I have been a fan for about 30 years now, and while I have not constantly been buying things, I have gathered a nice assortment, and stories to go with them. Below are not all the things I have, but the ones that mean the most.
“Chaplin: His Life and Art” by David Robinson
The first thing, and still one of my top things, is a hardback copy of David Robinson’s “Chaplin, His Life and Art”. It’s sitting just a couple feet from where I’m writing now. And it was the first Chaplin item I bought. I wrote more about how I got it on Day 16.
“Charlie Chaplin: King of Comedy“ by Gerith Von Ulm
This book’s biggest distinction in my collection is it being the oldest of all my Chaplin books. Published in 1940, it’s a biography with Chaplin’s longtime Japanese valet and secretary, Toraichi Kono, as it’s main source I found it in a tiny bookstore. Well it was more like a stall. Part of a flea market that was inside an air-conditioned building. It was so tiny that only two or three people could fit!
Photographs from the set of Limelight
Back in 1995 I bought two photographs from a photographer who was on the set of Limelight. Bernie Schoenfield was a professional photographer who was hired by a magazine to shoot pictures during the making of the film.
I have not seen these photographs anywhere else since, not even on the internet, so they are very special to me 🥰
I had started to write more about meeting him for this post, but it was too long, and deserves it’s own post anyway. So that will be for later!
Movie Posters
I have a big poster for The Kid that I bought from a street vendor in Paris, France, many years ago. We were walking along a street, saw a vendor selling various books and some posters. While I was looking at The Kid poster, a young girl (10-12) and her mom were walking past and the girl said excitedly “Oh, Charlie Chaplin!”
Below is my Instagram post of two other posters. I had both of these up last year. Then a month or so later, The Adventurer fell down. But, as I said in my IG post, I love these so much!!
My sister’s mother in law gave it to me. She was given it by students of hers. She told me she doesn’t know why since she didn’t collect dolls or was a Chaplin fan. So when she found out I was a fan, she said I would enjoy it much more than she did. It originally came with a metal cane, but I have lost that over the years.
“Le manoir de mon pere” by Eugene Chaplin
This book I got awhile ago and it’s only in French, no English translation. Even though I couldn’t read French, I got it anyway because there’s lots of pictures of. I am currently learning French, and one of the reasons why is so I can read this book. A couple weeks ago I took it out and could immediately read the title without having to figure it out (Yeah, it’s not hard to figure out, but I understood *why*). I was proud of myself. And one day I plan on being able to read the whole book 🙂
Speaking of foreign language (or, rather, non-English). I also have “Mein Freund Charlie” by Jerry Epstein which is the German edition of Remembering Charlie (another great book with lots of pictures)
Customized Jacket with Chaplin’s face
Way back in the summer of 1996, I was in a circus (and, boy, is that a whole other story! And yes, Chaplin is linked with that too). One of our stops was in Harrisburg, PA, in a field next to a mall. My boyfriend and I went to inside to look around and saw a shop where you could get costumed designed one-of-a-kind shirts, jackets, etc made. He had a jacket with his three types of clowns he performed as (yes, really, he was a professional clown!). And me? I had Chaplin’s face put on the back of a black jacket. It looked, and still looks, awesome!
Chaplin CD soundtrack with ticket stub
I wrote about this back on Day 8, but I’ll share it her as well
“A picture I took a couple years ago: My very worn out CD of the Chaplin soundtrack, and in the middle, my ticket stub from the United Artists theater where I watched it on it’s nation-wide opening day.”
And that’s it!
After almost 3 years, I finally finished my 30 Day Charlie Chaplin Challenge! Huzzah! This was a lot of fun to write about. Most challenging was on Attenborough’s Chaplin movie because there was so much I had stuck in my brain since seeing it in theaters in 1993 and I finally got a big chunk of it somewhat organized and written out.
Future Challenges
I have a few other 30 Day Challenges lined up like:
Smothers Brothers (been wanting to do this for a loooong tiiimmee!)
Favorite Albums (challenged by my sister Megan)
Favorite Movies (challenged by my friend Sean) – Will there be a Chaplin movie on this list? Is that a rhetorical question?
