Lot Essay
Accompanying letters of authenticity from Hollywood producer and costumier Ted Tetrick outlines the provenance. Ted Tetrick and Betty Chaplin Tetrick acquired the hat and cane after the death of Chaplin's studio manager Alfred Reeves in 1946. Tetrick had been associated with Chaplin since 1938, and was ..in charge of the costume and production design departments. This was the time when we used the original hat [and cane] in a scene using the 'Tramp' character in the film, "The Great Dictator". According to Tetrick this hat and cane were originally at the studio costume department and were selected by Chaplin personally.
The bowler hat and cane were Charlie Chaplin's trademarks and indispensable props to his famous Tramp guise. ...The tramp costume, which was to be little modified in its twenty-two year career, was apparently created almost spontaneously, without premeditation. The legend is that it was concocted one rainy afternoon in the communal male dressing room at Keystone, where Chaplin borrowed Fatty Arbuckle's voluminous trousers, tiny Charles Avery's jacket, Ford Sterling's size fourteen shoes which he was obliged to wear on the wrong feet to keep them from falling off, a too-small derby belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law, and a moustached intended for Mack Swain's use, which he trimmed to toothbrush size. This neat and colourful version of the genesis of the tramp seems to have originated in the Keystone Studio, and was certainly never endorsed by Chaplin...His idea was to create an ensemble of contrasts - tiny hat and huge shoes, baggy pants and pinched jacket...Whatever its origins, the costume and make-up created that day in early February 1914 were inspired. Chaplin recalled how the costume induced the character, so that 'by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born'. We know from the films that this was not strictly true; the character was to take a year or more to evolve its full dimensions and even then...it would evolve during the whole of his career....From the first, though, certain traits were obvious; the derby, the cane, the bow-tie and close-trimmed moustache indicated brave but ineffectual pretensions to the dignity of the 'petit bourgeoisie'.
The bowler hat and cane were Charlie Chaplin's trademarks and indispensable props to his famous Tramp guise. ...The tramp costume, which was to be little modified in its twenty-two year career, was apparently created almost spontaneously, without premeditation. The legend is that it was concocted one rainy afternoon in the communal male dressing room at Keystone, where Chaplin borrowed Fatty Arbuckle's voluminous trousers, tiny Charles Avery's jacket, Ford Sterling's size fourteen shoes which he was obliged to wear on the wrong feet to keep them from falling off, a too-small derby belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law, and a moustached intended for Mack Swain's use, which he trimmed to toothbrush size. This neat and colourful version of the genesis of the tramp seems to have originated in the Keystone Studio, and was certainly never endorsed by Chaplin...His idea was to create an ensemble of contrasts - tiny hat and huge shoes, baggy pants and pinched jacket...Whatever its origins, the costume and make-up created that day in early February 1914 were inspired. Chaplin recalled how the costume induced the character, so that 'by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born'. We know from the films that this was not strictly true; the character was to take a year or more to evolve its full dimensions and even then...it would evolve during the whole of his career....From the first, though, certain traits were obvious; the derby, the cane, the bow-tie and close-trimmed moustache indicated brave but ineffectual pretensions to the dignity of the 'petit bourgeoisie'.