Hollywood Heritage invites you to support their mission to raise funds and awareness to honor the Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley, a location in Hollywood where three of the greatest comedies of all time, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” (1921), Buster Keaton’s “Cops” (1922), and Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last!” (1923) were filmed. Each of these films has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as works “of enduring importance to American culture.” Hollywood Heritage hopes to install signs, a plaque, and an honorary mural at the alley.
The unveiling ceremony of the Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley will take place on September 29, 2021, the inaugural National Silent Movie Day in the U.S.
The collaborative project aims to locate, identify, and describe all historical film prints of Charlie Chaplin’s wartime comedy SHOULDER ARMS (U.S. 1918) preserved in archives and collections worldwide. For further details, visit the Project MASh website.
THE KID had its world premiere one hundred years ago today, on January 21, 1921 at Carnegie Hall in New York City in a pre-public subscription showing as part of a benefit for the Children’s Fund of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. A milestone in his artistry, THE KID was Charles Chaplin’s first full-length film as a director and his most ambitious production to date.
Chaplin created something completely new with THE KID. Films were either dramas, or comedies – but here, as in life, the two were combined in the most natural seeming way. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography that “there had been satire, farce, realism, naturalism, melodrama and fantasy, but raw slapstick and sentiment, the premise of THE KID, was something of an innovation.” He recalled being told by an industry professional, “It won’t work. The form must be pure, either slapstick or drama; you cannot mix them, otherwise one element of your story will fail.” But Chaplin followed his intuition, the film was an instant success, and the cinema industry never looked back.
In February 1921, the Morning Telegraph noted that “THE KID will live when other pictures have died. Its pathos is universal in its appeal. Its humor is classic. Chaplin is a humanitarian. He understands the hearts of the irresponsible, the children and the willing failures of the world. The joys of THE KID cannot be catalogued, they must be seen.”
THE KID is still a hit with audiences 100 years on. It is no surprise that the honorary Academy Award presented to Chaplin in 1972 was for the incalculable effect he had had in making motion pictures the art form of the 20th century. In 2011, THE KID was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
La Paternelle, a Swiss nonprofit mutual insurance company supporting orphans, has organized a children’s play for 125 years. This year, the children’s troupe will be performing a show based on Charlie Chaplin which will take place inside a circus tent set up for the occasion in Lausanne.
In December 2019 the Japan Arts Council National Theatre in Tokyo will stage a revival of the 1931 kabuki show KOMORI NO YASUSAN, written by Kimura Kinka in 1931 and based on Chaplin’s City Lights. The show has been revived and revised by Ono Hiroyuki in collaboration with Matsumoto Koshiro the 10th, who will perform in the show. Here are the first photographs of Matsumoto Koshiro the 10th in costume for the performance:
In commemoration of this year’s 130th anniversary of Chaplin’s birth, the National Theatre of Japan is reviving KOMORI NO YASUSAN, a Kabuki version of Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS that was originally performed in August 1931 at Tokyo’s Kabuki Theatre. The revival stars Matsumoto Koshiro the 10th.
The first ever Chaplin Award for Asia will be presented by Kiera Chaplin to the incredibly talented Tony Leung Chiu-Wai on November 10th, 2018 at the Shangliu Tatler Annual Ball in Shanghai.
