooklyn Eagle of October 18, 1910, to dispel any idea that Karno's was a minor company and that Chaplin, before his screen career, went unnoticed: "Charles Chaplin, leading comedian of Karno's Comedians, which are playing at the Orpheum Theatre, this week, is being extensively entertained by the British residents of Brooklyn. The members of the St. George Society and the Usonas are among those who have arranged affairs for Mr. Chaplin and his confreres." To theatre devotees in England, indeed, Chaplin had been known since his boyhood.
In the more popular "A Night in an English Music Hall," Chaplin played the part originated by Billy Reeves, star of the first company, and often played in England by Sid Chaplin. The setting was an average English music hall — with boxes and audience as well as the stage itself. Typical music-hall "turns" were presented on the stage within the stage. Chaplin, playing a drunken "swell" in evening clothes, kept half-falling out of his box, annoying the performers and the audience alike. He finished on the stage itself in a wrestling match with the "Terrible Turk." With the popularity of this act, a similar one, called "A Night in a London Club," was put on, in which Chaplin again played the lead.