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The Tramp ( Charlot in several languages), also known as the Little Tramp, was English 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 and bumbling but generally good-hearted character who is most famously portrayed as a mischievous vagrant. He endeavours to behave with the manners and dignity of a gentleman despite his actual social status. However, while the Tramp is ready to take what paying work is available, he also uses his cunning self 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 ("The little fellow", as Chaplin called him) 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".
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 Studios comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (released on 7 February 1914; Mabel's Strange Predicament, shot earlier, was released on 9 February 1914). 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. (In only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp.)
The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character. The 1931 sound production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times (1936), which ended with the Tramp walking down a 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.
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 (using Chaplin's own English accent), including a passionate plea for peace that has been widely interpreted as Chaplin speaking as himself. (1994). 9780306805998, Da Capo Press. ISBN 9780306805998
In 1959, having been editing The Chaplin Revue, Chaplin commented to a reporter regarding the Tramp character, "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. Bloom argued 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, a long-running hobo comic strip from Illustrated Chips that he had read as a boy in London:
The wonderfully vulgar paper for boys ''Illustrated ... and the 'Adventures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim,' two famous tramps with the world against them. There's been a lot said about how I evolved the little tramp character who made my name. Deep, psychological stuff has been written about how I meant him to be a symbol of all the class war, of the love-hate concept, the death-wish and what-all. But if you want the simple Chaplin truth behind the Chaplin legend, I started the little tramp simply to make people laugh and because those other old tramps, Weary Willie and Tired Tim, had always made me laugh.
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 hope for a more permanent transformation through love and his failure to achieve this.
The Tramp was usually the victim of circumstances and coincidences, but sometimes the results work in his favour. 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" (i.e., cocaine), 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.
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 (1940); however, this was an all-talking film (Chaplin's first). The film was inspired by the noted similarity between Chaplin's Tramp, most notably his small moustache and that of Adolf Hitler. Chaplin used this similarity to create a dark version of the Tramp character in parody of the dictator. In his book My Autobiography, Chaplin stated that he was unaware of the Holocaust when he made the film; if he had been, he writes, he would not have been able to make a comedy satirising Hitler. 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.
| Released on a split-reel (i.e. two films on one reel) with an education film, Olives and Trees. |
| Filmed before but released after Kid Auto Races at Venice, hence it was in this film that the Tramp costume was first used. |
| Chaplin co-leads the film |
| Two reels. Co-writer: Mabel Normand |
| Two reels |
| Co-writer: Mabel Normand The Tramp wears a top hat instead of a bowler. |
| Two reels ##The Tramp wears no jacket |
| Based on the poem by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy. |
| Released as a split-reel with a travel short, The Yosemite. |
| Two reels. Co-writer: Mack Sennett |
| Two reels |
| Two reels |
| Debut of Edna Purviance |
| One reel |
| One reel |
| Compilation assembled by Leo White with scenes from Police and an unfinished short, Life, along with new material shot by White. Chaplin includes this production in the filmography of his autobiography. Considered by some not to be a proper Tramp film, as Chaplin was not involved in the film's final production. Released two years after Chaplin left Essanay. |
| Co-writer: Vincent Bryan Released prior to Chaplin's last Essanay film. |
| Co-writer: Vincent Bryan Chaplin does not wear the Tramp's clothes, but wears oversized clothes and acts similarly to the character. |
| Co-writer: Vincent Bryan |
| Chaplin does not wear the Tramp's clothes, but wears rich mans clothes and acts similarly to the character. |
| Considered by some to be the Tramp |
| Added to the National Film Registry in 1998. |
| A tuxedo version of the Tramp costume is worn |
| Three reels. Score composed for compilation, The Chaplin Revue |
| Half-reel. Co stars brother Sydney Chaplin |
| Three reels. Score composed for compilation, The Chaplin Revue. |
| Three reels. Score composed for 1974 re-release. |
| Two reels. First film with Jackie Coogan, future star of The Kid. Score composed for 1973 re-release. |
| Six reels. Score composed for 1971 re-release. Added to the National Film Registry in 2011. |
| Two reels. Score composed for 1971 re-release. |
| Two reels. Score composed for 1972 re-release. Chaplin's final short (of less than 30 minutes running time). |
| Considered by many to be a Tramp film, though Chaplin's character is not very much like the Tramp. Most notably, the character wears different clothes. By extension of this, every Chaplin film is considered by some to be a Tramp film, though this is apparently apocryphal. Four reels. Score composed for compilation, The Chaplin Revue. |
Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond) did a burlesque of The Tramp in Sunset Boulevard. The most famous impersonation is that by Billy West.
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