Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 440. Photo: Sascha. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
French postcard by A.M., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 169. Photo: United Artists. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, Berlin, no. 1163/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Ifa / United Artists.
A metaphor for a world oriented only towards material values
For The Goldrush (1925), Charlie Chaplin reprised his role as The Tramp. The film is situated in Alaska, in the late 19th century. A group of adventurers heads into the wilderness to search for gold. Among them is The Tramp, who seeks shelter in a small cabin during an icy blizzard, but it is already occupied by the criminal Black Larsen (Tom Murray), who is wanted by the police. Joining them is the rough but good-natured adventurer Big Jim (Mack Swain), who recently struck gold. When the storm is taking so long that food is running out, the three draw lots for who will have to go out into the blizzard to obtain food. Black Larsen is chosen by lot to go in search of food. He encounters and kills two bounty hunters, then accidentally finds Big Jim's gold mine and never returns to the cabin.
The other two are starving and forced to eat whatever they can. The Tramp then boils one of his shoes for the two remaining men. He eats his share of the shoe with relish in one of the film's most famous scenes: he winds the shoelaces like spaghetti and gnaws the nails like chicken bones. Almost mad with hunger, Big Jim sees the Tramp as an oversized chicken, which he tries to catch and slaughter. A bear then enters the cabin and is killed, supplying them with food. When the two split ways, Big Jim returns to his pot of gold. He finds Black Larsen, who knocks him down. While fleeing with some of the mined gold, Larsen dies in an avalanche. Jim recovers consciousness and wanders into the snow, having lost his memory from the blow.
The Tramp has arrived in a gold rush town and falls in love with the attractive barmaid Georgina (Georgia Hale), who is in a turbulent relationship with the boastful Jack Cameron (Malcolm Waite). To irritate Jack, who is aggressively pestering her for a dance, she instead decides to dance with "the most deplorable looking tramp in the dance hall". Charlie is later taken in by a good-natured gold prospector who is setting off on an expedition and asks him to look after his hut while he is away. A few days later, he meets Georgina again by chance, who is on an outing with some friends. He invites them to the hut, where the women accidentally discover a photograph of Georgine that the Tramp has kept, and thus learn that he has fallen in love with the girl. They then decide to play a trick on him and pretend to accept his invitation to New Year's Eve dinner. Georgina does not take it seriously and forgets about it. The Tramp earns the money for his invitation by shovelling snow. On New Year's Eve, he has set a festive table. While waiting for Georgina and her friends, he falls asleep. In his dream, his guests have arrived, and he entertains them with the 'Sandwich Dance,' another scene that has gone down in film history. Charlie moves two buns, skewered on forks, to the beat of the music like the feet of a dancer. When the Tramp awakens, he hears the New Year's bells and is still alone. Disappointed, he goes into town to look for Georgina in the dance hall.
There, he meets Big Jim, who, because of the blow Black Larsen gave him, can no longer remember the exact location of his gold discovery. He only knows that it was near the hut. The Tramp is supposed to take him there, then he intends to share the money with him and make them both millionaires. The Tramp actually succeeds in finding the hut again. The two celebrate with lots of alcohol and go to bed. During the night, a snowstorm blows the hut halfway over a precipice. When the two gold prospectors wake up the next morning, they initially believe the swaying floor is due to their hangovers. They barely manage to get to solid ground before the hut plunges into the abyss. They find the gold nearby and return as millionaires, just as Big Jim had predicted.
The two men leave Alaska on a steamer. The Tramp, now dressed in tails and a top hat, is asked to don his ragged gold-digger's outfit for a photographer. During the photo shoot, he falls to the steerage, where the less well-off passengers gather. There, he encounters Georgina, who also happens to be on the steamer. She thinks he's a stowaway and tries to hide him. When this fails, she offers to pay for his passage. Meanwhile, however, journalists and ship officers have arrived and cleared up the misunderstanding. The tramp whispers something in a journalist's ear; obviously, he plans to marry Georgina. Charles Chaplin used the gold seekers' adventures, taken to extremes in the film, as a metaphor for a world oriented only towards material values. In this world, Charlie, despite all his clumsiness, ultimately finds personal happiness in the form of love.
Vintage postcard. Georgia Hale and Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
French postcard by Hélio-Cachan. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
French postcard by Hélio-Cachan. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
Vintage postcard.
The fifth-highest-grossing film in cinema history
After the huge success of The Kid (1921), Charles Chaplin spent a long time searching in vain for a new idea. In the autumn of 1923, he was invited by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They showed Chaplin various stereoscopic photographs. One image in particular caught his eye. It showed a long line of gold miners climbing the Chilkoot Pass in northern Canada. Chaplin immediately acquired literature on the subject of the gold rush. He was very inspired by a book about the 'Donner Tragedy'. A gold prospecting team led by George Donner had become trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada. In this desperate situation, cannibalism ensued. Some people ate their shoes, laces included.
Screen tests for The Gold Rush (1925) began on 8 February 1924. Chaplin initially had the sets for the opening scenes built in California. But then he decided to shoot the exteriors near Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A gold rush village was being built there with great effort. Six hundred extras clambered up the 2300-feet (700 metres) pass dug through the mountain snow. The costs were enormous from the start, and as always, Chaplin worked without a script, improvising when necessary. Sometimes nothing was shot for weeks while he thought about the story's progression. However, the huge film crew - actors, cameramen, set shifters, and lighting technicians - had to be ready at all times.
Principal photography was completed in May 1925. More than seven kilometres of film had been exposed, only the opening scene of which was used for the final version, which Chaplin himself assembled in the editing room. Chaplin had most of the scenes filmed at Truckee reshot on the back lot and stages at his Hollywood studio, where elaborate Klondike sets were constructed.
Originally, the only 15-year-old Lita Grey was to play the female lead of Georgina in the film. Lita became pregnant by Chaplin during filming, after which they married in 1924. Grey was replaced by Georgia Hale. Lita Grey had to be content with an extra role, while her husband Chaplin was having an affair with the leading actress, Georgia Hale, at the time of filming, as Hale later wrote in her autobiography. After filming, Chaplin's marriage to Lita Grey was on the verge of breaking up.
The Gold Rush cost almost a million dollars to produce. United Artists was the film's distributor. Critics generally praised the film. Mordaunt Hall wrote in The New York Times: "Here is a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, tenderness, linked with brusqueness and boisterousness. It is the outstanding gem of all Chaplin's pictures, as it has more thought and originality than even such masterpieces of mirth as The Kid and Shoulder Arms. The film became an enormous success. It was the fifth-highest-grossing film in cinema history, earning over $4,250,000 (today $78,070,000). The film has been re-released several times, including a sound film version in 1942. The Gold Rush grossed approximately six million dollars over the next years. Chaplin himself considered The Gold Rush to be the best of his films, and he stated that he wanted to be remembered for this film.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Editore, Milano, no. 462. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
French postcard by Ed. Nugeron, no. STAR 153. Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925). Caption: Centenaire de la naissance de Charlie Chaplin 1889-1989 (Centenary of the birth of Charlie Chaplin 1889-1989).
American postcard by Goldies Publications Ltd., Sausalito, California, no. A19 Photo: United Artists. Image: Lobby Card of Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
American postcard by Goldies Publications Ltd., Sausalito, California, no. A57 Photo: United Artists. Image: Lobby Card of Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925).
Sources: Le Gionate del Cinema Muto, Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.
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