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Director: Otto Messmer
Release date: October, 1919
Stars: Charlie Chaplin
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Charley at the Circus’ is an entry in Pat Sullivan’s Charlie Chaplin animated cartoon series.
As the title implies, the complete film takes place in a circus, and involves gags with Kewpie the Strong Woman, Mitzi the fat lady, a flea circus and a bearded lady, and Pauline the noseless goat. Notice the throwaway gag on the upcoming prohibition.
As with the other Charlie Chaplin shorts, the animation is crude and stiff, but at least this film profits from a running gag of a heavy guy chasing Charlie Chaplin. Nevertheless, there is no hint of greatness in this cartoon, and it’s clear that animator Otto Messmer still had to find his vibe.
‘Charley at the Circus’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies’
Director: Otto Messmer
Release date: October, 1919
Stars: Charlie Chaplin
Rating: ★
Review:
Pat Sullivan’s Charlie Chaplin animated shorts were a short lived series, spanning only two years (1918-1919) and about 16 films. ‘Charley at the Beach’ is one of the last and shows that some Charlie Chaplin’s mannerisms were transferred surprisingly well to the animated screen.
Indeed, Pat Sullivan’s Charlie Chaplin shorts were supported by the great comedian himself. Chaplin gave the animators thirty or forty photographs of himself in different poses and with these the animators could copy several of his movements. Sullivan’s prime animator was of course Otto Messmer, who a month later would create Felix the Cat.
According to Messmer his work on the Chaplin cartoons greatly influenced his work on Felix (Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat, p. 38), but to be honest, compared to the later Felix the cat cartoons, the animation on Charlie Chaplin is remarkably stiff and primitive. Moreover, in these Messmer makes a lot of use of text balloons, even when the images could speak for themselves, like in the hot dog scene.
‘Charley at the Beach’ is little more than a string of unrelated gags at the beach. Messmer even goes for some throwaway gags on fish. Unfortunately, several of the gags are misogynistic (Charlie Chaplin is a peeping Tom, and there’s some fat shaming) and one is even racist: when Charlie discovers a girl he fancies is black, he quickly swims away. The result is a pretty tiresome and boring film, and nowhere we can detect Messmer’s great talent, yet.
‘Charley at the Beach’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies’
Directors: John Coleman Terry & Hugh Shields
Release Date: June 1916
Stars: Charlie Chaplin
Rating: ★
By 1916 Charlie Chaplin had only been working in the movies for two years, but he was already famous enough to have songs written about him and to have animated cartoons featuring his tramp character.
‘Charlie’s White Elephant’ is a prime example of Pat Sullivan’s those Charlie Chaplin cartoons, which numbered ca. twelve in total. The short features Charlie and ‘Fatty’ both courting a girl who orders them to find a white elephant first. Charlie finds a normal elephant and paints it white, but neither he nor Fatty gets the girl.
‘Charlie’s White Elephant’ is credited to Paul Terry’s older brother John Coleman Terry. According to Donald Crafton (in his excellent book ‘Before Mickey’) ‘Charlie’s White Elephant’ was animated by Otto Messmer, the later animator of Felix the Cat, but in the comments below this post David Gerstein assures us he had nothing to do with this particular short, although he did animate some Charlie Chaplin cartoons later on. Thank you, David, for the clarification!
In any case the animator captures Chaplin’s body language very well. But most of the cartoon is filled with remarkably stiff animation, based on only a handful of drawings and many cycles. Moreover, there’s some odd staging with a lot of action taking place in the distance. The end result is more interesting for its historical value than as an entertainment piece.
Watch ‘Charlie’s White Elephant’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Charlie’s White Elephant’ is available on the DVD-sets ‘Chaplin at Keystone’ and ‘Chaplin – The Essanay and Mutual Comedies’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 