Word: chaplinitis
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...solar cyclones. Most probably, he said, the polar regions were warmer than the equatorial regions. Having given out an idea for Mt. Wilson astronomers to ponder, he peered at tiny Planet Eros through the Mt. Wilson telescope (see above), went to Los Angeles as guest of Cinemactor Charles Chaplin to see the opening of City Lights...
...almost a law in publicity-loving Southern California that the two greatest personalities there present shall hobnob while the press & public loudly cheer or jeer. Usually this means William Randolph Hearst and whatever foreign personage happens to be visiting Hollywood. But last week it meant Charles Spencer Chaplin and Albert Einstein. All of Hollywood's police reserves turned out one evening to make tunnels through the populace so that Mr. Chaplin could escort Dr. Einstein and a party of scientists to see the first new Chaplin film in two years...
...silent in the strictest sense. Synchronized sound effects and music are used beginning with the very first sequence, where the talkies are burlesqued by horn sounds that make the actors seem to be talking with their mouths full of mush. Also there is an episode where Mr. Chaplin swallows a whistle. Each time he coughs he whistles and he cannot stop coughing. Taxis hurry up and stop, dogs overwhelm him. Hollywood also grew hysterical during a prizefight in which Charlie survives two rounds by dodging so briskly that the referee is always between him and his murderous opponent...
...Chaplin is the last of the old guard to rely on native dramatic ability to gain his effects. Acting, is his art, the art of pantomime, and he does not want applause that is bought by gazing at a cardboard balcony and exercising a wheezy tenor, or archly boop-boop-a-doopering. The master comedian is clearly of the opinion that motion pictures, like peacocks, are fine when they silently unfold their tails, but when they attempt to speak it's a very different matter...
...Charlie Chaplin does not choose to speak. A conservative at heart, despite his caperings, the first comedian of the screen has made his latest picture after the mute manner. One by one the advocates of silent acting have been coaxed by producers or brow-beaten by public taste into becoming articulate. The result has been trying. No longer need a person who lisps or has a major impediment in their speech worry about a vocation. They can now go into pictures. And if the infirmament is noticeable enough they are often whisked to stardom...