The Tramp


The Tramp, also known as The Little Tramp, was British actor Charlie Chaplin's most memorable on-screen character and an icon in world cinema during the era of silent film. The Tramp is also the title of a silent film starring Chaplin, which Chaplin wrote and directed in 1915.
The Tramp, as portrayed by Chaplin, is a childlike, bumbling but generally good-hearted character who is most famously portrayed as a vagrant who endeavors to behave with the manners and dignity of a gentleman despite his actual social status. However, while he is ready to take what paying work is available, he also uses his cunning to get what he needs to survive and escape the authority figures who will not tolerate his antics. Chaplin's films did not always portray the Tramp as a vagrant, however. The character was rarely referred to by any names on-screen, although he was sometimes identified as "Charlie" and rarely, as in the original silent version of The Gold Rush, "The little funny tramp".

History

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 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:
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. 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..
The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character. When the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character, partly due to how the character was supposed to be American, and Chaplin himself had a strong and obvious English accent. The 1931 production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times, which appropriately ended with the Tramp walking down an endless 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. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.
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, including the passionate plea for peace that has been widely interpreted as Chaplin speaking as himself.
In 1959, having been editing The Chaplin Revue, Chaplin commented to a reporter "I was wrong to kill him. There was room for the Little Man in the atomic age."
A vaudeville performer named Lew Bloom created a similar tramp character which inspired Chaplin. According to Bloom, he was "the first stage tramp in the business". In an interview with the Daily Herald in 1957 Chaplin recalled being inspired by the tramp characters Weary Willie and Tired Tim from Illustrated Chips.

Characteristics

The physical attributes of the Tramp include a pair of baggy pants, a tight coat, a small bowler hat, a large pair of shoes, a springy and flexible cane and a toothbrush mustache. The Tramp walks strangely and uncomfortably because of the ill-fitting clothing; either he is wearing secondhand clothes, or they are originally his but he cannot afford new ones. The Tramp may have seen better days, but he maintains the attitude and demeanor of a high-class individual; as long as he acts like one he can believe that he is one, and is able to keep his hope that some day he actually will be again.
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 a hope for a more permanent transformation through love, and his failure to achieve this.
The Tramp was usually the victim of circumstance and coincidence, but sometimes the results worked in his favor. 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", 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.

Significance

Chaplin's social commentary, while critical of the faults and excesses created by industrialization, also shows support for and belief in the "American Dream." In Modern Times, Chaplin creates a "portrayal consistent with popular leftist stereotypes of wealthy leaders and oppressed workers in the 1930s." 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." However, "the film also guardedly affirms American middle-class, particularly its optimism." 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." "No comedian before or after him has spent more energy depicting people in their working lives." "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."
Chaplin used not one but two similar-looking characters to the Tramp in The Great Dictator ; however, this was an all-talking film. The film was inspired by the noted similarity between Chaplin's Tramp and that of German dictator Adolf Hitler. Chaplin used this similarity to create a dark version of the Tramp character in parody of the dictator.. 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.

The short film

The Tramp is also a short film starring Chaplin as the titular main character. In the film, a hobo exchanges the Tramp's sandwich for a brick, so the Tramp must eat grass. The same hobo later bothers a farmer's daughter, and the Tramp comes to her aid with the help of the brick. When two more hobos show up, the Tramp throws all three into a lake. The grateful girl takes the Tramp home, where he fails as a farmhand. He again helps drive off the hobos. The girl's fiancé arrives. Though a hero, Charlie—knowing he must go—writes a farewell note and leaves again for the open road.
The film also stars Edna Purviance, Lloyd Bacon, and Leo White.
The Tramp was released on 11 April 1915, through Essanay Studios.

Legacy