To the increasing number of corrective personal histories which has been a conspicuous feature of publishing in the last decade, David Robinson’s Chaplin: His Lift and Art is an imposing addition.1 I can’t offhand recall another biography of a performer that reconstructs the artist’s life and professional achievement in such satisfying detail. In addition to the biographical text itself, there are appendices (of over a hundred pages) including the Chaplin genealogy, a chronological list of every play and film which Chaplin directed or in which he appeared, a selective example of his film shooting schedules and ratios, a Who’s Who identifying everyone of any note mentioned in passing, three Keystone period scenarios, and a record of the FBI-versus-Chaplin activity.
My problem as a reviewer who feels that he should emphasize the essentials without crowding the view is that I haven’t the faintest idea how informed on the Chaplin subject anyone is, outside those long-suffering film-society folk for whom there was a Golden Age of the Silents. I’ll freely confess that although I have a proper respect for isolated moments of Chaplin’s unarguable genius in pantomime, that respect is impatiently qualified by subjective associations with the dreary period of filmmaking in which I came of age. The period and the place. I remember vividly that the East End of London, seen through the slumming eyes of a West Ender in the Twenties had me wondering how much more depressing it must have been when Charles Chaplin grew
