Film Fun (July 1915)

Record Details:

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.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN JUST what element constitutes Charlie Chaplin’s success would be hard to define. He is modest about it himself, with a modesty that is about as much surprise as it is reti¬ cence. Chaplin’s rise to fame came so swiftly that he hasn’t really waked up to it himself yet. While at times his work approaches buffoonery and always verges in the “slapstick” variety, it is the fun of the hour, just as the man himself is really the funniest man in the world. There are many imitators arising in the moving-picture field, and his brother Sid is following so closely in his footsteps that the latter’s friends insist that Charlie lifts many of Brother Sid’s tricks and mannerisms. John Bunny held the spotlight in his time, perhaps as much from his unique grotesqueness of form and facial architecture as from his sense of comedy; but Chaplin’s work is absolutely different in its way. He is the pioneer in his line before the screens as an exponent of English comedy. His experience as an English pantomimist undoubtedly gave him his power of mimicry and utility in deft changes of expression. The oldtime English pantomimist was the original clown that was later transplanted to the American circus, and in the hearts of every one there is a lingering fondness for the memories of the clown of our youthful days. It is this quality in Chaplin’s work that has made him so popular. * * NLY a year ago Chaplin was a pantomimist seeking what vaudeville engagements he could find. He looked upon $100 a week as a good thing. When he wandered into the Key¬ stone Studios and asked for a job, he looked the part. He looked it so well that Mack Sennatt took a chance on him. Sennatt is the man who gets his big salary largely on his genius in discov¬ ering good possibilities. He regarded Chaplin as a strike, once he had given him a tryout and noted his clever tricks. Sennatt has always been a great hand to make up his scenarios according to existing mate¬ rial, and he immediately doped out a plot on Chaplin that the latter aided efficiently by his knowledge of pantomime business that appeals to the “kid” spirit in every one. For several months Sennatt worked him over. He coached him, ate with him, followed him about like a shadow. But he did not feature him. Chaplin did that himself. He is built for the part. He has a face that is as solemn as a Gospel hymnbook, and he takes himself seriously, even in his funniest bits. Many of his funniest stunts are evolved on the spur of the mo¬ ment. The scenarios were often written about a bit of business invented by Chaplin at a rehearsal. Chaplin trying to be funny would never get a laugh; but Chaplin going seriously about his work, with his too loose trousers hitched in a godet at the belt, his shock of hair that upholds the battered old derby which is his trade-mark, and the queer toeing-out jerk of his foot clad in the policeman’s shoes, and his intensely sober face crowning it all, make him easily the funniest man in the movies to-day. A notice on any movie theater, “Charlie Chaplin To-day,” brings out the neighborhood in happily anticipating droves. He in¬ flated his salary $1,000 within a few months, plus the original $100 a week. First thing he did then was to insure his feet. He will be reimbursed by the insurance company $50,000 for the loss of either one, and $150,000 if he loses both. He de¬ pends greatly on his feet tricks. ^^HAPLIN is reticent about his work, because he doesn’t know much about it himself. He doesn’t think it is particularly funny, except that it sometimes strikes him as odd that a year ago he regarded his trousers’ pocket as the handiest bank for his account, with room to spare at that, while now he is defer¬ entially approached by land agents with tempting offers to buy property for country homes and could have accounts in half a dozen banks if he liked. Off stage he is not as different as you might imagine. Not long ago he stepped off a train in a medium-sized town in New York and crossed the platform, with the outgoing fox-trot step that is one of his greatest assets on the stage. A newsboy looked at his feet, whistled, glanced at his hair and trousers, and shouted to his compatriots in business, “Hey, dere, see wot’s present — Charlie Chaplin!” Everybody looked, and everybody recognized Chaplin, and he himself blushed to be recognized so easily. The public made him its own at once. Think back, and you will recall that if anybody had asked you a year ago if you had seen Charlie Chaplin, you would have inquired, “Who in thunder is Charlie Chaplin?” Yet the Keystone Company did not feature him. The peo¬ ple did that. When they saw this lithe, solemn clown doing his funny tricks on the screen, they inquired who he was. He was new, he was good, he was worth knowing. The film fans always want to know the names of their favorites. They asked their local manager, and the local manager asked the film com¬ panies, and the film companies wired to the Keystone Company and said, “What’s the name of this funny chap with the feet and the gathered trousers?” So the Keystone people pushed the inquiry along to Mack Sennatt, who wired back the name and went on with his scena¬ rios, making them up as he and Chaplin went along and making them funnier and funnier all the time. Sennatt has the knack of getting all the possibilities out of a strike. * * HEY are not so keen about featuring the comedy folk in these film companies, you know. The featured ones have a habit of plugging along and getting their training and waiting until they are heavily advertised, and then saying on salary day, “Once more, please — come across. I know a fellow in an¬ other company who will give me twice that much.” But his audiences featured him. They paid to see Charlie Chaplin. They endure the rest of the show with resignation until Charlie is flashed on the screen, and then they grin and nudge each other and settle down to enjoy the show, with shrieks and sobs of screaming laughter — real, good, hearty laughter that comes from beneath the fifth rib and starts a circulation through the blood and shakes up the liver and makes life worth living and home happy when the family gets back to the apart¬ ment after the show. He has the cleverest insight into the technique of his work since the days of old Dan Rice, who was the best man of his day in the clown line. Chaplin has had the training of adversity, but his head has not been turned by his sudden flight up the ladder of fame. Chaplin went with the Essenay Film Company several months ago, although his brother Sid, for whom he sent to England and who closely approaches him in his line of work, is still with the Keystone. 0,0