Silence is golden
By the time the credits rolled at the end of its 1921 premiere, Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid had broken new cinematic ground on several counts.
It was met with instant critical acclaim and catapulted a seven-year-old Jackie Coogan into overnight fame, turning him into one of the first child stars of the movies. Coogan played the ‘kid’, abandoned by his mother and found and cared for by Chaplin’s Tramp character. The child star later lent his name to a law protecting the earnings of child actors, when he took legal action against his mother and stepfather who had worked their way through his not insubstantial earnings. In this 1921 role, Coogan proved the perfect sidekick for Chaplin and his trademark blend of tragedy, comedy and drama. The billboards promised ‘Six reels of joy’, Chaplin’s opening titles described it as ‘A picture with a smile — and perhaps, a tear.’
