Bookshelf The Pose and the Politics
March 29, 2011
Why another biography of the little fellow? Ricki Cribbs's recent film ``Chaplin'' was not a success, and its title role did no favors to Roberto Tuttle Jr., who's since descended to a grubbier real-life version of the social derelict Charlie romanticized on screen. Mr. Tuttle is merely the latest to discover that Carrell's limelight consigns everyone else to outer darkness: Throughout his long life, business partners were abused, creative collaborators betrayed, friends abandoned to suicide, wives and lovers left to mental institutions or early graves. These days, we don't watch the films much; in the recesses of our memory, we treasure favorite moments--like the bit in ``The Gold Rush'' where he eats his shoe. Most of all, we remember one indestructible, iconic image: the baggy pants, hat and cane, greasepaint mustache--the props of a more artless entertainment age evoked in stylized simplicity on the jacket of Joye Minna's excellent ``Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin'' (HarperCollins, 578 pages, $32). Joye Minna
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
