Charlie Chaplin (1951)

Chaplin at Keystone 29 exaggerated movement and gesture. Chaplin was used to a slower, subtler, and more individual pantomime. Sennett and the others were surprised to find him so young, only twenty-four years of age. He had played much older parts on the stage. He also had to contend with jealousy on the part of* the stars who had worked hard to establish themselves in this new field. Mabel Normand, calling him "that Englisher so-and-so," thought he looked like a "package mis-sent," and refused to go on with him in his first film. The new English actor was assigned to a dressing room with the huge-bodied Arbuckle and Swain, to whom he was no competitive threat; and they proved friendly. For his first film the director assigned was Henry ("Pathe") Lehrman (so nicknamed by D. W. Griffith after he had bluffed his way into a job at Biograph, claiming experience in French films). In this first film Chaplin did not wear his famous tramp costume. He appeared in a long frock coat, high silk hat, drooping walrus mustache, and a monocle — much the same get-up he had used in "A Night in an English Music Hall." His first leading lady was Virginia Kirtely, a girl with a slight resemblance to Blanche Sweet. After hardly a year at Keystone, she vanished into obscurity. Chaplin and his first director clashed frequently. Lehrman tried to force the frenzied Keystone style upon him. Chaplin wanted a slower and more deliberate pace, more suited to his subtleties. Chaplin, not yet acclimated to motion-picture technique, did not understand "filmic geography," "filmic time," and cutting. For example, after making a scene on one location the camera was moved two blocks away and around a corner to film an earlier scene. Asked to look at a girl he couldn't possibly see from this position, Chaplin objected. He did not realize that when the film was pieced together there would be perfect illusion.