October 28-30, 2010
Ohio University Zanesville, Zanesville, Ohio
d
d
d
d
d
d
d
It remains shocking to many film enthusiasts that the reception of Charlie Chaplin in America does not compare with the reception of Charlie Chaplin in, say, the United Kingdom, Europe, or even Japan. Even in the 1960s, children in many other nations grew up watching the Little Tramp and Chaplin’s other alter egos.
Not so, in the United States, although a schooling in other greats of the silent era – Fatty Arbuckle, or Buster Keaton, say – has been, and remains, even more lacking.
Still, a slowing of Chaplin-related publications, American or not, seems highly unlikely, says Charles J. Maland, a professor of English and cinema studies at the University of Tennessee.
“People who are great artists, who have careers that evolve in interesting ways and who also live interesting lives, and Chaplin did both, will continue to get biographies written about them for a long time,” says Maland, who is working on a book about the production history of Chaplin’s City Lights. Like other modern-day Chaplin scholars, he is able to make use of many primary documents that are among increasing stores of material available to researchers – at the Cineteca di Bologna in Italy; at the city archives in Vevey, the Swiss town where Chaplin spent his last years; and elsewhere. …MORE >>
The Autry and Braun Research Libraries at the Autry National Center of the American West, in Glendale, Los Angeles, California, are seeking an