Word: tramp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Monica, 800-SEX-FRIEND No. It doesn't sound sexy to me. It was a little bit too whiny. I think she's a tramp...
...terrifyingly comic Adenoid Hynkel (a takeoff on Hitler), whom Chaplin played in The Great Dictator, or M. Verdoux, the sardonic mass murderer of middle-aged women, may seem drastic departures from the "little fellow," but the Tramp is always ambivalent and many-sided. Funniest when he is most afraid, mincing and smirking as he attempts to placate those immune to pacification, constantly susceptible to reprogramming by nearby bodies or machines, skidding around a corner or sliding seamlessly from a pat to a shove while desire and doubt chase each other across his face, the Tramp is never unself-conscious, never...
When a character in Monsieur Verdoux remarks that if the unborn knew of the approach of life, they would dread it as much as the living do death, Chaplin was simply spelling out what we've known all along. The Tramp, it seemed, was mute not by necessity but by choice. He'd tried to protect us from his thoughts, but if the times insisted that he tell what he saw as well as what he was, he could only reveal that the innocent chaos of comedy depends on a mania for control, that the cruelest of ironies attend...
...City Lights, when the heroine at last sees the man who has delivered her from blindness, we watch her romantic dreams die. "You?" she asks, incredulous. "Yes," the Tramp nods, his face, caught in extreme close-up, a map of pride, shame and devotion. It's the oldest story in show business--the last shall yet be, if not first, at least recognized, and perhaps even loved...
...wasn't until 1925 that Rodgers and Hart had a major hit. They wrote the songs for a lighthearted revue called The Garrick Gaieties. Its Manhattan was an overnight success, and the legendary partnership was flying at last. Such songs as The Lady Is a Tramp, Dancing on the Ceiling, My Heart Stood Still and Blue Moon etched the duo a permanent place in theater history...