CHAPLIN SINGS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4957, 18 February 1937, Page 7

CHAPLIN SINGS

AND A FRENCHMAN POCKETS THE MONEY Only once has Charlie Chaplin's voice been heard on the films, but that once has brought an unexpected and pleasant little fortune to someone in Paris. It is in his latest film, Modern Times, that this beloved clown suddenly bursts into song. Harassed and inarticulate as usual under the blows of misfortune, a final push has landed him before a cafe audience as the Singing Waiter. Sing he must, and sing he does; and not only the cafe audience but the far bigger kinema audience doubles up with laughter at the clowning which accompanies this song of gibberish and jumbled languages which remains Charlie's only contribution to the talkies. It is a delicious bit of nonsense, sung to the tune of an old French favourite, and many leave the kinema humming it. For years a composer in Paris has been drawing a tew pounds in royalties from this tune, but the last time he called for his royalties he found they had mounted from five or six pounds to the staggering sum of £ll,000. Charlie Chaplin's gibberish version had started everyone buying the old song again.

It is just the sort of odd happening with a twist in it that the little fellow with a comic moustache and a swaggering cane is always getting involved in; but this time the strange affair has stepped out of the films into real life.