I'm here today
Every few weeks, outside the movie theater in virtually any American town in the late 1910s, stood the life-size
cardboard figure of a small tramp — outfitted in tattered, baggy pants, a cutaway coat and vest, impossibly
large, worn-out shoes and a battered derby hat — bearing the inscription I AM HERE TODAY. An
advertisement for a Charlie Chaplin film was a promise of happiness,. He was the first, and to date the last,
person to control every aspect of the filmmaking process — founding his own studio, United Artists, with
Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, and producing, casting, directing, writing, scoring and
editing the movies he starred in. In the first decades of the 20th century, when weekly moviegoing was a
national habit, Chaplin more or less invented global recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art. In
1916, his third year in films, his salary of $10,000 a week made him the highest-paid actor — possibly the
highest paid person — in the world. By 1920, "Chaplinitis," accompanied by a flood of Chaplin dances, songs,
dolls, comic books and cocktails, was rampant. Filmmaker Mack Sennett thought him "just the greatest artist
who ever lived." Other early admirers included George Bernard Shaw, Marcel Proust and Sigmund Freud. In
1923 Hart Crane, who wrote a poem about Chaplin, said his pantomime "represents the futile gesture of the
poet today." Later, in the 1950s, Chaplin was one of the icons of the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac went on
the road because he too wanted to be a hobo. From 1981 to 1987, IBM used the Tramp as the logo to
advertise its venture into personal computers.
I'm here today
