Charlie Chaplin IS “The Star Boarder”

 500full

Today marks the anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin short The Star Boarder, directed by George Nichols. This is a terrific early comedy. Nice strong situation and shape to it. Chaplin plays a seedy boarder at a roaming house. He flirts with his landlady (Minta Durfee), who gives him all sorts of privileges. Edgar Kennedy is the jealous husband. He’s in fine form even at this early stage of his career.  The climax of the picture is a slide-show where the whole house accidentally sees incriminating pictures of Charlie and the landlady cavorting, taken by a troublesome kid from the house. Mayhem ensues.

The film has also been released as The Landlady’s Pet:

For more on silent comedy classics like Charlie Chaplin’s “The Star Boarder” please see  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.