1925 USA Black and White 82 minutes

Charlie is The Lone Prospector sharing a remote cabin with two much larger and more menacing-looking prospectors: Big Jim McClain (Mack Swain) and Black Larsen (Tom Murray) in the 1898 Yukon gold rush.

The movie is an ever-quickening spiral of jokes and contains many masterpiece examples of Chaplin's clowning genius: The opening sequence showing the tramp trudging through the snow, cooking a Thanksgiving dinner of stewed boot for Jim and Larsen, entertaining his beloved in his dreams with the famous dance of the bread rolls on forks and the laughter and tension sequence of the tramp keeping a hut precariously balanced on the edge of an icy precipice..

Facts

Trivia

Release date: August 16, 1925

Charles Chaplin:‘ What I have done in this picture is exactly what I wanted to do. I have no excuses, no alibis. I have done just as I liked.’

There was 27 times more film shot than appeared in the final cut.

The scene where The Lone Prospector and Big Jim have a boot for supper took three days and 63 takes to suit director Charles Chaplin. The boot was made of licorice, and Chaplin was later rushed to hospital suffering insulin shock.

The 2,500 men playing prospectors were real vagrants who were hired for one day's pay.

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area with commercial quantities of gold. One of the most famous was the California gold rush. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill early in 1848 brought more than 40,000 prospectors to California within two years.

Cast

Charles Chaplin

Multi Media