HIS entrances and his exits are what linger in the eye's mind. Half a century later, when the plots have disintegrated like old nitrate-film stock, the comings and goings remain indestructible.
Entrance: The Tramp. His mustache, bowler and jacket are all from the Salvation Army of Lilliput. The pants and shoes are Gulliver's discards. The step is shy, tentative, then jaunty. He is going for a walk in the jungle of the city. Titters, Howls and Boffos hang from every bough.
Exit: The girl has fallen for someone else. The Tramp sets off, his back to the camera, his bamboo cane a parenthesis of melancholy. Abruptly, the little shoulders twitch, the leg shakes off tragedy like a cramp. The head snaps to attention. Step, skip, step—the Tramp is restored, off once more on the unimproved road to Better Times.
Charlie Chaplin's off-screen life has been equally crammed with entrances and exits. None has had greater significance than those he will make next week in Los Angeles. There, the white-haired and rather fleshy 82-year-old will cross the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to accept a special Academy Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century." As the old comedian concludes his valedictory and ambles to the wings, an epoch will fade out. The ambivalent skirmish between Chaplin and the United States can be ended at last.
It began with the first entrance in 1910, when an unknown music-hall comedian found his English routines bombing on the vaudeville circuit. His sentiments were aggravated by failure, yet buoyed by the new ethos. "The American is an optimist with hustling dreams," Chaplin concluded. "Hit the jackpot! Get out from under! Sell out! Get into another racket! Why should I stick to show business? I was not dedicated to art. I began to regain confidence. Whatever happened, I was determined to stay in America."
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No other racket was necessary. Chaplin was to enter the pantheon by the stage door. One morning he tried on Fatty Arbuckle's trousers and Chester Conklin's jacket. The rest is legend. From that moment he essayed only one role—but what a role! The low comic became a visual poet; he gave slapstick soul. Comedy derives from the Greek kōmos—a dance. And indeed, as the Tramp capered about with his unique sleight of foot, he created a choreography of the human condition. Under Chaplin's direction, objects spoke out as never before: bread rolls became ballet slippers, a boot was transformed into a feast, a torn newspaper had a new career as a lace tablecloth. There have been more ambitious silent comedies than Chaplin's—Buster Keaton's The General combined yocks with the verisimilitude of Mathew Brady photographs; Harold Lloyd's and Ben Turpin's movies could wring as many laughs from an audience. But no one ever touched Chaplin's mute grace; no one ever approached the lyricism of his Eternal Immigrant lost in a country that would never be his. No one ever implied a comic past that reached back through civilization to Pan himself.