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The Circus Clippings 66/376

Evening Star, Washington, D. C., August 1, 1926.

The Circus Scenes

„Down from his eminence comes the brave fellow“

Editorial content. „Chaplin‘s New Screen Stunt.

      FROM the thumping praise-drums of Hollywood and“ (...)

„typewriters of Times Square“ (...) „advance notices

of The Circus“ (...) „silent drama and“ (...) „Charlie Chaplin.

      Recently the magazines have been telling in droll

paragraphs of the visit made by Chaplin in New York last

Summer, when he became acquainted with the

Feitlebaums and Looeys of le M. Milt Gross. They do say, too,

that Chaplin and Gross talked into the latest hours,

and that the result of their converse was an invitation from

the comedian to the comic artist to sit in as advisory

counsel on The Circus.

      The outgrowth of that conversation seems to have been

that Mr. Gross went to Hollywood, composed some

of the ,gags‘ – as movie lexicographers term comic sequences

– and then departed homewards.

      While in New York Chaplin explained his employment

of ,gag men‘ by asserting the negligibility of plot. He

said that in his next picture, as in others, characterization, which

is so easily picturized through extreme incidents that

amount to moving caricatures, will be the thing.

      ,Producers assert that the public wants this, that or the

other – battle, murder and sudden death in evening

dress and smoking jacket. But if you have the neatest tailored

plot in the world and have not living characters, you

have nothing,‘ said Chaplin.

      Among the peanut shells and the sawdust rings under

the commonly denominated ,big top,‘ there will

be enacted between Chaplin and his new leading lady,

a 17-year-old girl named Merna Kennedy, many

of these incidents which give atmosphere and character

to the film and guffaws to the customers. One of

these scenes depicts Charlie on a tight rope. Chaplin can

walk the taut wire with some degree of success.

However, in The Circus he is faking it.

      Then the wire snaps.

      Unaware that his overhead support has broken,

Charlie keeps on skipping up and down the

length of the wire. Suddenly he spies the dangling wire

before his eyes. He looks up. He looks down

at the monkeys. He looks at the wire and his face goes

white. Down from his eminence comes the brave

fellow, proud before his fall.“ (...)

      Text in parts identical with Hartford Courant, 

      Hartford, Conn., May 5, 1926 or Detroit Free Press,

      Detroit, Mich., May 16, 1926.

Redaktioneller Inhalt

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