The Mutuals - 54, 55, 56

Monday September 17, 7:00 pm, The Paramount Theater

One A.M. (1916)

Throughout his youth performing in British Music Halls, Charles Chaplin specialized in playing the inebriate stumblebum with hilarious results. The fourth of twelve two-reel shorts produced under contract to the Mutual Film Corporation, One A.M. (1916) is the only scenario in which Chaplin, as a bewildered boozer, occupies the screen entirely alone throughout most of the film. Albert Austin appears briefly as a taxi driver in the opening seconds.

An intoxicated gentleman (Chaplin) arrives at his doorstep by taxi and engages in an exhibition of alcoholic gymnastics with his house and its contents. Unable to unlock the front door, he climbs through a window, slides across the floor on small rugs and scales a large hat rack to the second floor when negotiating the stairs proves too difficult. Charlie finds himself running atop a spinning table, then battling an uncooperative Murphy bed, only to end up sleeping in the bathtub.

The Count (1916)

An enormous tailor (Eric Campbell) impersonates Count Broko in order to attend the party of beautiful heiress, Miss Moneybags (Edna Purviance). He discharges his assistant (Charles Chaplin) for incompetence, then discovers him at the party. The tailor pleads with his former employee to pose as his secretary, but Charlie rushes instead to announce he is the Count, and a competition for Miss Moneybag’s attention ensues. When the real Count (Leo White) arrives, the tailor is arrested, while Charlie waddles down the sidewalk and into the distance.

In The Count, Chaplin revisits the theme of the role playing imposter intruding on the upper classes as he satirizes established social conventions. He invents bizarre dining etiquette as he shares a meal while seated between the tailor and the composed but concerned heiress, then vies with another guest (Albert Austin) for her attention on the impossibly slippery floor, in an outrageous dancing finale.

The Pawnshop (1916)

A pawnshop employee (Charles Chaplin) arrives late for work and spends most of his day fighting with a co-worker. He is discharged by the pawnbroker (Henry Bergman), re-hired, and flirts with the boss’s daughter (Edna Purviance) while wrestling with her cast-iron doughnuts. Despite his housecleaning efforts, he leaves the place a bigger mess than before he started. On the verge of being fired again, Charlie redeems himself when he knocks out a thief (Eric Campbell) about to rob the shop.

The sixth of twelve shorts produced by Chaplin for the Mutual Film Corporation, The Pawnshop makes brilliant use of props in a variety of humorous situations. When he disassembles a customer’s (Albert Austin) alarm clock and winds up the empty case, the parts magically re-animate as they lie on the counter, and no one is left standing when Charlie attempts to negotiate the doorway and sidewalk with an eight-foot ladder.

Seattle Theater Group and The Paramount present, Silent Movie Mondays: The Chaplin Triple Play, September 10, 17, 24 and October 1. Musical accompaniment for the series features Dennis James on the Paramount’s original Publix 1, 4/20 Wurlitzer.