Day 1 – How did you become a Chaplin fan? – 30 Day Charlie Chaplin Challenge

I don’t know if “reluctant” is exactly the right word, but it’s the closest word I can think of. Maybe “gradual” is a better word.

Charlie Chaplin is one of those people who just always seemed to have existed. My whole life I have known who he was. Or, should I say, I always knew who the Little Tramp was. Everybody does. Just in silhouette people recognize him. But it was several years before I saw Chaplin without his ultra famous costume on.

Now, I wasn’t crazy about old movies. Silent movies even less so. They were old, usually in black and white, and boring. And silents? No talking? Are you kidding me? The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life were the only ones that I liked. But Chaplin snuck up on me, bit by bit.

One of the earliest memories was Maria from (old school) Sesame Street impersonating him on the show.

Then there was catching a part of a (then new) Chaplin documentary, Unknown Chaplin, when I was 10ish (that doc will show up later in the challenge 😉 ). While it would be a few more years before I became a fan, that one viewing stuck in my memory. Loved how it told the making of (what I found out much later) The Gold Rush.

When I was well into my teens (circa 1989), I got the huge book “Chronicle of the 20th Century” which had small newspaper like articles that covered various historical world events of the last century as if they were happening in the present. And Chaplin was in there. A lot. And I thought to myself “If I was a fan of his, I would love this book even more”.

What really got me hooked was after I became a fan of classic comedy (that started about 1986, when I was 13). It started with the Smothers Brothers. I collected anything (mostly albums) that I could get my hands on. On Dick Smothers solo album Saturday Night at the World, there was a song (side 1, track 4) called “Smile” which I just loved .

I looked on the back of the album to see who wrote it: C. Chaplin, J. Turner, and G. Parsons. Seeing the C. Chaplin, I thought “Is that Charlie Chaplin? The Little Tramp guy? He wrote music too?”.

And when I watched Tom and Dick in interviews, they talked about the comedians who came before them and who they looked up to. That got me curious about those others. I got into Abbott and Costello around 1989. In two different A&C books I saw, for the first time (that I know of), a picture of Chaplin out of costume, which really through me for a loop:

Where’s his mustache? What, it wasn’t real? And his HAIR! It’s WHITE!

And then a short time after that, I got into Laurel and Hardy. While reading “Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy” by John McCabe, I read the story that Stan told about being Chaplin’s understudy back in England during their music hall days.

In it, Stan recalls a story of when the comedy troupe they were in came to America. Both of them were wondering around town when suddenly nature called. There were no public bathrooms, so they went into a saloon. Being proper English gentlemen, they felt they should buy something before using the facilities. So they each bought drinks, quickly gulped them, and then ran to the saloon’s bathrooms. I busted out laughing imagining this happening.

All that was left to finish the job of me becoming a fan was actually watching one of his movies. It was on the tv show “Dead Comics Society” on the Comedy Network (now Comedy Central). It was hosted by Robert Klein. I happened to catch it playing “Modern Times”

I didn’t think I could laugh at a movie as hard or as long as I did this one. The machine feeding Charlie in the factory had my sides hurting from laughing so much! The roller skating scene was amazing. And wow, is it packed with social commentary. And a bit of foreshadowing of Chaplin’s own life. And I discovered where “Smile” came from.

I was a full throttle fan by the time “Chaplin” came out in early 1993. I owned and read a few books, and watched a bunch more movies. Amazed by the fact that he acted, wrote, directed, composed music, produced, built his own studio, co-founded a film corporation, often all at the same time for a number of his films. I watched “Chaplin” in the theater three times, and could tell what was accurate, impressed with some Easter Eggs, and sometimes had me thinking “Where the heck did *that* come from?”. (More thoughts on that movie will show up later in the challenge).

There’s a lot of aspects to Charlie’s life that mad me laugh, cry, be baffled, impressed, roll my eyes, and feel angry (seriously 1952 America? seriously?). As Chaplin said in the beginning of “The Gentleman Tramp” documentary, “I went through a hell of a lot.”

The one thing he is not? Boring.