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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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When Charlie Chaplin left Keystone Studios for more money and greater creative control at Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, he added more depth to his character, more thought to his direction, and more substance to his humor: at Essanay, he grew from a comedian to a true cinematic artist. This work carefully examines all sixteen Chaplin comedies produced at Essanay, showing Chaplin as an artist in transition from the knockabout Keystone farces to more refined, sometimes brilliant Mutual productions. From His New Job (1915) to Triple Trouble (1918), the book covers each film with key details, a history of its production, and valuable commentary that places the picture in context within Chaplin's canon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An Overlooked Era in Chaplin's Great Career
When I was growing up, I sought out the short films of Charlie Chaplin, and watched them repeatedly. I loved the Mutual series (and still do), but I simply did not appreciate the films he made for Essanay; they were simply poor, I thought. Of course, this was before they had the benefit of David Shepard's restoration. Now we can see these bright, inventive one- and two-reelers for what they are: a major step in Chaplin's great career. An indispensable companion to these films is James L. Neibaur's book, Chaplin at Essanay: A Film Artist in Transition, 1915-1916. Instead of racing through it (like time usually forces me to do with books these days), I savored each chapter, then watched the film that had just been discussed. I was struck by the insightfulness of Mr. Neibaur's observations, and impressed by the amount of fresh information he offers. That in itself is no mean feat. After all, how many books have been written on Chaplin and his films, anyway? For that matter, how many do we need? I'm not sure exactly, but I do know this book is one of them.

Solid Chaplin Research at it's Finest
Chaplin at Essanay: A Film Artist in Transition 1915-16 is the work of film historian Jim Neibaur, who has been writing about silent and sound comedy for a quarter century.Like all his books, this one combines solid historical research with insightful analysis.Any historian working on the Essanay period has a limited set of resources to draw from beyond the films themselves.Chaplin himself rarely spoke or wrote about his Essanay period and his professional colleagues are now long gone.Rather than simply quoting other Chaplin authors from the last 50 years, Neibaur goes back to original publicity material issued by Essanay, contemporary news reports, interviews and reviews.

Framing the bulk of the book between chapters on "Keystone" and "Mutual and After", Neibaur takes each Essanay short in chronological order and presents a plot summary and full analysis as to the importance of the picture in Chaplin's development as a performer and director.Rather than seeing Chaplin's Essanay films as a series of rough drafts for better work to come, he makes a convincing case that each short can stand its own merit and urges the reader to look at the surviving films with new eyes.Neibaur looks at the progressively complex structures of the films as Chaplin took his art to new heights with each passing month.Even such overlooked films as "By the Sea" and "Shanghaied" show Chaplin pushing his mastery of slapstick to new heights. Best of all, Chaplin at Essanay is blessedly free of the academic jargon that curses many a doctoral thesis posing as a film history text.It presents itself as history and the author's interpretation of that history, nothing more or less.

Chaplin at Essanay should be on the bookshelf of all Chaplin buffs and anyone interested in our comic heritage.

Long Overdue Chaplin-Essanay Appreciation
An excellent and long overdue appreciation of Chaplin's transitional year at Essanay.Neibaur succeeds wonderfully in presenting CC's work at Essanay with the historical importance and excellence in film making development that it has always deserved. The connections from film to film showing the progress of acting, characterization, directing, plotting etc. are solid and well made.The reviews and other contemporary articles are interesting and enlightening.A must-read for Chaplin fans and film history students.
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Many remember Charlie Chaplin's comic masterpiece, The Gold Rush , as the finest blend of comedy and farce ever brought to the screen, but far fewer remember its heroine, Georgia Hale. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Romantic and Sweet
This is a very beautiful memoir about Charlie Chaplin. Hale fell in love with Chaplin's tramp character, "Charlie." In her memory, it happened as a young girl when she first saw him at the movies, but one can suggest that it really happened when she co-starred with him in the "Gold Rush" in 1926. They had a close off-and-on romantic relationship for the next 17 years.
Hale wrote this in the 1960's, when she was in her 60's and had not talked to Chaplin for over two decades. Still, the pain and pleasure of her relationship with him seems quite fresh.
Unfortunately, she seems to be seeing the relationship through the prism of her Christian Science ideology. It is hard to say if she really loved "Charlie" the artist, but hated "Mr. Chaplin" the Hollywood businessman, as she insists. This might be a later interpretation that she imposed upon the relationship to suppress the very real contradictions that the relationship must have held for her. We should remember that she was in constant competition with hundreds of beautiful women for his affection and companionship. She desperately wanted to be special for him. The only thing that seems to have made her special was her love for Charlie the tramp character. One can say that Chaplin loved her for her love of Charlie.
She does give a fascinating dream account towards the end of the book in which she marries Chaplin and moves to a small village in Greece with him. Obviously, there, she would not have faced the terrible competition for his affection that she faced in Hollywood.
Heather Kiernan has done a wonderful job of editing this work into a narrative whole from what was apparently very choppy and incomplete manuscripts.

A Loving Tribute
This book is everything I expected it to be and more.

Too many books on famous faces are filled with stories of their sexual exploits. Too many of these books lose their credibility due to bad writing, unrealistic situations, and a tell-all attitude which cheapens the information presented. This book is not like that. It is classily put together like an old movie that never showed sex but smartly implied it. Hale does not blatantly throw her longtime love affair with Chaplin in the reader's face; she forces one to read between the lines and to still realize that there were barriers like marriage that she did not cross.

Along with stories about Chaplin, Hale reminisces on her life before and during stardom. She tells of winning a beauty contest that took her to Hollywood and meeting Chaplin on the street one day. She tells about filming The Gold Rush and her passionate love for Chaplin ever after.

More than anything else, though, this book gives its reader total insight into Chaplin as a man. He was tempestuously moody and difficult, yet insanely insightful. This all comes from a woman who knew him well for much of his life. So many books dismiss his personality to dissect his genius as a film maker but only glance at his behavior outside of that. This book looks into what Chaplin was like socially by a woman who was not only close to him, but is representative of the many women in the comic's life.

Miss Hale comes off as an annoying know-it-all bragging about Chaplin having an attraction to her during The Gold Rush in the Unknown Chaplin series. However, reading this book gives a whole new perspective on her. It helps one to understand that she was not bragging about Chaplin's affections; she was simply reveling in a tiny glimpse of hope that he might feel even a fraction of the love she felt for him. This is an honest, emotional account.

Totally misleading title
From the title of the book, one would expect intimate (i.e., sexual) tid-bits to be explored in this book. Forget it, Georgia Hale was almost without doubt Chaplin's mistress for several years but this prudish, virginal woman inexplicably chose to present herself as a chaste, untouched maiden, all the while living in Charlie's Summit Drive estate in Hollywood. Georgia Hale was Charlie's co-star in his immortal 1925 film "The Gold Rush;" she was discovered by Chaplin and she owned her entire career to him. She also fell madly in love with him but claims that she held off sleeping with him because of his (miserably unhappy) second marriage to Lita Grey. Her morality supposedly prevented her from taking the plunge with the Little Tramp. Yeah, right.

Georgia writes poorly, wanders all over the place in her style and tells the reader very little about Charlie besides the fact he was moody, brilliant, beautiful, sexy, maddening and immature. Oh yes, let's toss in genius to the mix, but we already knew all of that. Hale was in a unique position of revealing much about Charlie during a pivotal period in his life; she was undeniably close to him and he trusted her and treated her better than he treated many of his other paramours. But she muddies the water with an insipid and irritating style and the absolute crusher is the final chapter. It's an idiotic dream sequence which goes on forever and is both banal and bizarre.

The most interesting story in the entire book is when she briefly reunites with Charlie at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1972. Oona leaves the room and Chaplin asks her, "Have you ever married?" Even after 40 years, Georgia is still hopelessly besotted with Charlie and breathlessly intones, "After you, Charlie, no man could compare." Naturally Chaplin adores this line and showers her with kisses. One senses this was Georgia Hale's greatest moment since Charlie threw her over in the early 30's.

In short, a poorly written book, a tome of missed opportunities. Oh, what could have been!

Intimate Close-ups: Charlie Chaplin
I'm a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin's and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.Georgia Hale was a "hidden" love of his and this book gave me a lot of new info on him.If you like Charlie Chaplin and want to learnabout another part of his life, this is the book to read.

Georgia Gets Her Man- For A Time
I am a big Chaplin fan, so I try and read whatever I can get my hands on. Georgia Hale was Charlie's leading lady for The Gold Rush, and unbeknownst to me, one of his major loves off-screen. Their relationship was on-and-offagain for several years, but he kept coming back to her. I enjoyed readingabout Georgia's childhood and her search to meet the man (she claims) whocompletely saved her life. Her accounts with him are surprising, endearing,memorable. I only wish she would spend more time talking about herself asan individual, instead of Charlie's companion. This accounts for gaps intime and information since it is apparent that she feels the times notspent with Charlie are not worth mentioning. She also ends the book on arather uneventful and abrupt note which is dissatisfying. You learn moreabout Georgia's post-Chaplin life (but not much) in the introduction by theauthor. However, it is a touching recollection of her times with thisamazing man, hence my 3 stars. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a good book
A really good book about Chaplin.
A must have for any real Chaplin fan.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Lenny Maltin gives us another look at comedy's great talents
Once again.Leonard Maltin has given us another look at "The Great Movie Comedians"and he shows us why they are still popular with movie fans.In this third look at filmdon's funniest clowns and comics.He explains why Laurel & Hardy,Abbott & Costello ,"The Three Stooges",The Marx Brothers,Charlie Chaplin and W.C.Fields are still popular with their fans even years after these talented performers stopped making movies.He also explains why some performers like Jerry Lewis is still unable to work successfully as a solo clown or why "The Marx Brothers"were never able to sustain their popularity with moviegoers into the war years.(Mainly because of creative sabotage from stupid studio execs like Louis B.Mayer At MGM and the equally stupid heads of RKO and UA).He also looks at the brief but interesting film careers of Thelma Todd,Raymound Griffith,Charlie Chase, Fatty Arbuckle,Mabel Normand,Harry Langdon and Harold Lloyd.The book also includes a filmography of these performers best work and photos of these clowns and comics in their best scenes and off camera as well.While one can hardly agree with the insight into the films of Woody Allen ,Jerry Lewis,The Marx Brothers,etc in this book(I still don't find Mr.Allen,Mr.Lewis,The Marxes,Mr.Chaplin,Mr.Keaton,Mr.Langdon,Mr.Lloyd,Mr.Buster Keaton and Mr.Fields Funny).Mr.Maltin's estimation of their work is informative,interesting and fun.Which can make even a non "Three Stooges"or Non Fields,Marx,KeatonFan take another look at the careers of these famous funnypeople.Bravo Lenny.Kevin S.Butler.

The perfect book on movie comedians and movie comedy:
No one understands and appreciates movie comedy better than LeonardMaltin, and here he has written a book on the subject that is simplyperfect. His enthusiasm and love for these comedians and their comedies isinfectious, and he gives us a giddy yearning to watch the movies he cites.If one is an aspiring comedian, too, this is an inspirational book, fillingone with the wonderful possibilities of making an audience laugh. It isdifficult to fully describe the unpretentious, simple manner in which Mr.Maltin nails down the very essence of comedy in these pages. Mr. Maltinunderstands better than anyone the subtle art of analyzing comedy withoutkilling it, making his book an absolute joy.TO AMAZON:PLEASE NOTETHISIS A SLIGHTLY CORRECTED VERSION OF A REVIEW I WROTE FOR A LATER EDITION OFTHIS BOOK.THE REVIEW APPLIES EQUALLY WELL TO ALL THREE AVAILABLEEDITIONS. ... Read more

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"The biography is as good an introduction to Chaplin's life and films as has been published. The bibliographical essay . . . offers clear and reliable evaluations of the works considered. The filmography carefully lists everyone involved in each Chaplin film." Choice ... Read more