By the end of 1914, Charlie Chaplin had become the most popular actor in films, and reporters were clamoring for interviews with the comedy sensation. But no reporter had more access than Fred Goodwins. A British actor who joined Chaplin’s stock company in early 1915, Goodwins began writing short accounts of life at the studio and submitted them to publications. In February 1916 the British magazine Red Letter published the first of what became a series of more than thirty-five of Goodwins’s articles. Written in breezy prose, the articles cover a two-year period during which Chaplin’s popularity and creativity reached new heights. Only one copy of the complete series is known to exist, and its recent rediscovery marks a significant find for Chaplin fans. Charlie Chaplin’s Red Letter Days: At Work with the Comic Genius is a vivid account of the ebb and flow of life at the Chaplin studio. Goodwins was an astute observer who deepens our understanding of Chaplin’s artistry and sheds new light on his personality. He also provides charming and revealing portraits of Chaplin’s unsung collaborators, such as his beloved costar Edna Purviance, his burly nemesis Eric Campbell, and other familiar faces that populate his films. Goodwins depicts Chaplin in the white heat of artistic creation, an indefatigable imp entertaining and inspiring the company on the set. He also describes gloomy, agonizing periods when Chaplin was paralyzed with indecision or exhaustion, or simply frustrated that it was raining and they couldn’t shoot. Reproduced here for the first time, the articles have been edited by film historian David James and annotated by Chaplin expert Dan Kamin to highlight their revelations. Illustrated with a selection of rare images that reflect the Chaplin craze, including posters, sheet music, and magazine covers, Charlie Chaplin’s Red Letter Days provides a fascinating excursion into the private world of the iconic superstar whose films move and delight audiences to this day. It will appeal to movie fans, comedy buffs, and anyone who wants to know what really went on behind the scenes with Chaplin and his crew.

Charlie Chaplin was a skilled comedian, filmmaker and composer, and the mission of this book is to educate readers on the wide variety of Chaplin’s artistry: the subtlety of his mimetic satire, the sophistication of his film direction, and his prodigious musical skill that resulted in some of film’s greatest orchestral arrangements. This encyclopedia also emphasizes the singular nature of Chaplin’s biography: his unprecedented renown, the wide list of notables in art and culture with whom he fraternized, and the controversies that seemed to dog each stage of his life, perhaps most notably in his run-ins with the FBI and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, both of whom suspected him of communist leanings. Charlie Chaplin: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures his life, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction that offers a brief account of his life, and a dictionary section listing entries on Chaplin’s childhood, career, family, and associates. The bibliography is one of the largest available of works concerning Chaplin.

This book reprints and analyses reviews of music hall acts from the family magazine The Red Letter, which was published by the Scottish based firm D C Thomson from 1899 to 1987. The articles under review range in date from 1902 to 1914, covering theatres all over Britain and acts from around the world. The reviews are uniquely detailed and shed light not only on the early acts of comics who would later go on to achieve wider fame, such as Will Hay and Robb Wilton, but also reveal the acts of long forgotten performers. These so-called ‘wines and spirits’ acts—acts that would never top the bill but who nevertheless toured the halls, sometimes for years on end, such as female impersonator Albert Letine, comedy magician Chris van Bern and female stand up Anna Dorothy amongst many others—deserve to be remembered every bit as much as the top of the bill acts. The articles are arranged in sections, covering race, gender, character comedy, physical comedy, male comedy and specialty or ‘spesh’ acts. The reviews reveal not only the contents of the acts but also the audience reactions to those acts and prevailing contemporary Edwardian attitudes. The articles are accompanied by their original illustrations, some of which are unique and, like the articles themselves, unseen for over a century.

A thorough look into the early life and career of Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin’s career has been described, critiqued, and scrutinized. There are book-length studies on Chaplin’s music hall career, his career at Keystone Studios and the Mutual Studios. Somehow, his tenure with First National studios, however, has been largely neglected, even though it was during this several-year contractual time period that Chaplin built and occupied his own studio for the first time, that he attempted and succeeded in filming a comedy feature (The Kid) and that he helped to set up United Artists, an organization that protected the salaries and creative freedom of actors in Hollywood. This period in Chaplin’s story is especially interesting because such landmark moments are accompanied by Chaplin’s first marriage and divorce, the death of his first child, his friendship with French silent film comedian Max Linder, World War I and the role he would play in it, and the production and release of several unsuccessful films that marked Chaplin’s first creative blockage - one that threatened his future career. This book will discuss the transitional periods just before and after the First National contract, as well as the all-important period satisfying it. Archival evidence provides most of the support for the book’s assertions, from the Chaplin archive (property of Roy Export, digitized by Cineteca di Bologna, Italy), and the personal archives of other individuals or institutions discussed. Rare photos will illustrate the story.

A study of Charlie Chaplin, considered the world's greatest cinematic comedian and a man said to be one of the most influential screen artists in movie history.

From his early shorts in the 1910s through his final film in 1967, Charlie Chaplin's genius embraced many arts: mime, dance, acting, music, writing, and directing. The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion examines Chaplin's fusion of these arts in his films, providing new understanding of how movement communicates, how comedy routines are structured, and how stage skills can be translated to the screen. An acclaimed comic performing artist himself, Dan Kamin brings a unique insider's perspective to the subject. He explores how Chaplin's physical virtuosity led him to create the timeless visual comedy that brought silent films to their peak. Kamin uncovers the underlying principles behind the filmmaker's gags, illuminating how Chaplin conjured comedy from the fundamental physical laws of movement. He then presents provocative new interpretations of the comedian's sound films, showing how Chaplin remained faithful to his silent comedy roots even as he kept reinventing his art for changing times. Kamin also offers new insights into how Chaplin achieved rapport with audiences and demonstrates how comedy created nearly a century ago is still fresh today. Lavishly illustrated with many never-before-published images, The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin provides the only in-depth analysis of Chaplin as a movement artist and physical comedian. Revealing the inner working of Chaplin's mesmerizing art, this book will appeal not just to Chaplin fans but to anyone who loves comedy. This paperback edition features an annotated bibliography and a foreword by Scott Eyman, author of Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille and Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford.

Film star Charlie Chaplin spent February 1931 through June 1932 touring Europe, during which time he wrote a travel memoir entitled “A Comedian Sees the World.” This memoir was published as a set of five articles in Women’s Home Companion from September 1933 to January 1934 but until now had never been published as a book in the U.S. In presenting the first edition of Chaplin’s full memoir, Lisa Stein Haven provides her own introduction and notes to supplement Chaplin’s writing and enhance the narrative. Haven’s research revealed that “A Comedian Sees the World” may very well have been Chaplin’s first published composition, and that it was definitely the beginning of his writing career. It also marked a transition into becoming more vocally political for Chaplin, as his subsequent writings and films started to take on more noticeably political stances following his European tour. During his tour, Chaplin spent time with numerous politicians, celebrities, and world leaders, ranging from Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to Albert Einstein and many others, all of whom inspired his next feature films, Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and A King in New York (1957). His excellent depiction of his experiences, coupled with Haven’s added insights, makes for a brilliant account of Chaplin’s travels and shows another side to the man whom most know only from his roles on the silver screen. Historians, travelers, and those with any bit of curiosity about one of America’s most beloved celebrities will all want to have A Comedian Sees the World in their collections. Available only in the USA and Canada.

Charlie Chaplin's remarkable life and comedic talent have been the focus of countless popular and scholarly studies. In this groundbreaking work, Chaplin's often underrated skills as a film director take center stage. Highlighting the screen icon's significance as a filmmaker, this study focuses on the heart of Chaplin's cinema--his silent works starring his alter-ego, Charlie--and examines both his great silent film features like The Kid, The Gold Rush and Modern Times, and his shorter, earlier films like The Immigrant, The Pawn Shop, The Pilgrim and A Dog's Life. An analysis of the formal properties of Chaplin's filmmaking reveals the merit of his cinema, the depth of its emotion and the extent of its meaning. Chaplin is among the great artists of any medium, in any time, with an ability to touch on very subtle aspects of the human condition.

"This book is a visual and oral history, telling the story of Chaplin's pursuit of beauty, and how he captured it on film. Compiled primarily from documents in the Charlie Chaplin archives, as well as other archives around the world, this book shows how Chaplin's work was not only inspired by his early poverty-stricken life in London, but also by his working life in the music halls of Britain and on the vaudeville stages of America."--Introduction, page 9.