His Musical CareerCharlie Chaplin's musical career is as a piano mover for a music store in this, his 31st comedy for Keystone. The film was a direct inspiration for Laurel and Hardy's 1932 short, The Music Box. His Little Fellow is not a tramp but a hard-working laborer. Charlie is first seen applying for his job, being examined, muscles and even teeth, by
Mack Swain. In the showroom, we see Mr. Rich (
Fritz Schade) deciding to buy a piano from salesman
Charley Chase, and a few moments later, Mr. Poor being threatened that his piano will be repossessed if he can't make his payments. Mack and Charlie are sent to deliver the one piano and pick up the other, for which, of course, they will mix up the addresses. As they take the piano outside, Mack pulls Charlie along the showroom floor, as Charlie smiles to the camera, expressing his delight in a free ride. They load the piano onto the horse-drawn wagon. At one point the slope is so severe that when Mack leans to the back of the wagon, the donkey is lifted right off the ground. Arriving at Mr. Poor's house the residents are delighted that they seem to be receiving a free piano, as Charlie carries the piano on his back and must be straightened out by boss Mack. Next, the movers proceed to Mr. Rich's house and proceed to take his piano, over the objections of Mrs. Rich
Cecile Arnold. Mr. Rich arrives as Charlie and Mack get the piano out to the sidewalk. A kick to Mack's backside sends Charlie, Mack, and the piano skidding down a steep hill, and to Mr. Rich's horror, into Echo Lake in Westlake Park where Charlie plays some last notes before they begin to sink. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
RecreationFor this half-reel quickie,
Charlie Chaplin's 23rd Keystone comedy, Chaplin took cast and crew back to Westlake Park, scene of so many of the Keystones, and shot it in a day. While a sleeping sailor and his bored girlfriend occupy a park bench, the little Tramp is contemplating suicide on a nearby bridge. Leaving her boring beau, the girl passes
Charlie and inspires in him a new will to live. He follows her to another bench and, shyly at first, begins a flirtation. The sailor wakes and, finding them together, chases
Charlie away with a hard slap.
Charlie, from behind a tree begins a brick-throwing match in which inevitably, two Kops become involved. One comes up behind
Charlie as he's about to throw another brick and
Charlie (in a bit of business which anticipates a bit he gave to
Jackie Coogan in his 1921 classic, The Kid) dusts off the brick, tosses it idly, and throws it over his shoulder. Eventually the Kops catch up with the sailor and he successfully fights them off, getting them embroiled with each other. Meanwhile the Girl has escaped to the lake side and is joined by
Charlie. When the sailor and Kops arrive, all five end up treading water in
Echo Lake. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Cruel, Cruel LoveIn his eighth film for Keystone
Charlie Chaplin, in frock coat and bushy mustache, is cast in the role of a melodramatic lover who attempts suicide over his lost love. The film is a farce, a parody of the overacted melodramas of the day. Mr. Dovey (
Chaplin) is first seen on his knees proposing in the drawing room of his lady (
Minta Durfee). The couple are overheard and mocked by the lady's maid, whose laughter causes
Minta to eject her from the house. To get back at her boss, she arranges a hoax with the gardener. She feigns injury and her cries bring the departing Dovey to her aid. When
Minta sees her maid flirting with Dovey, she rejects him in a jealous rage. Back at home the despondent Dovey drinks what he thinks is poison; only his highly amused butler knows it was just water. Waiting for the poison to take effect, Dovey has horrifying visions of his eternal damnation. Meanwhile,
Minta has learned of her maid's deception and has sent the gardener to Dovey with a letter of apology. "It's too late. I've been poisoned," says Dovey and the gardener goes back to retrieve
Minta to be at her dying man's side. Dovey now summons doctors to save him, drinking all the milk he can with evident distaste. When the physicians arrive, the butler lets them in on the joke and they play along too, jokingly examining him.
Minta, having raced to her man's home, learns of the hoax and tells Dovey he's going to live. First relieved, then enraged, he attacks all the pranksters and finally embraces his lady, removing from his fingers a ball of hair he had pulled from his head and blowing it away. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Film JohnnieIn
Charlie Chaplin's fifth Keystone comedy we get a look inside the famous laugh factory. Charlie is a movie fan and we first see him creating havoc at a theatre where he gets too involved with the action on the screen and the beautiful actress in the film. Ejected from the theatre, he proceeds to Keystone itself where he mooches money from
Roscoe Arbuckle as he arrives at work. Charlie sneaks into the studio and disrupts the filming, much to the chagrin of the director. He mistakes a scene where the starlet is being manhandled for reality and comes to her rescue. Firing a prop pistol in all directions, he clears the stages before leaving. Meanwhile, a Keystone scout sees a building on fire in a nearby street and telephones the studio. In a parody of
Mack Sennett's propensity to use public events and disasters as backdrops for his films, the cast and crew rush off to do some location filming at the fire. Charlie shows up and again disrupts the filming, causing the director to take after him brandishing a club. The firemen arrive and seeing the struggle between the director and his assistants who are trying to restrain him, turn the hoses on the fighting men. Charlie again tries his luck with the beautiful actress and receives a good shaking in response, followed by a soaking by the fire squad. In a classic Chaplin move, he twists his ear as water squirts from his mouth. When the beautiful actress laughs at his condition, a water-logged Charlie gives up on his movie fanaticism. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
His New ProfessionCharlie Chaplin's 25th Keystone comedy is a park farce on the same order as many of his earlier shorts. It opens with a famous shot of Charlie sitting on a park bench, reading Police Gazette, the National Enquirer of its time. A couple nearby are unhappy; the boy,
Charles Parrot (later known as
Charley Chase), has to take care of his gouty, wheelchair-bound uncle, preventing him from going off with his girlfriend,
Gene Marsh. He gets an idea -- find someone to push uncle around for the day. He finds Charlie, of course, but not before his girlfriend encounters the Tramp. She accidentally drops her purse in front of him and he retrieves it and tries to flirt. When Charlie agrees to push Uncle around, the Nephew finds his girlfriend and they go off for a stroll. Wheeling Uncle past a saloon, Charlie asks for an advance for a drink but the Uncle refuses. Charlie pushes Uncle to a nearby pier where another invalid in a wheelchair with a tin cup and a "Help A Cripple" sign has fallen asleep. Charlie deftly puts the sign and cup on Uncle, who is also dozing. The first contribution is enough to send Charlie off to the saloon for a drink. Meanwhile the couple arrives at the pier and finds the sleeping Uncle in this embarrassing position. Gene laughingly teases her beau as they again escape. Another charitable soul comes by and drops a coin in the cup which awakens the cripple who takes back his sign and cup and strikes Uncle on his gouty foot with his cane. Charlie arrives quite tipsy and wheels Uncle further along the pier, amusing him with his Police Gazette. The couple has meanwhile had a fight, and the girl arrives on the pier and sits down next to Charlie. He begins flirting again, and when Uncle tries to interfere, Charlie pushes him right to the end of the pier. Nephew arrives and is enraged to see Charlie and Gene together. A scrap begins also involving a couple of Kops, one of whom shoos the boyfriend away before being pushed off the pier. The other Kop pinches Uncle as a troublemaker, leaving Charlie and Gene to walk off together. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Tango TanglesTango Tangles is an impromptu Keystone comedy which exploited the current "tango craze." A tango contest and exhibition prompted
Mack Sennett to send a crew out to a local dance hall where some of the film was shot.
Charlie Chaplin appears in a tuxedo, sans the famous Tramp makeup and costume, as a drunk who flirts with the hat-check girl, and he gets into fights with
Ford Sterling and
Roscoe Arbuckle, both musicians at the dance hall who are also enamored with her. Although slight in plot, the film is interesting because the three principal Keystone actors appear without comic makeup and because the audience can observe the mirthful reactions of the real dancers in the hall to the comic fight between Chaplin and Sterling. Also of interest is the blending of location and studio footage, noticeable due to differences in lighting and set. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
WorkWork,
Charlie Chaplin's eighth film for Essanay casts Charlie as a wallpaper-hanger's assistant who must pull the wagon containing the boss (
Charles Insley) and all his gear through the city streets and up some imposing hills (created by using tilted camera angles). Charlie is little more than a beast of burden and must do all the work when they arrive at a wealthy couple's (
Billy Armstrong and
Marta Golden) home. The woman of the house suspects the workers of being dishonest when she catches Charlie admiring a small statue, and she locks up her valuables in a safe. This prompts Charlie to "lock up" his and his boss's watches and cash by pinning them into his pants pocket. Charlie proves to be an inept decorator, making a huge mess and causing his boss to get a bucket of wallpaper paste over his head. He befriends
Edna Purviance, the maid, and in a rather intimate scene, tells her his story and his hopes for the future. The wife's lover,
Leo White arrives, but when he sees that the husband is still home, he pretends to be a workman. The husband is wise to the dodge and attacks his wife's lover, eventually pulling out a revolver and chasing him around the house. A stray bullet hits the gas stove which explodes, partially burying everyone. In the famous last scene, Charlie emerges from the inverted oven door, exhales some smoke, and, sizing up the situation, smiles into the camera. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Busy DayNotable as
Charlie Chaplin's first female impersonation film, the half-reel A Busy Day is another of the Keystone shorts in which a film crew was dispatched to improvise a comedy at the site of a public event, in this case a parade celebrating the opening of a new harbor in San Pedro, California.
Chaplin plays a shrewish wife, attending the event with her philandering husband,
Mack Swain.
Mack takes up with a young woman at the parade and his wife follows him around trying to catch them in the act. In the process, "she" gets involved with a film crew trying to record the event, getting in the way of the camera as
Chaplin's Tramp had done in the earlier Kid Auto Races. In this case, the director who manhandles the obstreperous wife is Keystone boss
Mack Sennett. The jealous wife also engages in some humorous dancing as she listens to the band play and tussles with a cop who earlier had tried to get her away from the movie camera. Eventually she catches up to
Mack and his paramour, and when she confronts and attacks them, she is thrown off a pier into the ocean ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
PoliceCharlie Chaplin's last film for Essanay (not counting the compilation, Triple Trouble) was released after he had moved on to the Mutual Film Corporation. Charlie is released from prison with the customary few dollars in his pocket. He's approached on the street by a fake preacher who asks Charlie to "Let me help you go straight," making him sob with his touching sermon, while picking his pocket. Charlie encounters a drunk with his pocketwatch hanging from his vest, but resists the temptation of stealing it. A few moments later, after realizing he has been robbed, Charlie sees the preacher with the drunk and notes, after the preacher departs, that the watch is gone. Approached by a real preacher this time, Charlie chases him down the street. As evening approaches Charlie goes to a seedy flophouse, but is ejected because he cannot pay. He encounters an old cellmate on the street and is recruited to participate in the robbery of Edna's house. Charlie proves an inept burglar, making so much noise that Edna is roused, and she calls the police before confronting them. She begs them not to go upstairs because her mother is very ill and the shock might kill her. She even provides food and beer for the burglars, asking Charlie to let her help him to go straight. But Charlie's partner is heartless and heads upstairs despite Edna's pleas. When Edna tries to stop him, he threatens to strike her and that is too much for Charlie, who fights with the thief until the police arrive. Firing his pistol, the thief escapes through a back window, but the cops catch Charlie before he can escape. Edna, grateful to Charlie for his protection, lies to the police telling them Charlie is her husband. After the cops leave, Edna gives Charlie a coin and sends him off. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
The BondThis short promotional film
Charlie Chaplin made for the U.S. Liberty Loan bond campaign was shot in a few days during the shooting of Shoulder Arms. Using rather stark, expressionistic sets and props, it tells the story of the various types of bonds between people. The bond of friendship, shows
Chaplin meeting friend
Albert Austin who tells him jokes, borrows money, then invites him for a drink with the money he's borrowed. The bond of love is represented by
Charlie and Edna, who are struck by cupid's arrows and soon enter into the bond of matrimony. But the "most important of all" is the Liberty Bond. Edna is Miss Liberty, threatened by the Kaiser who has subdued a soldier in uniform.
Charlie is seen buying bonds from Uncle Sam who gives the money in turn to a worker, who gives guns to a soldier and sailor. Finally,
Charlie KOs the Kaiser with a mallet inscribed "Liberty Bonds" and extorts the audience to help the cause. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
