Have you ever wondered what it would be like to perform original songs from the music halls of Victorian London?
The Porter House of Publishing has just released a songbook by Cecilia H. Porter featuring six long lost songs that were originally performed on the Victorian Music Hall stage more than a hundred years ago by Charles Chaplin Senior, father of the famous Little Tramp.
The book comes with a CD so that you can hear the songs, but there’s also an additional sing-along version of each song! For those who like to “tickle the ivories,” sheet music is included, as sold on the original song sheets.
This 100th anniversary celebration of Charlie Chaplin’s iconic persona, the Little Tramp, or as he himself named him, the Little Fellow, will be an event geared towards the public first and film scholars and aficionados second and third. We wish to invite abstracts/proposals from speakers who can accommodate this audience effectively, i.e., potential speakers should suggest topics dealing with historical or humanities-related
foci, rather than theoretical or academic. The best proposals will discuss the Little Tramp persona in some manner.
The event will be held in the beautiful northern Italian city of Bologna, with one day of the celebration to coincide with the beginning of the world-renowned Il Cinema Ritrovato festival (June 28-July 5, 2014).
**PROVISIONAL KEYNOTE AND/OR FEATURED SPEAKERS (OTHERS TBA):**
David Robinson, Film Critic and author of Chaplin: His Life and Art
Kevin Brownlow, film historian and director of The Unknown Chaplin
Kate Guyonvarch, Director of Roy Export S.A.S. /Association Chaplin office, Paris
Cecilia Cenciarelli, Archivist and Head of The Chaplin Project, Cineteca di Bologna, Italy
Lisa Stein Haven, Associate Professor of English and author of Syd Chaplin: A Biography
The following topics are meant to generate ideas for presentations, not limit creativity or exclude participation:
The Little Tramp’s Music Hall origins
Chaplin at Keystone: The Process of Creating a Character
The Little Tramp’s Final Appearance: The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux, or Limelight?
The Chaplin Imitator Phenomenon (Feel free to discuss a circumscribed time period for this topic)
The Little Tramp in Contemporary Film Criticism
Audience Reception: The Little Tramp
Consequences of A Woman of Paris: Chaplin’s Film Endeavor without the Tramp
All are welcome to submit proposals for consideration.
Please send a 500-word abstract, a short bio and your contact information by **June 30th, 2013** to Kate Guyonvarch (office@charliechaplin.com). Please place **Birth of the Tramp event** in your subject line.
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Chaplin and the famous Max Linder shake hands on the set of The Adventurer, circa 1917. From the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment. Scan Courtesy Cineteca di Bologna
The Criterion Collection (U.S.) releases Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947) on DVD and Blu-ray today.
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Synopsis by Charles Chaplin in My Autobiography, published 1964: Verdoux is a bluebeard, an insignificant bank clerk, who, having lost his job during the Depression, evolves a scheme of marrying old spinsters and murdering them for their money. His legitimate wife is an invalid who lives in the country with her little son, but she is ignorant of her husband’s criminal enterprise. After the murder of a victim, he goes home as would a bourgeois husband after a hard day’s work. He is a paradox of virtue and vice: a man who, as he trims his rose bushes, avoids stepping on a caterpillar, while at the end of the garden one of his victims is being consumed in an incinerator. The story contains diabolical humour, bitter satire and social criticism.
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Disc Features
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Chaplin Today: “Monsieur Verdoux,” a 2003 documentary on the film’s production and release, featuring filmmaker Claude Chabrol and actor Norman Lloyd
Charlie Chaplin and the American Press, a new documentary featuring the director of the Chaplin company Roy Export, Kate Guyonvarch, and author Charles Maland
Illustrated audio interview with actor Marilyn Nash
Radio advertisements and trailers
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and reprinted pieces by Chaplin and critic André Bazin
“The best autobiography ever written by an actor. An astonishing work.” —Chicago Tribune
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Chaplin’s heartfelt and hilarious autobiography tells the story of his childhood, the challenge of identifying and perfecting his talent, his subsequent film career and worldwide celebrity. In this, one of the very first celebrity memoirs, Chaplin displays all the charms, peculiarities and deeply-held beliefs that made him such an endearing and lasting character.
Re-issued as part of Melville House’s Neversink Library, My Autobiography offers dedicated Chaplin fans and casual admirers alike an astonishing glimpse into the the heart and the mind of Hollywood’s original genius maverick.
Take this unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called “the only genius to come out of the movie industry” as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his “reverse migration” back to Europe, My Autobiography is a reading experience not to be missed.
Get your copy of My Autobiography today on Amazon.