Word: chaplin
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...world premiere in London of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (see CINEMA), one cinemagoer drew almost as much attention as the picture. Seated in the royal box amid frothy net, rich upholstery and white-tied escorts was Princess Margaret, dressed in a fetchingly low-cut crinoline gown and seemingly unaware of raised eyebrows and buzzing tongues...
Limelight (Charles Chaplin; United Artists), Chaplin's first film in five years, is a sad disappointment. Intended as a tragicomedy, if not a tearjerker, it is a two-thirds bore that comes to life in the last half-hour or so, when the old-master clown stops trying to be pathetic and reverts to his inimitable proper stuff. The 63-year-old comedian, who wrote the script (and the music) and directed the movie, plays an aging, down-at-heel music-hall performer who saves a beautiful young ballet dancer (Claire Bloom) from suicide in World War I London...
Described by Chaplin as "a drama with comedy relief," Limelight avoids the ideological preoccupations and messages of his three previous films, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), The Great Dictator (1940) and Modern Times (1936), and goes back to the simple little tramp-meets-girl, loves-girl, loses-girl theme of his famed silent movies. But Chaplin no longer plays the tramp with the cane, battered derby, brush mustache and oversized shoes. In Limelight he is a dapper, though slightly seedy (and in heavy stage make-up rather repulsive) clown in spats and velvet-collared coat. Only a few reminders...
Pictures starring Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Harold Lloyd, Greta Garbo, W. C. Fields, and the Marx brothers are included on the Ivy Film society schedule...
Oldtime Comedian Buster Keaton gave photographers a chance to catch him in a traditionally morose pose before leaving on the United States for a European business trip. Two pieces of business: the London premiere of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (see above), in which Keaton appears; a three-week stint with a Paris circus...