I was in Hollywood recently to see The
Circus at Royce Hall, with score conducted
by Tim Brock, and, of course, had to check
out Hollywood Boulevard once again, even
though I’ve been there many times before.
I soon found out that my choice of day had
been a lucky one, because the very next
day the boulevard was to be completely shut
down in order to facilitate the premiere
night festivities for the new Batman
movie. Of course, this got me to thinking
about premieres in the golden days of Hollywood
and so I thought I would begin a two-part
newsletter on Charlie’s film premieres,
both in the U. S. and abroad.
It’s probably no surprise that the first
ever “over-the-top” film premiere in Hollywood
took place at one of Sid Grauman’s showplaces.
Douglas Fairbanks’ film Robin Hood
held the first such event in 1922 at Grauman’s
Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
Being the crowned king of 
Hollywood (with Mary Pickford his queen,
of course), Fairbanks set the precedent
for subsequent events with this one.
Chaplin decided to wait for a feature
to start this tradition with his own
films and so, his first premiere was
held for A Woman of Paris in
1923 at the Criterion Theatre in Hollywood—a
premiere he would not attend himself,
but, as David Robinson notes in Chaplin:
His Life and Art, glittered without
him (318-18).
He chose instead to attend the premiere
in New York City at the Lyric Theatre
on October 1st, beginning a sort of
routine in which he attended premieres
of his more cerebral films on the East
Coast (A Woman of Paris, Monsieur
Verdoux, and The Great Dictator),
and his more sentimental and fun-loving
films on the West Coast (The Gold
Rush, City Lights, and Modern
Times). The New York Times
report on October 7th gives us a glimpse
into Charlie Chaplin in a role not well-considered—that
of prologue creator/director. The prologue,
which you may already know, was a short
stage show that preceded the film itself
and was often limited to the night of
the premiere of the film or perhaps
to the premiere week. The show usually
reiterated themes or scenes or characters
from the featured film. (If you’ve ever
seen Jimmy Cagney’s Footlight Parade
(1933), you’ve seen a whole film about
the business aspects of the prologue.)
In “What Chaplin Thinks,” the Times
reporter tells us that Charlie was “directing
rehearsals of a spoken prologue to precede
[A Woman of Paris] and of the
incidental music when the interviewer
found him. [. . .] He was all over the
room, acting the parts of the prologue
actors, making them live the parts as
he showed them, mapping out the music
plot so that it fitted in with all the
varying moods of the film, and whenever
necessary humming over snatches of old
French songs for the musical director
of the orchestra.”
The Gold Rush (1925) and City
Lights (1931), Charlie attended premieres
on both coasts (Hollywood first). In Hollywood,
the premiere was to be held on June 26th
at Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and
so Grauman himself took the reins as prologue
director, even closing his theatre down
for four days in preparation (LA Times
21 June 1925). A rotogravure photo from
the New York Times shows us a
Gold Rush float in the parade
that opened the special “week” of celebration
taking place throughout the country. By
the night of the premiere, there were
no tickets available and the front of
the theatre had been elaborately bedecked
in an array of colors and lights. Celebrated
attendees were announced as they entered
the theatre as if they were royalty attending
some gala event. Grauman’s prologue began
with Eskimo dancing girls and seals perched
on a craggy arctic-looking glacier, followed
by “impressively artistic dances by fascinatingly
pretty young women wearing astoundingly
rich and beautiful gowns all blending
with the Arctic atmosphere and bespeaking
the moods of the barren white country”
(Los Angeles Evening Herald 27
June 1925). Other “turns” included artistic
ice-skating, a balloon act, a Monte Carlo
dance hall scene and a reading of poet
Robert Service’s “The Spell of the Yukon”
(1907):
I
wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
Came out with a fortune last fall,--
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought
it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all. [. .
.]
TheNew York Times reported on the premiere
night festivities on August 16th (both
Charlie and Edna were in attendance):
"Just before the curtain went up on
the prologue there was a wave of applause
and people stood up to behold the little
film fun-maker struggling up the aisle,
greeting old friends and being introduced
to scores of people. He was a little
nervous and appeared to be much relieved
when he reached his seat in the body
of the theatre. No sooner were the lights
switched on after the finish of the
picture—at twenty minutes past 2 o’clock
yesterday morning—than the enthusiastic
assembly appealed vociferously for a
speech from the author-actor, and Mr.
Chaplin, escorted by two friends, went
to the stage and thanked the audience,
ending his brief talk by saying he was
very emotional.”
David Robinson reports in his book on
the premiere night at the Tivoli Theatre
in London, in which the BBC tried a sort
of experiment—to record “a storm of uncontrolled
laughter, inspired by the only man in
the world who could make people laugh
continually for the space of five minutes,
viz., Charlie Chaplin” (358-9), an achievement
that proved to be an historic moment in
film and broadcasting history. In Berlin,
the premiere was positively remembered
for an unprecedented encore, when the
film was rolled back (no pun intended)
so that the “Dance of the Rolls” sequence
could be enjoyed for a second time.
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