Charlie Chaplin (1951)

Chaplin at Keystone 31 would stay on Chaplin's small feet), a tight-fitting coat, a derby that was a size too small (belonging to Minta Durfee's father), a bamboo cane, and the small "toothbrush" mustache (cut down from one of Mack Swain's). A prop camera was set up in front of the real camera. Chaplin made a nuisance of himself running out on the race track and getting in the way of the camera that was supposedly filming the races. He used a splayed, shuffling walk. In this, then new, and later world-famous costume and gait, he collided and brawled with the cameraman and the cops who tried to get him out of the way. Legend has it that the film was made in forty-five minutes. A "split reel" (500 feet or less), it was released on the same reel with an early, factual-educational short entitled "Olives and Their Oil." Mabel Normand was making a comedy called "Mabel's Strange Predicament." Sennett, feeling that it needed pepping up, called for the Englishman with whom Mabel was now willing to appear. Lehrman was directing and again had trouble with the new actor. Sennett took over and wisely turned Chaplin loose to see what he could do. The picture was one of those hotel mix-up farces. Nonchalantly, Charlie shuffles into the lobby in his new costume and gait, to use the telephone. He discovers to his dismay that he has no nickel. Mabel enters with a dog on a leash. Charlie gets mixed up with the dog, trips over the leash, falls, and gets his hand caught in a cuspidor. All the while, and all through a scolding by the hotel clerk, he preserves the utmost dignity. The scene runs longer than the customary few feet Sennett usually allowed for such action. The actors and prop men on the sidelines began to applaud and roar with laughter. Sterling, watching the