The Vagabond Clippings 47/55
Motion Picture, New York, June 1918.
The Vagabond Scenes
„Taking the people‘s mind off the struggle“
Editorial content. (...) „Letters to the Editor
Elsie Mae Shepherd, of West Point, Ind., just has to steam
up, so here goes:
I simply gotta write to some one, or explode, and as I have
seen only sixteen summers and winters, and I have
never been blind, either, I am in no state of mind to allow
my youthful career (?) to be nipped on the bud
by such an occurrence.“ (...)
„Again, I want to say that when it comes to comedy,
Charles Chaplin has the rest of the bunch beat a mile,
after giving them a head start. I‘d liked to have seen Max Linder
in such plays as The Adventurer, The Vagabond
or The Floor Walker. It would have been a rank failure.
It isn‘t the slapstick entirely that puts Chaplin‘s
work over – it‘s the subtle humor and pathos of his characters,
and I‘ll say that Chaplin does more real acting
than a great many of these bepompadoured, sport-shirted
,kissable-lipped,‘ first-water heroes. I myself would
just like to see Chaplin in a drama for once. I think he would
make a decided success of it, tho I wouldn‘t want
him to keep it up. We need him in comedy more than we do
in anything else. And why doesn‘t Chaplin go over
and stop the German bullets? He doesn‘t need to. He‘s doing
his bit staying right over here, cheering up and taking
the people‘s mind off the struggle that is going on ,Over There‘
and cheering the soldiers themselves in the training
camps and in the Y. M. C. A. theaters in France. If that isn‘t
as much as Max Linder is doing, well – but, when
it comes to Billie West, once is enough, and too much.“ (...)
Redaktioneller Inhalt
