The Cure
About The Cure
A wealthy drunk checks into a spa to dry out and brings a suitcase of liquor. He jams a gouty giant in the revolving door, sits down beside a young woman, and is sent for a massage. A worker dumps the suitcase into the mineral well. The guests drink the water and reel. He drinks it too, offends the woman, and the next morning walks into the same well.
Cast & crew
More about The Cure
Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and edited the short for Mutual. He first shot himself as a bellhop routing wheelchairs in the lobby, then threw that idea out and played the patient. An added prologue, made once prohibition was being argued, says he dropped the Tramp costume for an upper-class fop because gout was treated as a rich man's complaint. Mutual released it on 16 April 1917.
Themes
Background
Released while politicians were still arguing about alcohol, two years before national prohibition.
Reviews
Variety called it "a whole meal of laughs, not merely giggles." The Moving Picture World said it could not compete with Easy Street but that the bath scenes in the second reel were the funny part. The Louisville Herald, quoted in that paper, said pictures like The Cure were why Chaplin was worth his pay.
Music
The 1917 release is silent, with English intertitles. The 1932 Van Beuren reissue added music by Gene Rodemich and effects by Winston Sharples.
Preservation
A fragment of the ending, missing for years, was found in 2013 and put back for a 2014 festival screening.
Notes
- Edna Purviance plays the girl. Eric Campbell is the man with the gout. Henry Bergman is the masseur. Frank J. Coleman is the head of the sanitarium.
- John Rand, James T. Kelley, and Albert Austin play attendants. Tom Wood is also billed.
- Van Beuren and RKO put out a sound reissue on 19 August 1932.
- A missing piece of the ending turned up on 4 September 2013. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival showed the restored print on 11 January 2014.
Scenes
- The drunk's suitcase rides the revolving door into Eric Campbell's bandaged foot.
- A worker pitches the liquor bottles through a window into the spa well.
- The guests dance drunk on the health water.
- Sober the next morning, he steps back into the well.
Also available
- Internet Archive (CC_1917_04_16_TheCure)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Cure (1917) by Charlie Chaplin.webm)
