“It must be said of Charles Chaplin that he has created only one character, but that one, in his matchless courtesy, in his unfailing gallantry– his preposterous innocent gallantry in a world of gross Goliaths– is the finest gentleman of our time.” ~ critic Alexander Woolcott
The middle of summer might not be the most apropos time to discuss a film most associated with the cold and winter, but it was on June 26, 1925, when The Gold Rush was first released. It stars one of the few immortals of the silver screen. Sometimes you hear it asked, “Which actor will be remembered a thousand years from now?” The name Charlie Chaplin will still be known. He will outlast the critics and cancel culture and even the ravages of time and its effects on cinema history and film preservation. His films will adapt to whatever technology is present at that time. The reason for this is that his most famous character, The Little Tramp, was a representative for all humanity– a truly universal character the entire world could (and will) relate to, especially in the silent days when spoken language was not needed to convey meaning.
One of the 1,300 stills shot for The Gold Rush. Here is Chaplin on location behind the camera.
When I screened The Gold Rush in 2011 as part of my “Legends of Laughter” film program at the Park Ridge Public Library, there was the question of which version to show. The mk2 edition of the Chaplin dvd collection (as well as the Criterion Collection) features two versions of the film: the 1942 re-release (straight from the Chaplin family vault) and the original, 96 min. silent from 1925.
When Chaplin re-released The Gold Rush in 1942, it was at a time when few silent films were being revived. It was therefore a somewhat daring venture on his part. In order to “modernize” the film for current 1940s tastes, he added his own narration. When I first saw this, I expected to hear his voice only in the opening prologue in a manner not unlike his introduction to The Chaplin Revue. But that is not the case. His voice is heard throughout. This periodic, intrusive narration replaces the quaint inter-titles, giving voice to the other characters in the story. If Chaplin could’ve played every role in his films, I’m sure he would have tried as it is well-known he acted out everything for his performers. So in this fashion, he is able to play these other roles, if only through voice.
A fine voice though it may be, I found his narration as the overall storyteller distracting. In addition, the film is shortened from its original release; these edits do affect the subtlety of the film. Chaplin changed it from its epic quality. He simplified the story, giving it the feel of a storybook fable. I decided then that my library audience would perhaps prefer seeing the film as it was originally screened– not as how he later re-edited it. If any patrons balked at reading those few title cards Chaplin had cut out in ’42, they probably shouldn’t have come to a silent film festival. But from what I remember of that showing from 14 years ago, our series opener met with a respectful, polite reaction.
Setting up a shot with Georgia Hale.
The Gold Rush was Chaplin’s lucky strike, becoming a tremendous hit. It contains some of his most immortal sequences, such as the eating of the shoe and the dance of the bread rolls. The cooking of the shoe, in fact, is one of his great examples of comic invention, demonstrating what he could do with physical objects. The film is an episodic comedy of great artistic worth– and a film whose magic continues to transcend time and culture. At that time, Chaplin said it was the film he wanted to be remembered for, but this was actually a publicity statement. In later years in interviews, he said that the favorite of his films was City Lights (1931). The Gold Rush, nevertheless, remained very dear to him.
In the “Chaplin Today” documentary, it opens with the African filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo speaking of the film’s impact on his own life. We see the African children in his village watching and reacting favorably to the then 80+ year old images on their little television. Indeed, the film’s feelings are universal– and laughter spans the continents. Chaplin always saw himself as a “citizen of the world,” and his films have that unique ability to reach out to all nations.
Chaplin’s films have the worldwide ability to transfix even when a century separates us from them. It’s only a matter of getting audiences to them, of parents convincing kids to put down their iPhones and to disregard their Nintendo Switches just long enough to be taken in. There is a great power within films like these to connect with the new generation. Unfortunately, much of modern comedy is about the immediate laugh with no time given for a moment or gag to develop. It’s all about the now. If we can change that mentality, we can bring audiences back to these films to a greater extent. Film festivals and revivals and new releases are the kinds of things that will carry Chaplin’s name forward, sort of like stepping stones through history– bridges to propel that legacy into the future.
All these years later, it can be hard for modern audiences to appreciate a film’s ingenuity and originality that it first exhibited. Take, for instance, the scene of Mack Swain’s hunger-induced hallucination in which he imagines Charlie to be a chicken (which, in fact, he becomes thanks to an innovative camera dissolve). How many times have similar onscreen gags been done, most notably in Chuck Jones’ cartoons for Warner Brothers.
Charlie with veteran character actor Mack Swain.
Aside from the film’s famous scenes I referenced, what stands out in my memory is the film’s theme of loneliness. Chaplin was one of the most famous people in the world and, at the time of filming, was probably not lacking female companionship. He was married, although unhappily. Yet, he was a filmmaker who could capture feelings of those who have suffered emotionally as well as physically. Chaplin the artist never escaped the estrangement he felt as a child with a father who died early and a mother who was impoverished. Even when he found great success, like the rags to riches character he plays in the film, he remained an isolated, lonely man. This was in stark contrast to the public persona of Charlie Chaplin.
For anyone who’s been on the outside looking in and felt like they couldn’t fit in, like a sad wallflower disconnected from the life around them, then the little fellow’s first appearance in the Yukon dance hall is especially heartbreaking. Chaplin’s Little Tramp is the outsider with a desire to be seen, noticed and loved, but it is only in his dreams where all that seems possible.
The film has other themes, but this one affected me the most. It’s not a momentary shot where the little fellow is isolated from the crowd, but a well-developed theme throughout the movie that adds great depth to his characterization. The Gold Rush is one of his finest examples of pathos on-screen– pathos that is sincerely felt. It’s a film that brilliantly balances the sentiment with comedy and tragedy.
The Making of The Gold Rush
Set in the Canadian Yukon during the great gold rush of the 1890s, the story follows the travails of The Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin). He suffers through a snowstorm and winds up trapped in a small cabin with another prospector, Big Jim (Mack Swain) and a fugitive, “Black” Larsen (Tom Murray). The Little Tramp eventually escapes the cabin– and his hunger– only to become starved for the affections of a dance hall girl (Georgia Hale). His fortunes turn when Big Jim, suffering from partial amnesia, returns and enlists the Tramp in the hopes of finding his lost claim.
There were two comedy epics during the silent era: Buster Keaton’s The General (1926) and The Gold Rush, which followed Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923). The latter was directed by Chaplin, but he did not star in it. The Gold Rush would prove to be one of his most elaborate undertakings—an epic that seamlessly blended comedy with pathos. It was based on historical incidents: the 1898 Klondike gold rush and the 1846 Donner party tragedy, in which a group of snowbound immigrants in the Sierra Nevada were forced to eat their moccasins and the corpses of the dead in order to survive. From this inspiration, Chaplin was able to shape a comedy about hunger, loneliness, and the need for acceptance.
Hunger…
In fact, part of the film was filmed near the actual event in Truckee, California—snow country in the Sierra Nevada. The opening scene is a re-creation of a historical moment when the early prospectors climbed the 2,300 foot Chilkoot Pass—filmed with 600 vagrant extras brought in by train from Sacramento. The film features two of Chaplin’s most famous routines: the eating of his boiled shoe (which was actually made of licorice) and the dance of the bread rolls—an iconic set-piece that is now part of movie folklore. Variations of the latter appeared in other films, and even Curly Howard of The Three Stooges paid homage to Chaplin with a similar scene in Pardon My Scotch (1935).
Chaplin was a man of the theatre, so his films were not generally known for their technical expertise. Yet, The Gold Rush contains some exemplary special effects work involving miniatures, such as the cabin that teeters at the edge of a precipice in one of cinema’s greatest moments of comic suspense. There is also impressive camera trickery. The scene of Charlie dissolving into a human-sized chicken, for instance, was an effect done in the camera by cinematographer Roland Totheroh; “Rollie” had been with Chaplin since 1916.
The wonderful Mack Swain portrayed the prospector “Big Jim” McKay, who partakes in Charlie’s shoe dinner. Swain had been a veteran of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios. Chaplin had used him previously in his First National releases: The Idle Class (1921), Pay Day (1922), and The Pilgrim (1923). Unlike some of the characters in his very early films, there are no caricatures in The Gold Rush, no villains bordering on the grotesque.
The role of the dance hall girl was played by 24-year-old Georgia Hale—a former Miss Chicago who, in her own impoverished childhood, had been deeply affected by Charlie’s Little Tramp character. She was actually a replacement for Lita Grey, who had played an angel in Chaplin’s The Kid from 1921. During production of The Gold Rush, the 16-year-old Lita became pregnant with Charlie’s child and he was forced into marrying her. The mismatched marriage was doomed to failure, but Chaplin escaped from his home life by throwing himself into his work.
Loneliness…
The making of The Gold Rush spanned 17 months with 170 days of actual filming. Chaplin shot 230,000 feet of film at a cost of over $920,000, but the final edit contained just over eight and a half thousand feet.The original preview version of the film was 10 reels but then Chaplin cut it down by another reel for the world premiere at Grauman’s Theatre in Hollywood. The star-studded premiere itself became one of the biggest events of the 1920s, embodying the pinnacle of Hollywood glamour for that period.
The result of which is a film that works on all cylinders and is arguably Chaplin’s greatest achievement. The Gold Rush became one of the most successful films of the 1920s. It grossed over $6 million, which would place it in the top ten of highest-grossing silent movies.
When Chaplin left America in his 1952 exile, he closed down his Hollywood studio. All the essential film elements in his collection were shipped abroad to Britain, but everything else– the material he deemed non-essential (including cut footage from The Gold Rush) was to be destroyed by a film disposal company. Fortunately for film history, film preservationist Raymond Rohauer saved this “junk” film from the disposal company. The footage was later used to help re-construct the 1925 version of the film. More about this fascinating history is told by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance, both in his book on Chaplin, Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema (2003) and in his audio commentary for the dvd release.
~MCH
Douglas Fairbanks visits the set of The Gold Rush. This would be Chaplin’s first film for United Artists.
