How to Make Movies
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Albert Austin, dressed as a genie, waves up Chaplin's new studio, titled on screen as an old English village. Chaplin drives in, unlocks the gate, and has his secretary, Nellie Bly Baker, bring the mail while valet Tom Harrington takes the tramp boots out of the safe. He walks the carpenter shop, the lab, and the cutting room, then rehearses Edna Purviance, Henry Bergman, and Loyal Underwood, whom he keeps lifting by the neck. A golf gag with Eric Campbell was shot before the studio opened. Chaplin wipes off the tramp makeup and is driven away.
Cast & crew
More about How to Make Movies
In January 1918 Chaplin moved into a studio built on an old estate at La Brea and De Longpré, still among orange groves. Cameraman Roland Totheroh had filmed the construction from one spot so it could be sped up. First National, which had Chaplin under contract for comedies, did not take the half-documentary as one of those pictures, and it was left unfinished.
Themes
Making
Silent Era lists the cast as Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Albert Austin as the genie, Henry Bergman as a gag man, Loyal Underwood, Tom Harrington, and Eric Campbell as the golfer.
Look
Roland Totheroh shot the studio going up from a fixed setup, then the rooms, the pool, and the rehearsal.
Technique
The construction is a time-lapse: Totheroh returned to the same camera position so the building seems to rise in a rush.
Preservation
The film was never finished in 1918. A print of the material survives, and the Brownlow-Gill assembly of 1982 follows Chaplin's title list. Silent Era records a 35mm positive.
Notes
- The opening title on the official continuity is "A Dream Comes True – His Own Studio.
- Eric Campbell, who died in December 1917, appears in the golf scene, so that passage predates the studio opening.
- Nellie Bly Baker, the secretary here, later played the masseuse in A Woman of Paris.
- Chaplin reused some of the footage in The Chaplin Revue (1959).
- Kevin Brownlow and David Gill cut the surviving material to a title list in 1982. That was the first time the film was shown as a whole.
Scenes
- Austin's genie makes the studio rise out of the orange grove.
- Harrington is told to handle the tramp boots as if they were treasure.
- Chaplin lifts Loyal Underwood by the neck during the rehearsal.
Influenced
- The Chaplin Revue (1959)
