Word: chaplinitis
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...with sinus trouble clangs for the twiddling feet of Big Jim McKay, swashbuckling prospector who picks his teeth and his sweethearts with a Colt 44. The tiny mustachioed orphan of the storm beams innocently over the shoulder of McKay's own dearest. . . . Old stuff about an endearing note which Chaplin receives by mistake. . . . Out to make his pile so that he can wed the Klondike Kitty Kelly . . . . More prospectors*. . . . The big strike; the search for the girl; the scene on board the ocean liner in which the stunted erstwhile prospector, now in purple and fine sable, lounges on the first...
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London in 1889; his mother, part Irish, part Spanish, was playing there in a stock company. His father was a small-time music hall favorite...
Newspaper men have killed his parents in various ways; it is said that the paternal Chaplin died of natural causes and his widow (known to the boards as Lily Harley) went into dressmaking, taught Charles and his brother Sydney to hem flounces; there is still another affecting scene in which Chaplin, a sallow waif in bloomers, is portrayed leading his starved mother to a poorhouse while London gamins revile him for his kindliness. It was owing to this incident, some doters, declare, that his eyes acquired that tragic, haunted cast...
...first efforts to be funny in celluloid were dismal. Keystone directors feared that he was overpaid, offered to cancel the contract. Chaplin told Roscoe Arbuckle, the now deposed cinema clown, that he needed a pair of shoes. Arbuckle tossed him a pair of his own enormous brogues. "There you are, man," he said. "Perfect fit!" Chaplin put them on, cocked his battered derby over his ear, twisted the ends of his prim mustache. His face was very sad. He attempted a jaunty walk which became, inevitably, a heart-breaking waddle. He put his hand on the seat of his trousers...
...give a damn about anybody. ..." Critics took him up. On the strength of his avowed penchant for philosophical thought, they decided that he was a genius. H. G. Wells was proud to meet him. George Bernard Shaw gave him a couple of hundred well-chosen words. Meanwhile, Genius Chaplin continued to put one foot in front of the other much as before. He sat down in eggs. He held babies in his lap. His salary became $1,000,000 a year...