We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
cc 156
class," a wealthy fop and a foppish tramp. Influenced by his new intellectual friends Chaplin was perhaps attempting social significance but the contents were less significant than the title promised. Actually, "The Idle Class," introducing nothing new, was something of a throwback to the Mutual days — smoother in production but with slower pace and fewer laughs than those classic tworeelers. Its rather thin story line is reminiscent of "The Count" and "The Adventurer"; but it provides pegs for a number of amusing gags. Though the ending is somewhat abrupt and disappointing, the picture is generally entertaining and often rises to hilarious levels. Incidentally, it was then something of a novelty to see Chaplin attired in the height of fashion. Edna Purviance, too, is fashionably dressed, a change, excepting the last part of "The Kid," from her recent appearances as a country gawk or a lower-middle-class drab. Mack Swain, whom a quarrel with a producer had banished from the screen for a while, returned to appear with Chaplin for the first time since Keystone days.
As the picture opens the Wife, a wealthy woman, descends from a Pullman car, attended by maids and porters, at the railroad station of an exclusive community. She looks around, in obvious disappointment, for her missing husband, whom she had wired to meet her. As she steps to her waiting limousine, another passenger, the Tramp, dismounts from his "berth" in the tool box under one of the coaches. He calmly adjusts his baggage, which includes a bag of golf sticks, and reaches the Wife's automobile in time to ride off with her — on the rear bumper.
After a night of celebration the Absent-Minded Husband gets started on his meeting with his wife, but is delayed by a variety of mishaps. Still in evening clothes and a high silk hat, he makes their suite at the hotel just as his wife arrives to find it empty. Crawling in on his