Lights Out

I recently watched Chaplin's City Lights with some friends. We found the film delightful, as millions have before us.

Chaplin was a perfectionist who spent as much time and money as needed to get each scene right. As for other performers, he'd act out their parts and demand they copy him. It made me wonder how the film would have turned out with someone other then Virginia Cherrill playing Charlie's love interest (as it were), the blind flower girl. City Lights is a classic and it's hard to believe it would have been better with someone else, but, after all, the only essential part of a Chaplin film is Charlie himself.

Chaplin and Cherrill didn't get along, and after much shooting, he fired her for a short time before realizing he needed her back. In-between he hired Georgia Hale, who'd starred in The Gold Rush (Charlie liked women with states for first names). Most people think she wouldn't have done as good a job, but looking at the footage in the clip below, I think she would have pulled it off and no one would have felt something was missing.