He is very often employed (as a piano mover, a waiter, a property man at a film studio), sometimes with a home, a wife and child. He's meaner, tougher and certainly not a rough sleeper. The character Chaplin plays in those early Keystone one-reelers is not the Tramp of The Kid or City Lights. While the mischievous "little fellow" character was an instant hit with audiences, granting his creator an unparalled level of fame, he had a more gradual evolution than that story suggests. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists/Sportsphoto Ltdīut, as Chaplin biographer David Robinson argued on the weekend, there was no such easy birth. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born." "The clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large." The moustache was added to age his 24-year-old face without masking his expressions and that, according to Chaplin's autobiography, was that. According to Chaplin's much-quoted recollection of the day, the idea for the outfit, and the character of the little Tramp, came to him after only a moment's thought: "On the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. Studio boss Mack Sennett fretted that the film they were shooting that day, Mabel's Strange Predicament, was lacking a few killer gags, so he sent Chaplin, who had only recently joined the company, to get decked out in a "comedy makeup", return to the set and inject some laughs. The Tramp arrived, so the story goes, on a quiet day at Keystone studios in January 1914. The city's Slapstick festival, itself celebrating a decade on the job, kicked up its heels with a sumptuous gala screening of Chaplin's late silent masterpiece City Lights, and some searching questions about who exactly we were celebrating. Due to the global reach of Chaplin's fame, there will be events to mark the anniversary around the world all year, but this weekend, the corks were popped in Bristol. Twenty-fourteen marks 100 years since Charlie Chaplin first appeared on a movie screen as an eccentric fellow with a toothbrush moustache and a derby hat, walking with splayed feet and carrying a cane. A centenary is more than excuse enough for a party, even if the birthday boy is a work of fiction – a beggar, even, with ill-fitting shoes, a violent streak and bow legs.
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