Golden oldie

MARION MCMULLEN celebrates the 100th anniversary of Sir Charlie Chaplin's comedy masterpiece The Gold Rush

- MARION MCMULLEN

“A DAY without laughter is a day wasted,” Charlie Chaplin once pointed out.

To this end, he spent two years writing, directing and starring in his silent movie classic The Gold Rush, which premiered in Los Angeles 100 years ago on June 26, 1925.

The famous scene of him using bread rolls on forks to do a dance on a table top proved a winner with cinema audiences. At the Berlin premiere the projectionist had to stop the film and replay it again because it was so popular.

The film saw Chaplin in his Little Tramp guise playing a character called the Lone Prospector who heads for the Klondike during the 1890s gold rush in Canada to make his fortune. Along the way he falls in love with a girl he sees in a dance hall. "All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl," he said.

Chaplin revealed in his autobiography that the idea for The Gold Rush came during a visit to Pickfair, the home of his friends and fellow movie stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, where they showed him photos of Alaska and the Klondike.

The Gold Rush became one of the highest grossing silent films in movie history and Chaplin said at the time it was the film he most wanted to be remembered for.