Silents are Golden: Chaplin’s Year At The Keystone Film Company
In August 1913, Charlie Chaplin wrote a letter to his brother Sidney to share some exciting news:
“I have had an offer from a moving picture company for quite a long time but I did not want to tell you until the whole thing was confirmed and it practically is settled now–all I have to do is to mail them my address and they will forward a contract. It is for the New York Motion Picture Co., a most reliable firm in the States–they have about four companies, the ‘Kay Bee’ and ‘Broncho,’ [and] ‘Keystone’ which I am to join…”
Famed today for the many classic comedies he made in the late 1910s and the 1920s, it’s easy to forget that Chaplin became a household name during his sojourn at Keystone. By 1913 Chaplin, whose English music hall career began when he was a child, had spent the past several years working as a top comedian in Fred Karno’s famed comedy company. While on a lengthy tour of the U.S.A., somewhere along the way he was contacted about appearing in films. The move to the screen would truly change his life.
The slapstick-heavy Keystone studio was home to popular names like Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, and Roscoe Arbuckle as well as the famed group of Keystone Cops (a loosely-defined group played by whatever actors were handy at the time). It was also wildly prolific, releasing two or more one-reel comedies a week. Fast-paced and full of over-the-top costumes and makeup (especially where fake mustaches were concerned), Keystone comedies revolved around romantic rivalries, burglaries, misplaced bombs, cheap saloons, dance halls, chase scenes, and various misunderstandings–just about anything was ripe for satire and hyperbole. It was a strange environment for a young British music hall star to get used to, but it didn’t take long for Chaplin to prove himself.
It’s thought that Keystone was looking to replace their comedian Fred Mace, who was planning on leaving. Accounts vary as to who spotted Chaplin first–some say it was the N.Y.M.P head Adam Kessel, some say it was executive Harry Aitkin, and Keystone boss Mack Sennett even claimed that he and Mabel Normand spotted him when they attended a Karno show in New York City. Whatever the case, in the spring of 1913 Karno manager Alf Reeves received a telegram from the New York Motion Picture Company, famously reading: “IS THERE A MAN NAMED CHAFFIN IN YOUR COMPANY OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT…”
In early December 1913 Chaplin found himself at the Keystone Film Company gates. The studio was in a hilly suburb of Los Angeles that used to be called Edendale, only a short drive from Echo Park. At the time, it consisted of some bungalows and farm buildings converted into offices and dressing rooms, with a large open air stage with white cloth hanging overhead to soften the sunlight. The shy Chaplin watched as a crowd of noisy Keystone actors headed to lunch, and felt too intimidated to make an appearance. The next day he still couldn’t bring himself to go in, and the third day Sennett finally called him to ask where he’d been.
His first Keystone film was Making a Living, released February 2, 1914, where he plays a “would-be reporter” trying to impress a girl with his new job at a newspaper. When a romantic rival at the paper takes a sensational news-worthy photo, Chaplin’s character steals the camera and tries to pass off the photo as his own. Still musing over what his Keystone persona should be, Chaplin donned a top hat, long buttoned coat, cravat, monocle, and peculiar drooping mustache–perhaps drawing on his dandy-ish Archibald Binks character from his Karno days.
It only took until his second released Keystone film for his famed “Little Tramp” character to be born–or the “look” of the Tramp, at least. The split-reel Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) was filmed on location in Venice Beach, capturing a real soapbox derby. The premise was simple: a camera crew tries to film the race, but Chaplin’s “annoying bystander” keeps strutting and posing in front of the lens, trying to get on camera. The unusual breaking of the fourth wall is still very funny today. Chaplin wears the small mustache, derby hat, tight coat and baggy pants that he’d don for the rest of the silent era. Some sources say he borrowed various items from other Keystone comedians, but it’s likely that he improvised the look from simply rummaging through the studio’s wardrobe department. The look might actually have been created for his third released film, Mabel’s Strange Predicament (1914)–but Kid Auto Races was unleashed on the world first.
Other Chaplin Keystone roles came fast and furious throughout 1914, from a quick appearance as a Keystone Cop in A Thief Catcher (only rediscovered a few years ago) to various romantic rivals, drunks, villains, flirts…whatever the flavor of the day was. He battled Ford Sterling in Between Showers, played a bumbling movie fan in A Film Johnnie, flirted with a landlady in The Star Boarder, and impersonated an actress in The Masquerader. Audiences loved him, and soon “Keystone Charlie” was the studio’s biggest draw.
Interestingly, his Keystone persona is a far cry from the “sentimental Charlie” most people associate with his ‘20s features. Keystone Charlie is always ready to kick someone through a doorway or sling bricks at a romantic rival. He flirts with men’s girlfriends, wanders drunkenly through respectable hotels, and cheerfully sits way too close to annoyed girls in parks. In a nutshell, he acts the way any mischievous boy wishes he could behave–and largely gets away with it.
In August 1914 Chaplin proudly wrote to Sidney again: “Well, Sid, I have made good. All the theaters feature my name in big letters i.e. ‘Chas Chaplin here today’…It is wonderful how popular I am in such a short time and next year I hope to make a bunch of dough. I have had all kinds of offers…” By the end of 1914, the star had headed to the Essanay studio in Chicago, which promised him a weekly salary higher than what Sennett was willing to pay. His great silent classics were still on the horizon, but his sojourn at Keystone had given him priceless experience and inspiration to draw upon in the years to come.
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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
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