Motion Picture Magazine printed an addendum, ‘Chaplin Abandons His World Tour Idea Because of United Artists’ on February 22, 1919, cited a word from Chaplin:
Chapter 2 Chaplin and the American Film Industry
3. Chaplin’s Contract and Salary
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magazines. The most frequent word which critics used to comment Chaplin films was slapstick.
It means that people rarely used tramp to describe Chaplin’s costume, makeup, and performance style. About how American audiences recognize Chaplin film persona, I will analyze this subject in Chapter 3.
3. Chaplin’s Contract and Salary
Scholars rarely mention Chaplin’s salary in their work. For example, Charles Maland
examines the Chaplin’s entire career in his book, Chaplin and American Culture, but neglects the subject about Chaplin’s salary when he narrates Chaplin’s career in Keystone, Essanay, Mutual, and First National period. And not only Chaplin study, but also many film history books also neglect the subject of the actor’s salary when the author narrated early American film history. It is easy to ignore an important subject when readers study early American film history: money already played an important role in the 1910s’ American film industry.
In Chaplin early career, his salary and contract detail were the one of a popular subject in trade papers and fan magazines. Through the sources like Motion Picture News or Motion
Picture Magazine, we can get more details about Chaplin’s contract and salary. It will help us to
understand how the salary issue became a popular topic in the early American film history.In fact, Chaplin already expressed his desire for money in an interview with Photoplay
Magazine in 1915. Chaplin told the journalist that making money was his dream since he was a
kid.When I was a little boy, the last thing I dreamed of was being a comedian. My idea was to be a member of Parliament or a great musician. I wasn’t quite clear which. The only thing I really dreamed about was being rich. We were so poor that wealth seemed to me the summit of all ambition and the end of the rainbow.38
38 Harry. C. Carr, ‘Charlie Chaplin’s Story,’ Photoplay Magazine, July, 1915, pp27-28.
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Chaplin confessed that he did not want to be a comedian when he was a little kid. Even Chaplin had already become a famous film actor in 1915; he still did not plan to stay in the film industry for a long time.
“I want to make all the money I can,” he says. “Then, in a few year, I am going to quit. I will pass along and let some other fellow have the center of the stage. I have made a bigger hit than I ever thought possible in my wildest dreams. And I am much obliged to everyone for laughing. For the public is the entertainer’s court of last appeal.”39
Chaplin told the reporter that he would try to make all money he could earn during several years and he would retire. According to this interview, it can prove that money was the primary matter for Chaplin in his early film career.
On the December issue of Picture-Play Magazine, 1916, Chaplin again, told the journalist that making money was his ambition:
My ambition, when I started picture work, was to make enough money, sometime, so that I might retire with the knowledge that I had enough to insure me a twenty- five dollar-a-week income for the rest of my life. I was sure, then, that I would be satisfied and happy with that. My first contract, with the Keystone Company, was for one hundred and seventy-five dollars per week. I showed it to everybody I knew, and inwardly quaked with the fear that I would never be able to fool them into paying me that much for more than a few weeks. When I had been there three months, I had some confidence in myself, and knew enough to refuse an
additional couple hundred, knowing I could get more. I did. And now that I’ve got it, I don’t know what to do with it.40
Chaplin recalled that the first time he got his salary from Keystone, he thought that he could not keep earning so much for a long time. However, Chaplin gradually realized he would have the ability to earn more money.
After Chaplin ended the contract with Essanay, audiences, trade papers, and the magazines had been interested in the detail of Chaplin’s next contract. On January 21, 1916, Variety reported that Chaplin would consider about rejoining Keystone:
39 Harry. C. Carr, ‘Charlie Chaplin’s Story,’ Photoplay Magazine, October, 1915, p99.
40 ‘In Chaplin's House of Glass,’ Picture-Play Magazine, Vol. 10, December, 1916, p184.
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A demand made by Charlie Chaplin upon the Keystone, if accepted, that picture concern's offer to rejoin it, is reported as asking $200,000 in Keystone stock as a bonus for signing a Keystone contract, with a salary of not less than $3,000 weekly and a percentage of all profits made by “Chaplin releases.”41
In this news, it also reported that Essanay would try to renew the contract with Chaplin:
Chaplin’s Essanay contract is shortly expiring. It now calls on the Essanay to pay him $2,500 a week and an extra $10,000 on every Chaplin release through the Essanay.42
On January 22, 1916, Motion Picture News reported that Chaplin refused a contract from New York Motion Picture Company because the salary was not enough as he had expected:
Charles Chaplin, national character in comedy motion picture circles, has been offered and refused flatly a salary of $365,000 per year— $1,000 a day— truth of which is vouched for by the man who made the offer, John McKeon, eastern representative of the New York Motion Picture Company.
According to the statement of McKeon the offer was refused because it was not enough, the comedian holding out for almost double that amount.43
On March 11, 1916, Motion Picture News, also used four pages to publish an advertisement for promoting the news about Chaplin joined Mutual. (See Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4) Through these full-page advertisements, we can find that Chaplin signed a contract with Mutual Campany was a very important news for Mutual. It was not an ordinary method which the film company used such kind of level to promote a contract with a film actor.
41 ‘CHAPLIN'S ENORMOUS OFFERS;TURNS DOWN $500,000 YEARLY,’ Variety, January 21, 1916, p3.
42 ‘CHAPLIN'S ENORMOUS OFFERS;TURNS DOWN $500,000 YEARLY,’ Variety, January 21, 1916, p3.
43 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Jan. 22, 1916, p373.
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(Figure 1)44 (Figure 2)45
(Figure 3)46
(Figure 4)47
44 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1401.
45 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1402.
46 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1403.
47 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1404.
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On the same day, Motion Picture News also published news, ‘Charlie Chaplin Signs Contract
with Mutual Film,’ to detail Chaplin’s new contract with Mutual:
Charlie Chaplin has signed a contract to appear exclusively in the releases of the Mutual Film Corporation.
Chaplin will receive a salary of $670,000 for his first year’s work under the contract, the Mutual announces. The total operation in forming the Chaplin producing company involved the sum of $1,550,000. This is stands as the biggest operation centered about a single star in the history of the motion picture industry, it is said.48
In this news, it claimed that it was the biggest contract in the history of the film industry.
President of Mutual, John R. Freuler explained that why Mutual would pay Chaplin this big contract; he believed that Chaplin was worth to deserve this number of salary because Chaplin could bring a vast business benefit to Mutual Company. In this news, Freuler said:
“This contract,” observes Mr. Freuler, “is only a new token of the bigness of the motion picture and the motion picture industry, a combination of art, amusement and business. The figures are all business,” he added with a dry smile.
“We can afford to pay Mr. Chaplin this large sum annually because the public wants and will pay to see him. I consider this contract a very pleasing bargain for everybody concerned — including this corporation, Mr. Chaplin and the fun-loving American public.49
On April 8, a news quoted a word from Max J. Weisfeldt, an exchange manager for the Mutual of Omaha, this manager declared that:
“Chaplin salary paid by Mutual was one of the biggest advertising ideas in modern motion picture progress.”50
It can prove that the contract with Chaplin was a part of advertisements which Mutual used it to promote Chaplin films. The reason that Mutual offered Chaplin a huge salary was not only because Chaplin was worth to deserve it, but also because it was a prominent advertising idea.
48 ‘Charlie Chaplin Signs Contract with Mutual Film,’ Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1459.
49 ‘Charlie Chaplin Signs Contract with Mutual Film,’ Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Mar. 11, 1916, p1459.
50 Motion Picture News, Vol. 13, Apr. 8, 1916, p2051.