Charlie is in costume except that he has replaced his bowler hat with a straw hat.
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Other familiar faces include: cameraman Rollie Totheroh (far left), press agent Carlyle Robinson (in the middle wearing glasses) and I believe that's Allan Garcia (who plays the millionaire's butler) behind Charlie (4th from left).
Filmed at the Venice Dance Hall, this film is unique because its three main characters (Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Ford Sterling) appear without their usual costumes and make-up. Basic plot: three men vie for the attentions of the hat check girl at the dance hall.
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Numerous sources credit the role of the hat check girl to Sadie Lampe but her identity has never been fully confirmed.
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If there are no bricks or custard pies around, just throw a human being.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. On the first photo someone has written: "Hollywood's greatest comic, sans moustache."
"Because one hundred years later the world still needs people like Chaplin. He held a mirror up for us to laugh at our limitations, to weep at injustice, and to find hope in our ability to love. In his 83 films, Chaplin, perhaps more than any other filmmaker, showed us what it means to be human."
Released March 11th, 1915, this was Chaplin's third film for Essanay.
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Charlie's training accoutrements: a very lightweight barbell & beer--lots of beer.
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Edna, the trainer's daughter.
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Charlie's pet bulldog doesn't like the way the fight is going. Note: Spike the dog was hit by a car and killed in Niles, CA, only a few weeks after production was completed.
Adolphe Menjou remembered that Chaplin's mood could be measured by the color of his suit:
The regular studio staff members claimed that they could gauge his mood by the suit he was wearing. They would call his house before he arrived and would try to learn from his valet what clothes he was wearing that day. If he were wearing his famous green suit, we would get ready for a bad day. The green suit was his melancholy suit. But if he were wearing a blue suit with pin stripes, that would be a sign of a good day; he would be in a jovial all's-right-with-the-world mood, and we would get some fine scenes shot. A gray suit meant a sort of in-between mood; we would never be sure whether things would go right on a gray-suit day, so we would feel our way for a while until a definite mood developed. One or two of the staff had this suit-to-match-the-mood theory developed to a very fine degree. They claimed that they knew his whole wardrobe and that every suit in it had a different shade of meaning. (Adolphe Menjou, It Took Nine Tailors, 1948)
The suit-color theory was corroborated by Chaplin's publicist, Jim Tully (who was alerted to it by Eddie Sutherland*):
It was Eddie Sutherland, this assistant director, who claimed that he could tell Chaplin's moods by the suit he happened to be wearing. A dark-green suit was always evidence of a heavy mood. Sutherland first drew my attention to this in Chaplin. I watched it over a period of two months. It never failed.
One of the most vigorous pictures of the comedian in my memory is that of him walking, head down, face buried in a meditative scowl, and wearing the dark-green suit.
When in a light mood Chaplin always walked swiftly, his arms bent, his hands even with his breast, his fingers snapping continually. I always knew that he could be easily approached at such a time. He seldom, if ever, wore light clothes. The nearest approach to it was the wearing if a pair of flannel trousers. (Jim Tully, "The Real Life Story Of Charlie Chaplin," Pictorial Review, April 1927)
*In an interview in 1959, Sutherland said that when Chaplin wore the green suit "all hell broke loose." (Jeffrey Vance, Chaplin: Genius Of The Cinema, 2003)
Florey was working as a reporter for the magazine at the time. They are looking at the June 16, 1922 issue (below) with French actor, Gaston Modot, on the cover.
I have never seen a Chaplin film with a live orchestra so I'm vey excited. There was a nice write-up about the show in the Lexington paper yesterday, so I hope some people will come out to see it. Unfortunately, there is a UK (University of KY) basketball game on TV tonight (UK vs LSU in the SEC tournament), and here in the Big Blue Nation that trumps everything. Even though my husband is a fan of both Charlie and orchestral music, I know he'll still be dying to check the score about halfway through the show.
