Charlie Chaplin (1951)

Record Details:

Title:
Charlie Chaplin
Date:
1951
Publisher:
New York : Henry Schuman, Inc.
Volume:
Charlie Chaplin
Leaf #:
000302
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
{"Media History Digital Library","Richard Koszarski","Jeff Joseph"}
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
March 21, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




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.

■ ■ XXIV "City Lights" "The Circus" brought in three times its cost, but Chaplin himself never considered it one of his best films and was anxious to start another. Less than a month after completing "The Circus" he began work on an idea for his next film. It was only an idea. Whatever the picture was to be, its heroine was to be a blind girl! Chaplin may have been inspired by Raquel Meller's singing of "La Violetera" (Who'll Buy My Violets). He was certainly much taken by the Spanish diseuse on her 1926 tour and at one time there was talk of her playing Josephine to his Napoleon. In fact, publicity pictures were taken of Chaplin costumed as the little Emperor. But the singer was happily and undetachably married to Gomez Carrillo, Ambassador to France, the man who had exposed the famous spy, Mata Hari. At any rate, nothing came of the Napoleon plan. Nor of another rumored plan to play Christ in a new interpretation which would shift from an emphasis upon His meekness to an emphasis on His virility, His commanding qualities as a leader of men. The image of the blind girl displaced Napoleon and Christ. Around that bare idea, Chaplin began building a scenario. His collaborators were Harry Crocker, who had assisted as collaborator, director, and actor in "The Circus"; Henry Bergman, who had been with him since 1916; his public relations man, Carl Robinson; and