A wonderful suit and shoes that had tops like spats. My first impression of Chaplin was that he was a very, very marvelously dressed little guy. Charlie’s brother Sydney lived in that house.
There used to be a house right next to it. The first time I met him was at his studio at La Brea and Sunset. What happened is that Harms Music invited me to work with Charlie on the score of his new movie. He retained credit for writing the music, but we wrote it together. Chaplin as the Little Tramp in “Modern Times,” 1936, his last silent film.ĭAVID RAKSIN: The song “Smile” came from Chaplin’s film Modern Times. But his job was saved, he said, by none other than the legendary film composer Alfred Newman, the uncle of Randy Newman. He even included the fact that, like all those who served in the role of Charlie’s “musical secretary,” he was ultimately fired before his work was complete.
#SMILE THROUGH YOUR FEAR AND SORROW FULL#
Never before had he shared the full details of “Smile” and its origins, until this interview. He was surprised and pleased by my great love and fascination with Chaplin, and he generously shared all details of their work together, including accounts of their daily trips to Musso & Frank’s Grill for lunch, making up ditties about the Irish stew on their way. I had the good fortune to interview Raksin in 1999 for my book Hollywood Remembered. After retiring, he taught film-scoring at USC, UCLA and spent many years writing his immense auto-biography, The Bad and the Beautiful: My Life in a Golden Age of Film Music. Called “the grandfather of film composers,” he died in 2004 at the age of 92. Yet there was another contributor who is forever overlooked when this song is discussed, and that is David Raksin. It’s a standard almost always attributed, if at all, to Chaplin, rarely mentioning the careful craft of Turner and Parsons, who discovered and developed its essence as a beautifully lyrical song.
They wrote the lyrics, wisely relying on the beloved spirit and image of Chaplin’s Little Tramp, who often laughed in the face of sorrow, and they created what became a standard. The song itself was the brilliant creation of the songwriters John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, who adapted that melodic theme from the movie, changing it somewhat, and turned it into a song.
#SMILE THROUGH YOUR FEAR AND SORROW MOVIE#
Most recently came a 1959 rendition by the iconic comic Jimmy Durante, known more for his big schnozz than his music, which was used in the 2019 movie Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix. His brothers performed it in his honor at his funeral. Michael Jackson said often it was his favorite song, and recorded it himself in a beautifully reverent, orchestral version. Judy Garland’s heartrending performances of it in 1963 on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and elsewhere resonated through the darkness of that year and beyond. It’s now of America’s most famous songs, recorded originally by Nat “King” Cole, who had the first hit with his 1955 recording. In this, the full account of its origins, as expanded with an interview conducted with the composer David Raksin, who worked with Chaplin, is the whole story behind the song “Smile.” In fact, Chaplin did write the song, indirectly. “Smile.” Most people know the song, and many know it as “the song Charlie Chaplin wrote.”ĭid Chaplin write it? Was he even a songwriter? “Smile, though your heart is aching, smile, even though it’s aching…” It’s a beloved standard. I’m hoping that the instructions for this would eventually be released, but I’m also afraid that it’s going to give me nightmares waking up in the middle of the night staring at those deepset eyes staring out into the dark.The entire story behind the lengthy creation of a beloved standard Even the detailed attention to the creation of the brick-built font to spell out “Joker” in the most elegant manner wrapping around the whole bust is not spared. The masterpiece looks great at every angle and especially scary when staring at it eye-to-eye.
The amazing brick layering techniques in which every single piece seems to fit perfectly and brings this character to life gives me the chills. While this LEGO bust of the Joker by George Panteleon isn’t from the movie, it bears a striking resemblance to the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series, especially that nose and that wide grin. Being a fan of the Dark Knight and the various original treatments of his arch-enemy over the past decades, no comic panel could have told the tale that was told with the amazing embodiment of Joaquin Phoenix on the big screen. The new Joker movie by Todd Philipps in my view tells one of the best origin stories for the Clown Prince of Crime.
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