American Icons: The Tramp

This is silent film’s most memorable character.

Charlie Chaplin was a music-hall comedian when he started shooting pictures at the Keystone Studios in Los Angeles in 1914, right at the dawn of silent film. With just a pair of baggy pants, a derby hat, mustache, floppy shoes, and his own physical genius, Charlie Chaplin created silent film’s most memorable character: the Tramp. The persona would allow Chaplin to couch serious satire — with targets ranging from capitalism to Fascism — in comedy that’s still funny today. The Tramp hardly made it out of the silent film age, but as WNYC’s Sara Fishko explains, he’s never left the world’s imagination.

(Originally aired: November 24, 2006)

Video: Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) — the Tramp’s first appearance