The first, Making a Living, also marked the first time Charlie Chaplin appeared on film. The simple story cast Chaplin in a role with villainous leanings, as a schemer trying to out maneuver a rival reporter. Not only did his character hint at little of Chaplin's future comedic charm, but none of the usual "Tramp" apparel was yet present. Chaplin wore a top hat, monocle and drooping mustache. For Keystone, Making a Living was a fairly well developed picture. It was shot both in the studio and on location (in a nearby garden). But Chaplin reportedly hated the film. According to the biography Chaplin, His Life and Art by David Robinson, "[Chaplin] was outraged when he saw the finished thing and discovered that in the cutting, Lehrman [the director] had excised or mangled good gags which he had introduced." So it wasn't a perfect start, but still the press still saw something of his future genius, dubbing Chaplin "a comedian of the first water."
Next in the series is Caught in a Cabaret, Chaplin's twelfth film for Keystone. Many filmographies give Chaplin co-director credit for this short, along with Mabel Normand. But there is some dispute over when Chaplin actually made his directorial debut. His 1964 autobiography claims Chaplin's first directorial effort to be Caught in the Rain (number 13 for Keystone). While in an August 9, 1914 letter to brother Sydney, he marked six films as "My Own." This list included Twenty Minutes of Love (Keystone #11) which, if true, would be Chaplin's first directorial outing, and it excluded Caught in a Cabaret. Either way, the short Caught in a Cabaret helped cement the on screen relationship between Chaplin and co-star Mabel Normand. The story finds Chaplin as a waiter who rescues Mabel from a thief and then pretends to be the Ambassador from Greece.
The third short featured in Chaplin at Keystone is another with Mabel Normand -- Mabel's Busy Day. It was Chaplin's 18th Keystone effort and was filmed largely on location at a local racetrack. The plot casts Mabel as a hot dog vendor at the track, and Charlie as a thorn in her side. It's another of the films usually included on filmographies as co-written and directed by Chaplin and Normand that Chaplin failed to claim in the letter to his brother. But one thing that's for certain about Mabel's Busy Day, it demonstrated Chaplin's growing popularity. When an earlier film, Kid's Auto Races, was shot, the racetrack crowd showed little interest. But as Robinson points out in Chaplin, His Life and Art, "in Mabel's Busy Day, the crowds in the background [were] huge, and [had] to be roped off from the performers." In just sixteen films, Chaplin had found a following.
Last up, is The Rounders, film number 26 for Chaplin at Keystone. This short teams Chaplin with Fatty Arbuckle as a pair of drunks out to escape their domineering wives. Chaplin is certainly given writer-director credit on this one. In fact, during his last three months at Keystone, Chaplin directed a total of ten films - all of his remaining films for the studio except for the feature Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) which was directed by Mack Sennett. So in less than a year, Chaplin had learned an important Hollywood lesson -- it's good to be in charge.
And that's at the heart of what the four shorts captured in Chaplin at Keystone Studios reveal; the growth of Chaplin during his time at Keystone, from novice film actor to take-charge director. This idea, of creative independence, would be central to the rest of his film career.
Producer: Mack Sennett
Director: Henry Lehrman, Mabel Normand, Charles Chaplin
Screenplay: Reed Heustis, Mabel Normand, Charles Chaplin
Cinematography: Frank D. Williams
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Henry Lehrman, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle.
BW-55m.
by Stephanie Thames
