The closing event of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a screening of Charles Chaplin's The Pilgrim (1923) and Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924), for which a new orchestral score was created. At EFSP we focus on a special series of Chaplin postcards. Red Letter photocards was a British series of sepia-tinted postcards with pictures of the films Charlie Chaplin made for the Essanay Studio in 1915 such as The Tramp, Shanghaied, A Woman By the Sea and The Bank. The complete series contains 26 postcards, but 19 are yet in our collection.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in The Champion/Champion Charlie (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie and the Bulldog.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in A Night Out/His Night Out (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: A Small Flirtation (Charlie's Night Out). The man left of Chaplin is Ben Turpin. The man on the right is Leo White, who plays the French Count/dandy while his companion is Eva Sawyer. In the back, the head waiter, played by Bud Jamison.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in Work (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie the House Decorator (Charlie at Work). The man right of Chaplin is Charles Inslee.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in In the Park (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Scene, Charlie in the Park (Charlie in the Park).


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in By the Sea/Charlie's Day Out (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie's Day Out (Snapped on Los Angeles Beach). Almost unrecognisable because of the drawn face is Edna Purviance. NB There is no dog in the film.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in His New Job (Charles Chaplin, 1915), also with Charles Inslee as the director, Charlotte Mineau as the film star, and Leo White as the leading man. Caption: Charlie Becomes a Star (Charlie's New Job).


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin is a janitor in The Bank (Charles Chaplin, 1915). The man right of Chaplin is John Rand, a salesman who proves to be a robber. Caption: Charlie the Messenger (Charlie at the Bank).


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in Shanghaied (Charles Chaplin, 1915). The man right of Chaplin is Lawrence Bowes, who plays the ship's mate. Caption: "'I've come aboard, sir." (Shanghaied.)


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in A Woman (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Left, Edna Purviance as the daughter and right, Marta Golden as the mother. Caption: Charlie "The Perfect Lady."


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in A Woman (Charles Chaplin, 1915), also with Edna Purviance as the daughter and Charles Inslee as the father. Caption: Charlie in the Shivers (Charlie the Perfect Lady.)

Chaplin’s cinematic adolescence
In November 1914, Charles Chaplin left Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company and signed on at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, where he made 14 films plus a cameo appearance in  Broncho Billy Anderson's film His Regeneration. After the expiration of his one-year contract with Keystone, Chaplin was lured to Essanay, founded in 1907, for the unprecedented salary of $1,250 per week, with a bonus of $10,000 for merely signing with the company and his own production unit. The fourteen short films he made for Essanay were distinctly marked and designated upon release as the “Essanay-Chaplin Brand.”If the early slapstick of the Keystone comedies represents Chaplin’s cinematic infancy, the films he made for Essanay are his adolescence. The Essanays find Chaplin in transition, taking greater time and care with each film, experimenting with new ideas, and adding flesh to the Tramp character that would become his legacy. Chaplin’s Essanay comedies reveal an artist experimenting with his palette and finding his craft.

While no single Chaplin film for Essanay displays the aggregate transformation to the more complex, subtle filmmaking that characterises his later work, these comedies contain a collection of wonderful, revelatory moments, foreshadowing the pathos (The Tramp), comedic transposition (A Night Out), fantasy (A Night Out), gag humour (The Champion), and irony (Police), of the mature Chaplin films to come. The most celebrated of the Essanay comedies, The Tramp is regarded as the first classic Chaplin film. It is noteworthy because of Chaplin’s use of pathos in situations designed to evoke pity or compassion toward the characters, particularly the Tramp. An innovation in comedic filmmaking, The Tramp dares to have a sad ending. Pathos also appears in The Bank, in which Charlie’s heart is broken when the object of his affection throws away the flowers he has given her and tears up the accompanying love note.

Jeffrey Vance at Charlie Chaplin.com: "Nowhere is the evidence of Chaplin’s growing cinematic maturity more evident than in the subtle evolution of the Tramp’s treatment of women in the Essanay comedies. At Essanay, Chaplin found Edna Purviance, who would remain his leading lady until A Woman of Paris (1923). Born Olga Edna Purviance in Nevada in 1895, she had trained as a secretary and was recommended to Chaplin by an Essanay employee as a beautiful young woman who frequented a popular San Francisco café. Chaplin was instantly captivated by her beauty and charm. The personal chemistry between Chaplin and Purviance served the Tramp’s changing attitudes toward women well, resulting in no small part from the intimate relationship the two enjoyed off-screen. In the Keystone comedies, the Tramp was usually at odds with the women in his life, such as his frequent foil Mabel Normand. Purviance was far more demure and refined, and the Tramp’s interplay with her is gentle and often romantic. Although the female characters of the first Essanays are indistinguishable from those of the Keystones (more often than not, objects of desire, derision, or simply unimportant to the plot), beginning with The Champion, there is a softening in the Tramp’s attitude toward women. The romantic longing at the beginning of A Jitney Elopement demonstrates this transformation.

The evolution of the Tramp was undoubtedly fueled by Chaplin’s efforts to seize greater creative control over his films. Unlike the Keystone comedies, which have a simple plot and place primacy on farce humour, Chaplin’s Essanay comedies display more sophisticated plots and involve more textured characters. The maddening pace of producing nearly one new Keystone comedy each week was reflected in the rapid pace and formulaic storylines in the films. However, the pace of Essanay was somewhat slower, allowing Chaplin to take more time and care in creating his films, and more room to experiment. The tempered pace shows in the style of the films, which contain more subtle pantomime and character development. Although the first seven films Chaplin made for Essanay were released over three months, Chaplin slowed the pace of production to one two-reel film per month after that.

Chaplin had disagreements with Essanay from the beginning. The company’s co-founder, George K. Spoor, had never heard of Chaplin and was reluctant at first to give him his promised $10,000 signing bonus. Chaplin also refused to allow Essanay’s practice of projecting the original negative when screening rough film footage, which saved the studio the expense of making a positive copy, insisting that viewing prints had to be made." Chaplin disliked the unpredictable weather of Chicago and left after only one year for more money and more creative control elsewhere. His departure caused a rift between founders Spoor and G.M. Anderson, better known as 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, cinema’s first cowboy star. Chaplin was the studio's biggest moneymaker, and Essanay resorted to creating "new" Chaplin comedies from file footage and out-takes. Finally, with Chaplin off the Essanay scene for good, Essanay signed French comedian Max Linder, whose clever pantomime, often compared to Chaplin's, failed to match Chaplin's popularity in America. Chaplin remained bitter about this period in his career for the rest of his life.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in Shanghaied (Charles Chaplin, 1915). The two men, left and right of Chaplin, are Bud Jamison and Lawrence Bowes, the first and second mates on the ship. Caption: "Charlie is Shanghaied." (Shanghaied.)


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in A Woman (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Impressive Charlie. (Charlie the Perfect Lady.)


British postcard by Red Letter, no. 6. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in Work (Charles Chaplin, 1915).


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Caption: Charlie in Private Life.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Leo White in The Champion (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie up against it. (Champion Charlie.)


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance and Leo White in A Jitney Elopement (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie Threatens Count. (Charlie's Elopement.)


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp, Ernest Van Pelt as The Farmer, and Edna Purviance as The Farmer's Daughter in The Tramp (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Second Thoughts. (Charlie the Tramp.)


British Postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in His Trysting Place (Charles Chaplin, 1914). Caption: Charlie the Nurse.


British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and at left Carrie Clark Ward in The Bank (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Just a Moment Please. (Charlie at the Bank.)

Sources: Jeffrey Vance (Charlie Chaplin.com), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Mauvais genres, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) is one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. The Tramp with his toothbrush moustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane is a little man who struggles to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until his last work close to his death at the age of 88.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 665/2. Photo: Hansaleih. Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 129/4. Photo: United Artists / SF. Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931).


Vintage postcard. Photo: Triangle.


British postcard in the H. B. Series., 'Entire British Production', London E.C., sent by mail on 30.7.1917. Signature: AEI.


French postcard by Editions Nugeron, no. 76.

Music Hall tradition

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the Music Hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, was a singer and actress with the stage name Lilly Harley.

They separated before Charlie was three. Charlie lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin Sr. was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Charlie and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum.

Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot, mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager.

Meanwhile, the five-year-old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, 'Jack Jones'. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, 'The Eight Lancaster Lads'. Nearly 11, he appeared in 'Giddy Ostende' at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his film characters. His films would later re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth.

In 1901, his father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve. His mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.


Vintage postcard. Photo: Chaplin Studios.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for The Champion (Charles Chaplin, 1915) with Chaplin and Leo White.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard, no. 4. Photo: Essanay.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard, no.6. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for Work (1915) with Edna Purviance.

Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe

From age 17 to 24, Charlie Chaplin joined Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the troupe was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel.

In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling.

Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (Henry Lehrman, 1914) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded Sennett to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films.

He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehrman, 1914). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's moustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the cane.

Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for The Bank (1915).


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for The Tramp (1915).


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for The Tramp (1915). Chaplin as the Tramp, Ernest Van Pelt as the Farmer and Paddy McGuire as the Farmhand.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Publicity still for A Jitney Elopement (1915) with Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance and Leo White.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Chaplin and Billy Armstrong enjoy an ice cream after their fight in By the Sea (1915). The ice cream clerk is 'Snub' Pollard.


British postcard by Red Letter Photocard. Photo: Essanay. Chaplin and Margie Reiger flirt in By the Sea (1915), while Bud Jamison and Billy Armstrong are not too happy about this, and Edna Purviance fears trouble is coming up. The film was shot at Crystal Pear in Los Angeles.

Keystone, Essanay, Mutual, First National, United Artists

From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern, 1914) onwards, Charles Chaplin wrote and directed most of his films himself. By 1916 he was producing them, and from 1918 he was also composing the music.

He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915 and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith.

His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first film for United Artists, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play The Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films, he played different characters.

The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Goddard) walking down an endless highway towards the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film.

The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed The Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 581/4,1919-1924. Photo: B.B.B. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 581/5, 1919-1924. Photo: B.B.B. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1843/1, 1927-1928. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 90/3, 1925-1935. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for The Circus (1928). Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 987/1, 1925-1926. Collection: Didier Hanson.


French postcard by Editions Cinematographiques, no. 499. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for The Circus (1928). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Adulation and controversy

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's political ideas ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from The Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions.

In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the army in Europe.

For most of World War II, he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year-old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill.

After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton.

In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings.


British postcard by Rotary, no 11675 A. Photo: Witzel.


Spanish postcard by Editorial Photográfica, Barcelona, no. A - 103.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1163/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Ifa / United Artists.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1165/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ifa / United Artists.


A fashionable Chaplin on a French postcard from the 1920s.


British postcard in the Film Weekly Series, London.

A King in Switzerland

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London. A King in New York (1957),(in) which he starred, wrote, directed and produced, satirised the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

His last film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote, starred Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, 'This is My Song', reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark.

Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote 'My Autobiography', which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed.

Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his four marriages, he had a total of 11 children.

In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar Awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. Author George Bernard Shaw once called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".


French postcard by Hélio-Cachan. Photo: publicity still for The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).


French postcard by Hélio-Cachan. Photo: publicity still for The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).


Dutch postcard. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1948. Photo: publicity still for The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940).


East-German collectors card, no. III/18/211, 1955. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Limelight (Charles Chaplin, 1952).


French postcard by Editions P.I., presented by Les Carbones Korès Carboplane, no. 568 Photo: United Artists.


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle, Mâcon, no. 005/4. Photo: Collection B. Courtel / D.R. Charles Chaplin and Geraldine Chaplin on the set of The Countess from Hong Kong (Charles Chaplin, 1966). Caption: Charles Chaplin, whose last film this was, directed his daughter Geraldine.

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Linda Wada (Edna's Place), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 16 September 2023.