The Tramp was born in the wardrobe department of Keystone Studios, in Los Angeles. The year was 1914, and Charlie Chaplin was a twenty-four-year-old contract player. Keystone was known for its slapstick comedies, and pantomime was more Chaplin’s comic genre. At first, nobody seemed sure what to do with him. Then one day the head of the studio, Mack Sennett, sensed that a scene they were shooting needed some funny business. Chaplin happened to be standing nearby. Sennett ordered him to put on comedy makeup “anything will do.”
On his way to wardrobe, Chaplin decided that everything should be a contradiction: a coat and hat that were too small, pants and shoes that were too big. Since the character was not supposed to be young, he added the mustache— very small, so it wouldn’t hide his expression. He performed the scene; Sennett loved it; and the Tramp was launched on his brilliant career.
In the earliest Tramp movies, “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” (seventeen minutes long) and “Kid Auto Races at Venice” (about six minutes), the Tramp character is annoying and disruptive. He smokes and he drinks. (Chaplin had sometimes played a drunk on the vaudeville stage.) But the character was popular, and after Chaplin added the Pierrot element, the touch of poetry, the Tramp as we know him came into being.
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THE ST. ALWYNN GIRLS AT SEA SHEILA HETI
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys' ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys' ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
WHEELS UP
Can the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary negotiate a course between the E.U. and President Trump?
A CRITIC AT LARGE - CHECK THIS OUT
If you think apps and social media are ruining our ability to concentrate, you haven't been paying attention.
PARTY FAVORS
Perle Mesta and the golden age of the Washington hostess.
CHARLOTTE'S PLACE
Living with the ghost of a cinéma-vérité pioneer.
THE CURRENT CINEMA - GHOST'S-EYE VIEW
“Presence.”
MILLENNIALS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Fame is fickle, and no one knows this better than millennials. Once, they were everywhere—in television laugh tracks for “The Big Bang Theory,” in breathless think pieces about social-media narcissism, and acting the fool in 360p YouTube comedy videos. Then—poof! Gone like yesterday’s avocado toast.
ANNALS OF INQUIRY: CHASING A DREAM
What insomniacs know.
THE MASTER BUILDER
Norman Foster's empire of image control.
INTIMATE PROJECTS DEPT. THE GOLDFISH BOWL
There are roughly eight hundred galleries that hold the permanent collection of the Met, and as of a recent Tuesday morning the married writers Dan and Becky Okrent had examined every piece in all but two.
