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New Book: The Early Years of Charlie Chaplin by Lisa Stein Haven


Professor Lisa Stein Haven takes us back to The Early Years of Charlie Chaplin, her latest book just released by White Owl (an imprint of Pen & Sword Books).

The Early Years 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, 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 discusses 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, digitised by Cineteca di Bologna, Italy), and the personal archives of other individuals or institutions discussed. Rare photos illustrate the story.


New French Edition of My Autobiography


How well do you know the man behind the legend?

We are thrilled to announce the new French edition of Chaplin’s MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY published by the Éditions Robert Laffont with a portrait by Nickolas Muray of Chaplin looking quite dashing on the cover.



New Book Review: “There are Some Secrets” by Sara Sass


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Book: “There are Some Secrets” by Sara Sass - Atmosphere Press 2021

Short biography of E.V. Lucas, an important member of the London Edwardian literary milieu, close friend of J.M. Barrie and publisher of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books, starting with When We Were Very Young when Lucas became chairman of Methuen in 1924. Both Milne and E.H. Shepard, who illustrated the Pooh books, worked at Punch magazine with Lucas, whose idea their collaboration was.

Punch was an English institution, which Chaplin loved. He owned bound volumes of the magazine (now in the library in the Manoir de Ban at Chaplin’s World) and in the early 1950s browsed through them, bookmarking illustrations to show how he wanted the sets for his London Edwardian film Limelight (1952) to look.

E.V Lucas organised a dinner in honour of Chaplin at the Garrick Club in London in autumn 1921. This was Chaplin’s first trip back to London since his departure as a little known theatre performer in 1912. Chaplin wrote in My Trip Abroad:

All those at the dinner were well known in art circles—E. V. Lucas, Walter Hackett, George Frampton, J. M. Barrie, Herbert Hammil, Edward Knoblock, Harry Graham, N. Nicholas, Nicholas D. Davies, Squire Bancroft, and a number of others whose names I do not remember. (..) I am late and that adds to an embarrassment which started as soon as I knew I was to meet Barrie and so many other famous people.

There is Barrie. He is pointed out to me just about the time I recognise him myself. This is my primary reason for coming. To meet Barrie. He is a small man, with a dark moustache and a deeply marked, sad face, with heavily shadowed eyes; but I detect lines of humour lurking around his mouth. Cynical? Not exactly. I catch his eye and make motions for us to sit together, and then find that the party had been planned that way anyhow. There is the inevitable hush for introductions. How I hate it. Names are the bane of my existence. Personalities, that’s the thing.

But everyone seems jovial except Barrie. His eyes look sad and tired. But he brightens as though all along there had been that hidden smile behind the mask. I wonder if they are all friendly toward me, or if I am just the curiosity of the moment.

There is an embarrassing pause, after we have filed into the dining-room, which E. V. Lucas breaks. ‘Gentlemen, be seated.’

I felt almost like a minstrel man and the guests took their seats as simultaneously as though rehearsed for it.

(..) The food is being served and I find that E. V. Lucas has provided a treacle pudding, a particular weakness of mine, to which I do justice.”

At this dinner J. M Barrie, possibly as a joke, invited Chaplin to play the part of Peter Pan. As Chaplin wrote later, “It is too big and grand to risk spoiling it by some chance witless observation, so I change the subject and let this golden opportunity pass.”

In 1920, in THE WORLD’S DESIRE of Adventures and Enthusiasms E.V. Lucas interestingly discusses Chaplin’s potential to make audiences cry as well as laugh, before the comedian himself had actually done so in The Kid in 1921.

Lucas’s difficult family relationships, and his friendships with the literati of the time, are carefully detailed in this new publication by Sara Sass.


Cineteca di Bologna Publishes New Book on The Freak


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The Italian edition of a new book by David Robinson on Charlie Chaplin’s unfinished film THE FREAK, published by Cineteca di Bologna, is available in Italian bookstores and on the Cineteca’s online shop. Other language versions are hoped for in 2021.

This book is not just the first-ever publication of an unknown Chaplin film script, but the comprehensive presentation of an unfinished film – one of Charles Chaplin’s most remarkable works, and his last. Chaplin had the idea for THE FREAK in 1968-9 when he was close to 80, and was inspired to produce the script in a much shorter time and with more confidence than any preceding screenplay. Once the script was complete, Chaplin and his producer Jerry Epstein saw the urgency, given Chaplin’s age, of getting the film into active production as soon as possible. Hence, even while still seeking funding, Chaplin at his own cost engaged designers to present his visual concepts and to produce storyboards, and explored the elaborate (pre-CGI) special effects techniques the story demanded. In particular, Chaplin, Epstein and the studio special-effects department spent much time and money in producing the prototype of the big articulated wings which were to be attached to the leading actress – Chaplin’s daughter, Victoria – throughout the film. (The wings are now on display at Chaplin’s World in Switzerland.)

The recent acquisition of some Jerry Epstein papers by the Chaplin office revealed surprising information about THE FREAK: the project was actually one step away from being made, as evidenced by pre-production files, casting, location scouting and extensive correspondence between Epstein and several studios. Although the film was never finished, Chaplin left us a rich testimony – almost 3,000 pages worth –of words, photographs and designs, together with sound recordings of his own reading of the script, and of his own experiments on the piano, when composing the musical track.

It is from these that this book is able to evoke the real essence of Charles Chaplin’s THE FREAK.

THE FREAK is Cineteca di Bologna Publishing’s second journey through unmade Chaplin films. In 2014, they published “Footlights: The World of Limelight”, which included the previously unpublished novella Footlights (the “book-of-the-film” that preceded Limelight) by Chaplin with a commentary by David Robinson. This new book publishes, for the first time, Chaplin’s complete script as well as a rich selection of previously unseen materials. The texts are assembled and edited with an accompanying commentary by David Robinson in association with Cineteca di Bologna, and in close collaboration with Victoria Chaplin, Gerald Larn, principal art director during preparation of the film, Kate Guyonvarch and the Chaplin Office in Paris, and Cecilia Cenciarelli, whose years with the Chaplin Archive have given her an unrivalled and indispensable grasp of his work.



The Music of Charlie Chaplin


Jim Lochner’s brilliant comprehensive new musical biography of Charlie Chaplin, The Music of Charlie Chaplin, is now available from McFarland Books.

Chaplin the actor is universally synonymous with his beloved Tramp character. Chaplin the director is considered one of the great auteurs and innovators of cinema history. Less well known is Chaplin the composer, whose instrumental theme for Modern Times (1936) later became the popular standard “Smile”, a Billboard hit for Nat “King” Cole in 1954.

Drawing on numerous transcriptions from 60 years of original scores, this comprehensive study reveals the untold story of Chaplin the composer and the string of famous (and not-so-famous) musicians he employed, giving fresh insight into his films and shedding new light on the man behind the icon.

Also available on Amazon: