![]() The rodomontade was, Laurel saw, a gag, but the essence of its truth was soon realized. Another member of the company, Stan Laurel (later of Laurel and Hardy), reported on Chaplin’s antics aboard ship:Ĭharles put his foot up on the rail of the boat, swung his arm landward in one of his burlesque dramatic gestures, and declared, “America, I am coming to conquer you! Every man, woman, and child shall have my name on their lips-Charles Spencer Chaplin!” His childhood in London was burdened with desperate poverty the son of a struggling actress, he got his first acting job at fourteen, enjoyed success in the music halls, and, in 1910, sailed with the Fred Karno troupe for a three-year gig in the United States. The book’s editor, Paul Duncan, who also wrote or co-wrote ten of its fifteen chapters, states his aim in the first line of his introduction-“to show you how Charlie Chaplin made his films”-and he has access to an extraordinary trove of documents for the reconstruction, “preserved thanks to Charlie’s half brothers Sydney Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden.” The Chaplin family made these materials available to Duncan and his collaborators, but their involvement doesn’t seem to have inflected the substance of the book, which also ranges widely through Chaplin’s private life, including its lurid, scandalous, and criminal byways.Įven if the book were published without its images, solely as a collection of its wide-ranging texts, it would still provide crucial visions of Chaplin’s artistry and its inescapable coalescence with his life. It’s an apt tribute to the filmmaker, whose artistry transcends the cinema and spans world-historical dimensions. The most un-put-downable movie book of the season is also the most un-pick-uppable one: “The Charlie Chaplin Archives” (Taschen), which is the size of a small suitcase and weighs in at fourteen pounds, packed tightly with five hundred and sixty pages’ worth of thick and glossy paper bearing a treasure trove of superbly printed images alongside a relentlessly fascinating collage-like textual biography of Chaplin. “It was really my father’s alter ego,” Chaplin’s son has said, of the silent-film character, “the little boy who never grew up.” PHOTOGRAPH BY HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY Only it is hard to find.Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp. You find that and you have found everything. ![]() The only comedy that is worth while is when it has beauty. The people wanted to see the boy saved from suicide and have the girl go back to him, and have them live happily forever after.”Ĭhaplin: “Yes, it was tragedy.” “I like tragedy. It has made $100,000.” “It wasn’t because it was too sophisticated it was because it held out no hope. ![]() Carr discusses “A Woman of Paris” of Paris with Chaplin:Ĭarr: “But you were so sophisticated in A Woman of Paris that the picture failed.”Ĭhaplin: “Oh, it wasn’t such a failure. You find that and you have found everything.įrom “Chaplin Explains Chaplin”, an interview with Harry Carr in The Motion Picture Magazine, Nov. When the United Press Association telegrammed Chaplin asking him to confirm the quotes, he realised he had been manipulated and replied, “Whatever statements were made, true or not true, this man could never have entered my house as a reporter. They are being taught to admire and emulate stoolpigeons, to betray and to hate – and all in a sickening atmosphere of religious hypocrisy.” The worst thing is what it has done to the children. People stand by and do nothing when friends and neighbours are attacked, libelled and ruined. Compassion and the old neighbourliness have gone. I’m not against materialism but look at what the American kind has done. so terribly grim in spite of all the material prosperity. I will never allow any of my pictures which I control to be shown in America again. I do not need the American market for my films. But remember that for 15 years I was hounded as a ‘communist’ and persecuted as if I were a criminal – and once faced 25 years in jail for ‘white slavery’ and whatever else they could throw in. ![]() I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President. so terribly grim in spite of all the material prosperity.Ĭedric Belfrage of the Amercian socialist weekly National Guardian visited Chaplin in Vevey and published quotes from their private conversation in “Chaplin Looks at USA”, November 14, 1955: “I no longer have any use for America at all. I no longer have any use for America at all. ![]()
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