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Chaplin and Related Readings:

1. Chaplin's rise to prominence

a. 1914--Sennett--$150.00/wk.

b. 1915--Essanay--own writer/director--$1250/wk.

c. 1916--Mutual---$10,000/wk.

d. 1917--independent

e. 1919--co-founded United Artists

2. keys to Chaplin's success

a. audience

1. industrialized

2. urbanized

3. immigrant

b. appeals in his films:

1. treatment of the city

2. the Tramp and audience identification

3. comic strategies

4. melodramatic strategies

c. resistance to/incorporation of sound

(from Gehring: what were the pressures on Chaplin in the period before he made City Lights? From Maland: What were the basic elements of Chaplin’s “contract” with his audience? Why do both Gehring and Maland suggest that City Lights offers social criticism?)

3. Issues in Movie-Made America, Chapts. 5-9:

-- Why are Hollywood images influential off-screen?

-- What does Sklar mean by the subversive influence of film comedy? Why was Chaplin a timely/appealing film artist?

-- What motivated efforts to control film content during the 1920s? How did the film industry respond?

-- From Sklar's discussion of Zukor's rise to influence, what emerges as the source or sources of power in the film industry? Why was Zukor a survivor? Why can Sklar say that "the studio system was the house that Adolph Zukor built?" Why was Warner Bros. also a success story as the industry shifted into the 1930s?