The Tramp

The character of the Tramp was originally created by accident while Chaplin was working at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, when dressing up for the 1914 short film Mabel's Strange Predicament starring Mabel Normand and Chaplin. In a 1933 interview, Chaplin explained how he came up with the look of the Tramp:[2]

A hotel set was built for (fellow Keystone comic) Mabel Normand's picture Mabel's Strange Predicament and I was hurriedly told to put on a funny make-up. This time I went to the wardrobe and got a pair of baggy pants, a tight coat, a small derby hat and a large pair of shoes. I wanted the clothes to be a mass of contradictions, knowing pictorially the figure would be vividly outlined on the screen. To add a comic touch, I wore a small mustache which would not hide my expression. My appearance got an enthusiastic response from everyone, including Mr. Sennett. The clothes seemed to imbue me with the spirit of the character. He actually became a man with a soul—a point of view. I defined to Mr. Sennett the type of person he was. He wears an air of romantic hunger, forever seeking romance, but his feet won't let him.

That was actually the first film featuring the Tramp but a different film, shot later but with the same character, happened to be released two days earlier. The Tramp debuted to the public in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (released on 7 February 1914; Mabel's Strange Predicament, shot earlier, was released on 9 February 1914). Chaplin, with his Little Tramp character, quickly became the most popular star in Keystone director Mack Sennett's company of players. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. (In only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp.)

The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character. The 1931 sound production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times (1936), which ended with the Tramp walking down a highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song.

In The Great Dictator, Chaplin's first film after Modern Times, Chaplin plays the dual role of a Hitler-esque dictator, and a Jewish barber. Although Chaplin emphatically stated that the barber was not the Tramp, he retains the Tramp's moustache, hat, and general appearance. Despite a few silent scenes, including one where the barber is wearing the Tramp's coat and bowler hat and carrying his cane, the barber speaks throughout the film (using Chaplin's own English accent), including a passionate plea for peace that has been widely interpreted as Chaplin speaking as himself.[3]

In 1959, having been editing The Chaplin Revue, Chaplin commented to a reporter regarding the Tramp character, "I was wrong to kill him. There was room for the Little Man in the atomic age."[4]

A vaudeville performer named Lew Bloom created a similar tramp character. Bloom argued he was "the first stage tramp in the business".[5] In an interview with the Daily Herald in 1957, Chaplin recalled being inspired by the tramp characters Weary Willie and Tired Tim, a long-running hobo comic strip from Illustrated Chips that he had read as a boy in London:

The wonderfully vulgar paper for boys [Illustrated Chips] ... and the 'Adventures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim,' two famous tramps with the world against them. There's been a lot said about how I evolved the little tramp character who made my name. Deep, psychological stuff has been written about how I meant him to be a symbol of all the class war, of the love-hate concept, the death-wish and what-all. But if you want the simple Chaplin truth behind the Chaplin legend, I started the little tramp simply to make people laugh and because those other old tramps, Weary Willie and Tired Tim, had always made me laugh.[6]

The Tramp and Kid ("John").

The physical attributes of the Tramp include a pair of large baggy pants, a tight coat, a bowler hat, a large pair of shoes, a springy and flexible cane, and a toothbrush moustache - a mass of contradictions, as Chaplin wanted it to be.[7]

Two films made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of Chaplin's screen persona. While in the end the Tramp manages to shake off his disappointment and resume his carefree ways, the pathos lies in the Tramp's having hope for a more permanent transformation through love and his failure to achieve this.[8]

The Tramp was usually the victim of circumstances and coincidences, but sometimes the results work in his favour. In Modern Times, he picks up a red flag that falls off a truck and starts to wave it at the truck in an attempt to return it, and by doing so, unknowingly and inadvertently becomes the leader of a group of protesting workers, and ends up in jail because of it. While in jail, he accidentally eats "nose powder" (i.e., cocaine), which causes him to not return to his jail cell; but when he eventually does, he fights off some jailbreakers attempting to escape, thus saving the life of the warden. Because of this, the warden offers to let him go, but the Tramp would rather stay in jail because it is better than the outside world.

Chaplin's social commentary, while critical of the faults and excesses created by industrialisation, also shows support for and belief in the "American Dream". In Modern Times, Chaplin creates a "portrayal consistent with popular leftist stereotypes of wealthy business leaders and oppressed workers in the 1930s."[9] While the Tramp and his fellow workers sweat on the assembly line, the president of the Electro Steel Company works on a puzzle and reads comic strips in the newspaper. The obsession of working with efficiency and assembly-line productivity ultimately drives the Tramp mad. This could be seen as "an attack on the capitalist rationalization of production."[10] However, "the film also guardedly affirms American middle-class, particularly its optimism."[11] For example, one sequence depicts the Tramp's dream in which he and the gamine live a traditional middle-class lifestyle.

The Tramp and the gamine find a rundown shack to live in. The gamine cooks a cheap breakfast, and then the Tramp is off to work, while the gamine stays to maintain the home—an allusion to a middle-class setting. By the ending of Modern Times, "the film seems tailored to please the middle-class optimist." Due to all of their failings the final scene had the gamine stating, "What's the use of trying?", and the Tramp replying "Buck up—never say die." In his silent films, Chaplin uniquely deployed critical social commentary. "What makes Modern Times decidedly different from Chaplin's previous three films are the political references and social realism that keep intruding into Charlie's world."[12] "No comedian before or after him has spent more energy depicting people in their working lives."[13] "Though there had been films depicting the lives of immigrants and urban workers, no filmmaker before Chaplin had created their experience so humanly and lovingly."[14]

Chaplin used not one but two similar-looking characters to the Tramp in The Great Dictator (1940); however, this was an all-talking film (Chaplin's first). The film was inspired by the noted similarity between Chaplin's Tramp, most notably his small moustache and that of Adolf Hitler. Chaplin used this similarity to create a dark version of the Tramp character in parody of the dictator. In his book My Autobiography, Chaplin stated that he was unaware of the Holocaust when he made the film; if he had been, he writes, he would not have been able to make a comedy satirising Hitler. In his autobiography, Chaplin identifies the barber as the Tramp. A noticeable difference is that the barber has a streak of grey in his hair, whereas the Tramp had always been depicted as having dark hair. Also, the barber lacks the ill-fitting clothes of the Tramp and is clearly portrayed as having a profession. His character does share much of the Tramp's character, notably his idealism and anger on seeing unfairness.

In the 1910s, due to the desire for more Chaplin films than Chaplin could make, many created their own character like the Tramp or even just played the Tramp. This has continued, though to a much lesser degree, after the 1910s due to people admiring Chaplin. Some films have been animated and obviously do not need an actor to play the character, who is portrayed as mute.

The most famous impersonation is that by Billy West.

• At the peak of Chaplin's popularity, in 1915, a song was made about him, titled "Those Charlie Chaplin Feet", which describes his funny character, the Tramp.[25]
• The Tramp character of Chaplin, according to Walt Disney, was one of the inspirations for the character of Mickey Mouse, saying "We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin ... a little fellow trying to do the best he could".[26] Ub Iwerks, the artist who helped Disney designing Mickey, said about the character "People accepted him as a symbolic character, and though he looked like a mouse, he was accepted as dashing and heroic."[27]
• Numerous works cite the Tramp as an icon of the Great Depression, of Charlie Chaplin himself, and of the downtrodden hero, from Chaplin's films with similar characters (such as The Great Dictator), to Playboy Penguin, the dapper, silent penguin rescued by Bugs Bunny.
• The Tramp made a cameo appearance in the 1974 Rankin/Bass stop motion holiday special The Year Without a Santa Claus.
• In 1978, a year after Chaplin's death, the Peter, Sue, and Marc band took part in the German finals with their song "Charlie Chaplin" as their entry.[28]
• In the 1980s, the character was portrayed in advertising for the IBM PC personal computer.[29][30]
• The cartoon character "Baggy Pants" presents an imitation of the Tramp.
• From 1973 to 1990, the children's educational television series Sesame Street occasionally featured cast member Sonia Manzano, who played Maria, in character as the Tramp for some skits. Manzano was often accompanied by fellow cast member Linda Bove, who would play a second Tramp or a supporting character, typically a pretty lady.
• Indian filmmaker-actor Raj Kapoor was inspired by Chaplin's "tramp" character, adopting a similar "tramp" persona in a number of his films, such as Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955).[31]
• In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", putting Chaplin's performance as the Tramp in City Lights at No. 44.[32]
• The Tramp is the main character in the CGI TV series Chaplin & Co. The show places the character in the 21st century and features him meeting up with numerous characters (one of them being a modern version of the Kid) while retaining the humor from Chaplin's original films.
• Homer Simpson dresses up as the Tramp in the opening couch gag in The Simpsons 2002 episode "Jaws Wired Shut".
• The 1995 musical Little Tramp is based on the life of Chaplin and includes the creation of the Tramp.

Kevin Scott Collier. The Chaplin Animated Silent Cartoons. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2019. ISBN 1098846044