CHARLIE CHAPLIN HONOURED

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28013, 6 July 1956, Page 15

CHARLIE CHAPLIN HONOURED

Revival Of “The Gold Rush” SECRECY ABOUT NEW FILM (From the London Correspondent o 1 "The Press”) LONDON, June 27. British cinema audiences will see Charlie Chaplin eating his boot again this summer when his 31-year-old film, “The Gold Rush,” is revived here Sound effects, music and a commentary in which Chaplin narrates the story and speaks dialogue for the mute characters have been added to the old silent film and some scenes not included in the original version have been brought from the cutting room vaults. “The Gold Rush” features Charlie the Tramp in bowler hat and baggy trousers as a gold prospector in the Arctic: the tragic-comedian of genius who set an earlier generation rolling in the aisles. And it is only through these revivals that the new generation will see Charlie the Tramp. For Mr Chaplin has no intention of bringing that lovable character back on to the v orld’s screens. At a British film industry dinner recently he said quite emphatically that he would never bring Charlie the Tramp back. “Never, never, never.” he said. “If he did (come back) he would have to talk and to talk he would have to step off his pedestal, the pedestal o the silent film. The orientals have gods, but they never take them out of their shrines.”

Later, after the dinner, honours were heaped on Chaplin. Mr Anthony Asquith spoke of him as a unique combination—a person who was at one and the same time the -creator, the medium and the creation. It was as if Beethoven has been not only the composer and pianist, but also his complete piano works and the piano on which he had played. In Charlie. Mr Chaplin had created a worthy companion for Falstaff and Don Quixote —at once a human and a symbol of humanity.

He asked Mr Chaplin to reply, though he would have preferred, he said, to repeat the only instruction a film director once gave to Charlie: “Get out there and monkey around for 20 feet.”

Mr Chaplin, rapidly and a trifle wrily. brought everything to a delightful close in less than a minute. He said his best speech would be to use the words of Calvin Coolidge when he terminated his presidency of the United States. “Asked by a pressman if he would say a last few words to the American public, Coolidge replied: ‘Yes—Goodbye.’ ” Mr Chaplin is in Britain making a new film, “A King in New York.” at Shepperton Studios and work is proceeding under the direction—one should probably say domination—of the master film-maker in complete and utter secrecy. There have been none of the usual publicity handouts about this film and actors and technicians have been warned that a slip of the tongue will find them without a job in a Chaplin film.

Many consider “The Gold Rush” as Chaplin’s funniest film, but not the clown himself.

“The film I am making now will be the funniest ever,” he says. Not just the funniest Chaplin film, but the “funniest ever.”