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Charlie Chaplin
(1889–1977)
Anecdote 1...
The playwright Charles MacArthur had been brought to Hollywood to do
a screenplay, but was finding it difficult to write visual jokes.
"What's the problem?" asked Chaplin.
"How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue,
slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh? It's been done a million
times," said MacArthur. "What's the best way to GET the laugh?
Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching, then she
slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, and THEN
she slips?"
"Neither," said Chaplin without a moment's hesitation. "You
show the fat lady approaching; then you show the banana peel; then you
show the fat lady and the banana peel together; then she steps OVER the
banana peel and disappears down a manhole."
Anecdote 2...
Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition in
Monte Carlo. He came in third.
Biographical Note...
British-born film actor, who went with Fred Karno's
troupe to the United States in 1910. He became legendary as a downtrodden
little man in baggy trousers and a bowler hat in such silent comedies
as "The Gold Rush" (1924) and "City Lights" (1931).
He spoke for the first time in "The Great Dictator" (1940),
a film ridiculing Hitler. Knighted in 1976, he is considered to be the
screen's greatest comic.
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