A Night in the Show (1915)
Chaplin's Essanay Comedies (1915) • 25m
This exceptional comedy owes its existence to Fred Karno's sketch, Mumming Birds, a burlesque of a music hall performance with terrible acts and ill-behaved patrons, in which Chaplin had found his great theatrical success playing the Inebriated Swell. Chaplin plays dual roles in the film: a version of his old stage success of the well-to-do-drunk Mr. Pest, and Mr. Rowdy, a dissipated working man, both of whom are attending a vaudeville performance.
Mr. Pest manages to cause as much disorder in the stalls as does Mr. Rowdy in the gallery. The film carefully reflects the Karno style, although it differs in significant aspects from the Mumming Birds sketch so as to avoid claims of plagiarism. Chaplin would eventually return to the idea of dual roles in the later The Idle Class (1921) and The Great Dictator (1940).
Up Next in Chaplin's Essanay Comedies (1915)
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Burlesque on Carmen (1916)
Chaplin’s burlesque of Cecil B. DeMille’s popular film version of Carmen (1915), starring the great opera diva Geraldine Farrar, was originally intended and completed as a two-reel comedy in January 1916. In Chaplin’s version, Don José becomes Darn Hosiery (Chaplin), with Edna Purviance as the se...
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Police (1916)
Police uses comedy to make pointed – if glancing – social statements which over the years became central to Chaplin’s work. The film arguably is the most mature in the series and anticipates such later films as Easy Street (1917), The Pilgrim (1923), and Modern Times (1936).
The Tramp, releas...
