By the end of his first year in Hollywood with Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios Charlie Chaplin's accomplishments had been prodigious. He'd completed 34 films, primarily two-reel comedies; he quickly adopted the elements of his Tramp screen persona; and he'd already become a recognizable commodity with the moviegoing public of the day. While Sennett had granted him the autonomy to direct over 20 of the shorts, Chaplin was certain that his value to the studio was greater than the $175 a week he was being paid. As his Keystone contract was winding down, the Chicago-based Essanay Film Company put an offer of $1250 a week plus a $10,000 signing bonus plus creative control on the table, and Chaplin was only too willing to sign. Essanay ("S-and-A") was founded by George Spoor, a onetime newsstand operator in the Windy City who made himself rich via theater ownership and film rentals, and Gilbert "Bronco Billy" Anderson, the star of the seminal narrative film The Great Train Robbery (1903) and countless silent-era sagebrushers. In his year's association with the studio, Chaplin got to labor at a more leisurely pace as he turned out fourteen shorts, showcased in Chaplin at Essanay Studios - Part One. While the earliest touched on comic scenarios already explored at Keystone, Chaplin's year with Essanay would sharpen the nuances and elements of pathos that are now identified with the Tramp.

Chaplin journeyed to Essanay's Chicago lot to create the first of his efforts for the studio, His New Job (1915). The story casts him as a movie actor looking for a break, waiting interminably in a casting director's anteroom. (Chaplin worked in a tweak of his former employer, naming the studio "Lockstone.") Having finally wheedled himself a role, Chaplin goes on to create havoc on the set, getting demoted to carpenter's assistant by the increasingly furious director, then getting just as improbably named to the lead when the star refuses to show. In the small role of a stenographer, a sixteen-year-old Gloria Swanson can be seen.

Chaplin hated the cold Chicago winter, and Essanay sought to appease its new star by offering to set him up with their studio in the Northern California town of Niles, where Anderson ground out his "Bronco Billy" opuses. Chaplin invited several of the Essanay players appearing in His New Job--Ben Turpin, Leo White, Bud Jamison--to follow along. Chaplin opted to cast around locally to find a romantic foil for his comedies, and settled on a full-figured nineteen-year-old San Francisco secretary named Edna Purviance. For the next seven years, Purviance would be Chaplin's on-screen leading lady and sporadic off-screen romantic interest. Purviance retired by the mid-20s, after a pair of Chaplin-produced efforts featuring her as a dramatic lead flopped.

Chaplin's first Niles short, A Night Out (1915), smacks of his Keystone effort The Rounders (1914). Chaplin and Turpin portray a pair of boisterous drunks who enter a swanky restaurant, heckle Frenchman patron White, and generally become a public nuisance until being rousted by the burly headwaiter Jamison. Looking for a place to sleep it off, the comics unknowingly wind up at the hotel where Jamison lives, and circumstances lead a pajama-clad Charlie to stumble into the headwaiter's bedroom, just as Jamison comes home to panicky wife Purviance. Turpin never again got as large a share of the stage in his remaining two Chaplin films; speculation abounds that Charlie felt threatened by the cross-eyed comedian's positive notices. An angered Turpin signed on with Sennett after a year, and the screen clowns' relationship would be hostile thereafter.

By his own account, Anderson directed Charlie's third Essanay short, The Champion (1915), while Chaplin reciprocated by helming a Bronco Billy effort; although this is disputed, Anderson can be seen in a cameo as a fight fan. The plot has a vagabond Charlie hired as a sparring partner for an up-and-coming fighter; once he sees how the pug's opponents are getting stretchered out, he takes the precaution of loading his glove with a horseshoe. The added wallop transforms the bum into a contender, leading to a comically climactic bout with champion Jamison.

Chaplin once told Sennett that "All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl," and that was pretty much all the framework required for In the Park (1915). While pleasant enough, the film is basically a retread of a situation employed in at least three of his Keystone shorts. As the idler Charlie is pursuing a flirtation with nursemaid Purviance, her purse is swiped by a thief (Chaplin regular Billy Armstrong), and the plot (such as it is) follows the bag as it changes hands.

Producer: Jessie T. Robbins
Director: Charles Chaplin
Screenplay: Charles Chaplin
Cinematography: Harry Ensign
Music: Robert Israel
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Leo White, Frank J. Coleman, Ben Turpin, Edna Purviance, Bud Jamison.
BW-111m.

by Jay S. Steinberg