His New Profession

I saw this Charlie Chaplin short under the title THE GOOD FOR NOTHING. It's very similar in tone to IN THE PARK, consisting of Chaplin and a few others goofing around in the great outdoors, although the setting this time around is a pier. I didn't like it as much as IN THE PARK, as the gag rate isn't as consistent, and much of the humour is lowbrow and repetitive.

Chaplin plays an idler who is tasked with looking after an invalid by fellow comedian Charley Chase. The guy is in a wheelchair so all manner of pain-focused gags arise from that situation. There are some very funny bits here, especially those involving the wheelchair being pushed around, although Chaplin doesn't seem quite on form and he has little of those character quirks I've seen elsewhere. Watch out for Fatty Arbuckle's cameo as the exasperated bartender.

In 1914 Charlie Chaplin made no fewer than 36 silent comedy shorts. "The Good for Nothing", also known as "His New Profession", is one of them, released in late August just after the outbreak of World War I. Europe may have had more serious matters on its mind, but in America what mattered was slapstick.

Here Charlie is hired by a man to wheel his elderly, wheelchair-bound uncle around a seaside park. Dissatisfied with the amount he is being paid, however, he puts a beggar's sign and tin on the wheelchair while the old man is asleep. Further complications ensure, involving a real beggar and those two stock comic figures from Chaplin comedies, a pretty girl and a policeman. When the uncle's wheelchair rolls on to the pier we think we know what is coming. Or is it?

We are lucky that so many of Chaplin's films have survived, given that many films from the 1910s are now lost, although today some of them are of little more than historical interest. What strikes the modern viewer is how cruel some of them are. "The Good for Nothing" is not quite as bad in this respect as something like "In the Park", but even so it struck me as trying to get laughs at the expense of the elderly and disabled. The uncle is not treated as a human being in his own right, more like an item of property on whom virtually any indignity can be inflicted provided that it helps to get laughs.

Motion Picture News described the film as "a laugh throughout", which suggests that both audiences and critics in 1914 were more easily pleased than modern ones. This was, however, a period during which both Chaplin, and the cinema in general, were on an upward learning curve and needed to work out what worked and what didn't. And, although films like this one may seem a bit crude by modern standards, and indeed by the standards of any period alter than about 1930, the general consensus at the time seemed to be that they did work. They just don't make very interesting watching 100 years on.

Chas. Chaplain entertains the observer in this number with a lot of new eccentric comedy. The plot is only sufficient to hang a number of amusing antics on. Some of the situations are very funny and this will please admirers of slapstick fun. - The Moving Picture World, September 26, 1914

If you've seen any of the comedies Charlie Chaplin made at Keystone during his first year in the movies you know that they're usually very fast-paced, sometimes chaotic (even when the print is in decent shape), and generally full of slapstick violence. Furthermore, Charlie himself is not the lovable Little Tramp of later days, but a more ruthless figure, often drunk and combative. Where the ladies are concerned he's playful but not exactly warm-hearted. Sometimes Charlie is an out-and-out villain, as in Mabel at the Wheel and Tillie's Punctured Romance, and in one Keystone, The Property Man, he's a bully who torments his elderly assistant.

In His New Profession, a one-reel comedy, Charlie is a scamp who hangs around at a seaside park reading The Police Gazette, an illustrated weekly full of sin and scandal that was the National Enquirer of its day. A young gent who is stuck pushing his wheelchair-bound uncle around the pier persuades Charlie to take on the job for a while, so he can go off with his girlfriend. Through devious means Charlie uses the old man to raise a little cash to buy himself beer, but when the nephew returns the situation quickly deteriorates into a brawl involving the police. In this film Charlie is more selfish and amoral than villainous; when a passing lady drops her handbag he almost pockets it, but quickly returns it when challenged. His strategy to earn himself beer money is rather amusing. Compared to other, more crazed Keystone shorts the knockabout violence in this one builds gradually, the way Laurel & Hardy would handle escalating hostilities in their best comedies later on. Still, the tone here is pretty raw. Charlie sits on eggs and wipes off the residue on the grass, a beggar pretends to be crippled, and the uncle's bandaged foot gets clobbered repeatedly -- of course. Refined it ain't, but nonetheless it's more enjoyable than some of the other Keystones. It's well paced, and despite the low comedy stuff the atmosphere is light-hearted. It's just a day at the seashore with the old gang.

A couple of notes on the cast: the dapper young man first seen pushing his uncle's wheelchair (and who comes to regret entrusting Charlie with this job) is played by a very young Charley Chase, who went on to a starring career of his own in the '20s and '30s. And during the sequence in the saloon you'll have to look fast to catch a glimpse of Roscoe Arbuckle as the bartender. This cameo role is so brief, and is presented so casually, one suspects an inside joke.

An early Chaplin comedy from his days at Keystone, which means he's more aggressive than he was in later years. This early version of the Little Tramp thinks nothing of kicking the occupant of a wheelchair in the chest and stealing from a beggar. There are a few mild laughs - which is more than you can say for many of Chaplin's efforts for Keystone - but he's still far from the finished article.