What with my attending a taping here in
Athens of a popular Public Radio International
program called “Mountain Stage” and my receiving
information about the airdate for the upcoming
two-part BBC2 program
on Charlie, everything pointed to “RADIO”
for this month’s newsletter. In fact, there
is so much to say about this topic that
I’m going to follow in the BBC’s footsteps
and make this a two-parter as well. Charlie’s
relationship with radio as a medium has
been little discussed, so it was exciting
for me to discover that he was a sort of
pioneer in using this medium as a means
to market his work. As Dr. Connie Kuriyama
mentioned this summer in her paper at the
Chaplin conference, Charlie’s relationship
to the word as a unit and to the spoken
word in particular truly deserves some reconsideration.
He may have made the transition to sound
film slowly and even reluctantly, but he
was using radio to his advantages as early
as 1923, just three years after the first
ever radio program at Station KDKA in Pittsburgh
on November 2, 1920 and the same year (1923)
in which radio was first considered a stabilized
(established) medium (“Radio Bells to Welcome
the New Year,” New York Times,
30 Dec. 1923).
Listed
as “Talk by Charlie Chaplin” on the schedule
for Newark, New Jersey’s Station WOR, 
Charlie took advantage of his trip east
for the premiere of A Woman of Paris
to try out the airwaves. The talk was
to last a half hour, beginning at 9:00
PM on October 3rd. The Radio Digest
Illustrated gave the program front
page coverage in its October 27th issue
with the headline “Charlie Chaplin ‘Acts’:
Comedy King Afraid When First on Air.”
The article relates that Charlie was “visibly
agitated as he made ready” that night
in the studio. “ ‘This is quite an ordeal,
you know,’” said Charlie to the station
director, J. M. Barnett. “ ‘You have to
use your imagination so much. . . You
can face the camera, knowing that if you
make a mistake, if you slip up, you can
try again; you can make over the picture.
But think of all the thousands of people
out there in the world hanging onto every
word I say.’ Charlie mopped his brow and
grimaced in the way that has thrown millions
into uproarious laughter. ‘I don’t know
what to say; I haven’t prepared a speech,’
he said pitiably.” However, soon it was
time for newspaper man Alfred J. McCosker
to introduce Charlie to his waiting audience.
And so Charlie began: |
