Charlie & Rob: Two Weeks and Counting

One week ago, previews began for "Chaplin: The Musical." The show opens in two weeks, on Sept. 10. This is a big event - for fans of Chaplin and for new Broadway shows. So I think it's only fitting to turn this post into a "Time with Charlie Chaplin and Rob McClure."

McClure, as I'm sure you know, plays the lead. As he did when the show first appeared at the La Jolla Playhouse as "Limelight" two years ago. The show was a big hit there and, given the talent involved with the current production, will only be better. Some highly dedicated and talented people with impressive credentials are involved.

But back to Rob. To tell you the truth, I admire him but don't envy him. Chaplin's moves and expressions are so well known, I'm sure the audience will be comparing him to what they've seen of The Little Tramp on the screen. For instance, Rob spent countless hours perfecting one of Charlie's most famous bits: the dance of the bread rolls, from "The Gold Rush." Rob called it "extremely difficult in its simplicity." He's right. And I believe that's what made so many of Chaplin's scenes works of art. Here's a link to McClure and director Warren Carlyle talking about that dance and what it took to bring it to the stage.  Rob talks about the famous Bread Roll Ballet

There have been shows on Broadway before based on famous people. But I doubt if there has been anyone more famous than Chaplin represented. Not only famous, but so familiar for his screen performances. Capturing that "essence" of Chaplin was more than just impersonation. It had to be true. I like what the director said about Rob: "He knows how to embody Chaplin."

Recently McClure talked about his three favorite Chaplin films. Two of them were somewhat expected: "City Lights" and "The Great Dictator." But the third one surprised me. It's one of my favorite shorts. Chaplin made it in 1916 for The Mutual Film Co. The title is "One AM" and it's a tour de force in a solo performance by Charlie (except for a short bit at the open with a cab driver played by Albert Austin). Here's a link to the three films. You'll get to see the complete "One AM" and the complete "City Lights." I'm not sure where the print of "City Lights" originated but, according to a logo and translations on the title cards, it looks as though it might be Russian.

I think the fact that Rob picked "One AM" says a lot about how he admires Chaplin's sense of movement, invention, and timing. If you've never seen this one, check it out. 
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/163363/pass-the-popcorn-chaplin-star-rob-mcclure-reveals-his-top-three-favorite-charlie-chaplin-films/

Besides my interest in Chaplin the man and The Little Tramp, I am fascinated with shows that combine movies and stage, Hollywood and Broadway. From the videos I've seen promoting the musical, it appears they have accomplished this in an imaginative and entertaining way. Of course I won't know for sure until I see the show, which happens in a couple of weeks. But if it's as good as everything else I've seen, I know it will be done as Chaplin would have done it: To perfection.

I'll end with Chaplin's own words, in a 1967 interview with Richard Merryman.
"I care about my work. It's the best thing I do. If I could do something else better, I would do it. But I can't. And so this thing that I've got, whatever it is, whether it's creativeness or whatever it is, I care, I really care."

He could also be talking about the people involved in "Chaplin: The Musical."

Here's a link to more videos and information about the show: 
http://broadwayworld.com/topic/BECOMING-CHAPLIN

The Chaplin Exhibit in St. Louis

My road to the Chaplin exhibit at the St. Louis County Library began in New Orleans in 1960. I had been living in San Francisco for about a year, hovering somewhere between Beatniks and a regular 9-to-5. Neither had worked out for me. So I stopped in New Orleans on the way home, not the most direct route but a fortuitous detour. I watched a Kennedy/Nixon debate on a little TV set in a French Quarter bar one night. The following day I wandered along the streets, not really looking for anything in particular, when I stopped at an artist's gallery on one of the narrow side streets. Inside I saw a work of art, framed, hanging on the brick wall. It was a charcoal drawing of Charlie Chaplin. 

I told the artist I liked it, wanted to buy it, but didn't have the money. I left...without the drawing. Four months later, back home in St. Louis with a job, I had the money, wrote the artist, heard back that he had put the artwork away for me, knowing I'd buy it someday. And that's how it started. 

Now, 50 years later, after numerous visits to book stores, eBay, garage sales, antique stores, and even the Montecito Inn, I figured it was time to put some of the items on display. The most difficult part was deciding on the items. 

Joe Delmore at work

With the help of friend and fellow Chaplin aficionado Joe Delmore, the exhibit went up for public enjoyment on Wednesday, August 1, and will remain there for the entire month. Joe missed his calling. He could have been one of retail's great window designers. Besides having a sharp eye for details in movie scenes, his sense of balance, flow and focus elevated the display from "nice" to "superb."

A rewarding side note: while we were arranging the items, I was surprised by how many people stopped, smiled, and talked about Chaplin and silent movies. The exhibit contains over 50 items, including posters from the Museum of the Moving Image in London (now closed) when they were celebrating Chaplin's 100th birthday. Books from Sweden, France, Ukraine, Germany, Japan and India. 

A match book cover from the legendary Hollywood restaurant, Chasen's, signed by Charlie. The restaurant opened in 1936, was famous for it's chili, and celebrities, and shuttered in 1995. True to Hollywood habits of ignoring its past, the building was demolished to make room for a grocery store.

Even a beach towel (not vintage, never used) and a tee-shirt with a caricature by David Levine. I have a lithograph signed by Hirschfeld, but kept it at home. Too large for the display case. I also excluded two large boxes of clippings, photos, cards, etc. that would have made the exhibit look like an attic. 


I have seen two great Chaplin exhibits in my life. The first was at the aforementioned Museum of the Moving Image, in London. Located on the South Bank of the Thames, it was literally just blocks from where Charlie was born and spent an impoverished youth. The items on display put me back into the late 19th century, gaining insight into the world of the young Chaplin.

The other exhibit appeared in October, 2010, at the Zanesville Museum of Art. Organized by Lisa Stein, who was responsible for the 
First Charlie Chaplin International Conference, 
the exhibit featured a remarkable array of 
Chaplin material - letters, photographs, artwork, books   and magazines, personal items. What made it a singular experience for me was to be wandering around the museum in the company of people like David Robinson, Chuck Maland, David Shepard, and other Chaplin experts and writers from around the world. My only regret was not staying in Zanesville an extra day at the museum.

If you're in St. Louis, or driving through, stop by the Library, across from the swanky Plaza Frontenac collection of up-scale stores, most of which Charlie would not have patronized. 



If you're in New York - caution: plug alert - check out the new show on Broadway, "Chaplin: The Musical," which begins previews on Aug. 21 and opens on Sept. 10.

The Three Stags Pub, courtesy of Carl Sturmer

A pint of bitter. To your health.

If you're in London, stop by the Three Stags Pub for a pint. That's the last place Charlie ever saw his father. I have a glass from there, thanks to another Chaplin friend and fan, Carl Sturmer of New York. Carl has documented a lot of buildings and locations in London connected to Chaplin, which I'll be referring to in future posts. My "to do" list now includes sharing a few pints with Carl at the Three Stags.

The Music in His Life

The Barrymore Theater on W. 47th St. in NYC

The Chaplin name will brighten Broadway starting this August. That's when "Chaplin: The Musical" begins previews, with the opening set for Sept. 10, 2012. Rehearsals are scheduled to begin next week. 

Which leads me to the subject of Charlie and music, a connection that began when he was a young boy in London and which continued throughout his life. Charlie talks about seeing two street musicians in Kennington Cross:

"It was here that I first discovered music, or where I first learned its rare beauty, a beauty that has gladdened and haunted me from that moment. It all happened one night while I was there, about midnight. I recall the whole thing so distinctly.

"I was just a boy, and its beauty was like some sweet mystery. I did not understand. I only knew I loved it and I became reverent as the sounds carried themselves through my brain via my heart.

"I suddenly became aware of a harmonica and a clarinet playing a weird, harmonious message. I learned later that it was 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee.' It was played with such feeling that I became conscious for the first time of what melody really was. My first awakening to music."

That's the way Charlie remembered it in 1921, when he wrote "My Trip Abroad." In 1952 he talked about music during a BBC interview. Fred Karno was head of the music hall troupe that Charlie had joined before coming to the U.S.

"The Karno sketches had splendid music. For instance, if they had squalor surroundings with a lot of comedy tramps working in it, then, you see, they would have very beautiful boudoir music, something of the eighteenth century, very lush and very grandioso, just purely as satirical and as a counterpoint; and I copied a great deal from Mr. Fred Karno in that direction."

Charlie played the cello and the violin. Left-handed. He had the instruments restrung, reversing the sequence of the strings. To make this even more interesting, he was not classically trained in music and could not read or write music. Still, he heard it and realized its importance in his films. In 1926 he told a reporter:

"Music is extremely important....that is why I welcome the efforts being made to provide music by mechanical systems, such as the DeForest and the Vitaphone. Mechanical music which has the quality of a symphony orchestra is much better as an accompaniment than feeble vamping on a piano or the excruciating efforts of an incompetent or ill-led orchestra."

And as any Chaplin fan knows, he had zero tolerance for incompetence.

According to Eric James, Chaplin's music associate, "No one understood the power of musical accompaniment to film better than Charles Chaplin whose instinct for and exposure to music served him well as he began to construct his classic films." 

Chaplin's final film, his only one in color, was "A Countess from Hong Kong." As he did with many of his scores, he conducted, as in this shot from the recording session for that film. One final comment about Chaplin and his music: he wrote one of the most popular songs ever to come from a movie. The movie was "Modern Times," in 1936. The song was "Smile."