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The importance of the Tramp character to the success of Charlie Chaplin's film career is indisputable. Chaplin himself admitted that he had difficulty being funny in his first movie appearances until he assembled the various contradictory elements of costume and character traits which came to signify the Tramp. In his autobiography, Chaplin claims that the character was bom one day in 1914 on the set at Keystone when Mack Sennett told him to, "put on a comedy make-up . Anything will do . " Chaplin recalls:
I had no idea of what make-up to put on . . . However, on the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and shoes large .... I added a small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression.1
Chaplin goes on to say that while at first he "had no idea of the character, . . .the clothes and make-up made me feel the person he [the Tramp] was . . .all sorts of crazy ideas that I would never have dreamt of."2 In an earlier autobiography Chaplin's Own Story (1916), Chaplin had described a similar genesis of the Tramp on the Keystone set, but with a greater emphasis on the financial windfall the invention of the character represented.
Chaplin repeatedly described his anxieties about these early days in films in terms of money and the security he sought by its acquisition. In 1914 Sennett was paying Chaplin $150 a week, which Charlie felt at the time to be a very good salary, much more than he had been making on stage with the Fred Karno Company. But Chaplin also feared the loss of this high salary if he failed in his new career in the movies. For Chaplin, laughter and the Tramp character that helped him produce it in his films had a definite monetary value:
"laughter will get the big salaries, . . .1 was not thinking about Charlie Chaplin [his public image] in those days; I was thinking of his work and his success and his growing bank account."
Chaplin showed his awareness of the...