His New JobCharlie Chaplin began his new job at Essanay Studios, who lured him away from Keystone with an offer of $1250 a week plus a bonus of $10,000, with a parody film on his former employer. It features two actresses at the beginning of their careers in minor roles --
Gloria Swanson and Agnes Ayres. Charlie applies for work at the Lockstone Motion Picture Company. Arriving at the office just after him is cross-eyed comedian
Ben Turpin. Charlie is interviewed by the boss who uses a funnel and long tube as a hearing aid. Charlie uses the device with a cigarette in his mouth which gets lodged in the funnel. Charlie tries to dislodge it by pouring ink into the funnel and blowing but ends up with the ink on his own face. Hired as an assistant carpenter/prop man, he disrupts rehearsals and gets into trouble with the director. He is told to don an extra's military costume for the Russian melodrama being filmed, but he goes instead into the star's dressing room and steals his costume. Charlie is as inept as an actor as he is a carpenter, sitting on the train of the leading lady's gown, tearing it off as she walks up a staircase and blowing his nose in it as he overacts tearfully. (This scene contains one of the first dolly shots in Chaplin films). He later topples a large column which lands on top of him, and he is sat upon by Turpin, who, having replaced him as prop man is called to lift the column. Eventually, the star actor arrives, and, enraged at finding his costume missing, starts a melee on stage which ends with everyone but Charlie unconscious. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Night OutIn his second Essanay comedy
Charlie Chaplin is teamed with cross-eyed comic
Ben Turpin as two drunks on a spree. It is noteworthy as his first film with
Edna Purviance, who was to be his love interest in films for the next eight years, and in real life for the next three. It combines elements from at least three Keystones, Mabel's Strange Predicament, The Rounders and Caught in the Rain, but uses a number of comic transpositions of the type that were to become Chaplin's hallmark. Charlie and Ben carouse to a saloon and a restaurant, incurring the wrath of a French boulevardier and a restaurant manager. Ejected from the restaurant, they return to their hotel room where they meet Edna, whose room is across the hall. Charlie flirts with Edna until her husband, the restaurant manager, returns and chases him away. Charlie and Ben then have a fight, and Charlie packs and leaves the hotel, checking into another one nearby. Edna and hubby decide they don't like the hotel either and move into Charlie's. Charlie undresses for bed in his room while Edna, across the hall, plays fetch with her dog. When she throws her slipper into the hallway, the dog takes it into Charlie's room and under his bed. Chasing the dog, Edna hides under Charlie's bed when he re-enters the room from the bathroom. He escorts her back to her room but is caught there by the irate husband. When hubby draws a pistol, Charlie escapes through the window but makes his way back into the hotel. He encounters Ben who has come looking for Charlie's share of the rent on their former room, and a fight ensues in which Charlie ends up floundering in the bathtub. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
The ChampionThe Champion,
Chaplin's third film for Essanay, is easily one of the funniest and is his most advanced film to date in plotting and characterization. We meet
Charlie and his bulldog sharing a found hot dog, which the dog won't eat until it is salted. They pass a gymnasium advertising for sparring partners.
Charlie finds a lucky horseshoe and after witnessing the condition of the previous sparring partners, he decides to employ it in his left boxing glove. He thereby kayos the club champ and becomes the new golden boy. He begins to train for the big championship fight against Champ,
Bud Jamison. The beautiful daughter of the Gym owner,
Edna Purviance gets his interest and seems taken with him. A shady character
Leo White, a slimy betting tout, oozes into camp and tries to bribe
Charlie into throwing the big fight, but while
Charlie takes his money, he treats him with total contempt. On the day of the fight,
Charlie says an emotional goodbye to his dog and enters the ring. In the audience are cowboy-star
Bronco Billy Anderson, one of the founders of Essanay (whose initials, along with partner George K. Spoor's are the source of its name), and
Ben Turpin as the vendor. The hilarious slapstick prizefight is pretty even at first, but by the fourth round
Charlie's getting the worst of it. Seeing the trouble his master is in, the bulldog jumps into the ring and restrains the opponent by the seat of his pants while
Charlie delivers a series of coup-de-grace punches.
Charlie is hoisted on the shoulders of his cornermen as the new Champion. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
In the ParkCharlie Chaplin's fourth release for Essanay is very similar to his Keystone Twenty Minutes of Love. He had taken longer than planned to complete his previous film, The Champion, and he felt obliged to give Essanay a new film quickly, so he shot and edited this park farce in the course of a week. It opens with
Leo White in his French Count costume and
Margie Reiger spooning on a park bench, observed by an amused
Edna Purviance seated on a nearby bench, wearing a nursemaid's outfit and minding a baby carriage.
Chaplin, strolling through the park, encounters an inept pickpocket, from whose pocket
Chaplin picks a cigarette and a match.
Chaplin comes upon the couple, and mocking their emotions, he gets chased away.
Purviance is joined by her boyfriend
Bud Jamison who goes off to buy a hot dog from a vendor.
Finding
Purviance alone,
Chaplin makes eyes at her and gets a few smiles in return, but when he tries to mash her she spurns him. Meanwhile the pickpocket steals
Reiger's purse while the couple are necking. Returning to
Purviance,
Jamison chases
Chaplin away.
Chaplin encounters the same hot dog vendor and steals a string of hot dogs which he hangs from his breast pocket and eats by swinging them up to his mouth. The pickpocket steals
Chaplin's hot dogs, but
Chaplin steals the purse from his pocket. While
Chaplin sells the purse to
Jamison for $2, the pickpocket starts a brick fight during which everyone except
Chaplin is knocked out.
Chaplin gives the purse to
Purviance, who rewards him with a hug, but
Jamison awakens and returns to claim the purse and
Purviance. By this time
Reiger has discovered her purse is gone and sends
White over to
Jamison to retrieve it. He is beaten back by
Jamison and when
Reiger spurns him for his ineptitude he contemplates suicide.
Chaplin comes along and obliges him by booting him into the lake. Meanwhile
Reiger has summoned a cop who gets the purse back from
Jamison and confronts
Chaplin, but ends up in the lake along with
Jamison, as
Chaplin strolls away. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Jitney ElopementThe title of
Charlie Chaplin's fifth comedy for Essanay refers to the popular term for a Model T Ford, a jitney. Its theme of impersonation was one
Chaplin had used before in Caught in a Cabaret and Her Friend the Bandit, and would use again in The Count and other films.
Chaplin's girlfriend
Edna Purviance is about to be forced by her father to wed the wealthy Count de Ha-Ha (
Leo White), whom neither has met.
Chaplin, dropping by for a visit, stands below her bedroom window whistling for her. She tosses him a note from the Count, announcing his visit and pleads to be rescued.
Chaplin impersonates the Count and is welcomed by her mercenary father. He's given drinks and cigars and sits down to lunch with
Purviance and her father.
Chaplin performs a bit that he had done in one of the Karno sketches, that of carving a loaf of bread into a spiral and using it as an accordion. Although his table manners are decidedly not upper class,
Chaplin pulls off the impersonation until the real Count arrives. The enraged father kicks
Chaplin out of the house, then goes out for a spin with
Purviance and the Count in the latter's car. They drive to a park where father hopes the Count can sweet-talk
Purviance into marrying him. At first horrified by his intentions, she breaks out into gales of laughter at the sight of the tattered seat of his pants.
Chaplin happens by and steals
Purviance away, dispatching Count and father, along with a couple of cops. The fleeing couple steal the Count's jitney, and lead Count, father and cop, now following in a car they've taken, on a merry chase. The chase leads them to a pier, where in a clever stop-motion photography scene, the cars jockey about until
Chaplin bumps the other car off the pier and into the water. A happy
Chaplin and
Purviance are about to kiss as the film fades out. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
