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Charlie Chaplin, “The Contender” |
As Glenn Mitchell writes in The Chaplin Encyclopedia, fighting
in some
form or other made its way into Charlie’s films from the beginning.
Most of the Keystones saw Charlie in some sort of scrap or scuffle
and as the Little Tramp character evolved, his ability to vanquish an
unlikely opponent or at least recover from a humbling defeat with
honor and energy became well-known and beloved aspects of his
personality. It’s not surprising, then, that the sport of boxing found
its way into several of Chaplin's films, beginning with Keystone’s
The
Knockout (1914) in which he played a referee. By the time he
had
expanded on this theme the next year in his Essanay film The
Champion and then perfected it in City Lights (1931), the
connection
between the Little Tramp and boxing seemed a natural one.
This connection, in fact, was nicely reinforced by Charlie’s activities off-screen
as well. He relates in his autobiography, for instance, that
while working for Karno in Paris in 1909, Charlie had a sparring match
with an ex-lightweight prize fighter named Ernie Stone, one that he
claims was his last (“I have never fought anyone since”):
It started in a restaurant, and after the waiters and the
police had separated us he said, “I’ll see you at the hotel,” where we
were both staying. He had the room above me, and at four in the
morning I rolled home and knocked at his door. “Come in,” he said
briskly, ‘and take off your shoes so we won’t make a noise.” Quietly
we stripped to the waist, then faced each other. We hit and ducked
for what seemed an interminable length of time. Several times he hit
me square on the chin, but to no effect. “I thought you could punch,”
I sneered. He made a lunge, missed and smashed his head against
the wall, almost knocking himself out. I tried to finish him off, but my
punches were weak . . . Suddenly, I received a blow full in the mouth
which shook my front teeth, and that sobered me up. “Enough,” I
said. “I don’t want to lose my teeth.” He came over and embraced
me, then looked in the mirror: I had cut his face to ribbons. My
hands were swollen like boxing gloves, and blood was on the ceiling,
on the curtains and the walls. How it got there, I do not know. (Charles Chaplin: My
Autobiography, pp. 113-4)
Roscoe Arbuckle’s biographer, David Yallop (The Day the Laughter
Stopped), claims that both Charlie and Roscoe routinely acted as
seconds for matches held at the Los Angeles Athletic Club where
Chaplin was living at the time. Charlie—often in the company of Douglas Fairbanks—both
entertained a long list of boxers at his studio and often posed
for impromptu films or photographs in mock fights with them.
Included in this list were Jack Dempsey, of course, but also
many lesser-known fighters, such as Joe Benjamin, French
Canadian Al Baffert, technically a wrestler, who was drafted
into helping Charlie rehearse the City Lights boxing scene,
Benny Leonard and Harry Mansell (short films of Charlie
“fighting” the last two are now available on MK2’s edition of
City Lights).
Dempsey even joined Doug and Charlie in 1917
when they traveled up to Mare Island near San Francisco to
entertain the troops (this clip is included in The Funniest Man
in the World). Charlie must have shared in a sort of mutual
admiration with these gentlemen. He may have demonstrated
his interest in their sport by welcoming them to his studio and
frequently patronizing their matches, but many of them had
film aspirations themselves (check www.imdb.com to see
their credits).
While Bud Jamison, Charlie’s opponent in The Champion, or
Hank Mann, his opponent in City Lights, were hardly boxers
in real life, one boxing/wrestling type did make it into a Chaplin
film and that was Sammy Stein. Sammy played the bare-
chested foreman in Modern Times who we see carrying out the
boss’s orders as they come across the video screen. Just a
couple of years before shooting on Modern Times began,
Sammy was making a name for himself in wrestling, a sport he
was to move into at the same time as he was wrapping up four
years in the NFL. An article in the New York World Telegram
(November 3, 1931) related that "Sammy Stein, who mixes
football with his wrestling, kept his record intact by downing
Steve Znosky . . . No wrestler of the newer crop has come
along as fast as Stein." Sammy seems to have been good at
parlaying his talents into other media, because his film career
didn’t begin and end with Modern Times, but includes more
than 50 screen appearances.
Clearly the performative nature of a spectator sport such as
boxing or wrestling has much in common with acting. In fact,
I think it was British boxer Frank Bruno who said, “boxing is
just show business with blood.” Leave it to Charlie to see
that connection and make the most of it.
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