His Musical Career (1914)

Charlie and his partner are to deliver a piano to 666 Prospect St. and repossess one from 999 Prospect St. They confuse the addresses. The difficulties of delivering the piano by mule cart,... See full summary »

Director:

Charles Chaplin (uncredited)

Stars:

Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Fritz Schade

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Charles Chaplin	...	Charlie aka Tom - Piano Mover
Mack Swain	...	Mike aka Ambrose - Tom's Partner
Fritz Schade	...	Mr. Rich
Cecile Arnold	...	Mrs. Rich
Charley Chase	...	Piano Store Manager
Frank Hayes	...	Mr. Poor

Storyline

Charlie and his partner are to deliver a piano to 666 Prospect St. and repossess one from 999 Prospect St. They confuse the addresses. The difficulties of delivering the piano by mule cart, and most of the specific gags, appeared later in Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box".

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Plot Keywords:

piano | delivery | walking on someone's back | mule and cart | kicked in the butt | 

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Genres:

Short | Comedy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

7 November 1914 (USA)

Also Known As:

Charlie as a Piano Mover

Company Credits

Production Co:

Keystone Film Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

16 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

When Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain remove the piano from the shop where they work, and pause outside to bicker, the shop window reflects a large crowd of bystanders who have stopped to watch the comedians perform for the cameras.

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Connections

Edited into Comedy Cocktail (1951)

User Reviews

Charlie the piano man

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'His Musical Career', still made relatively early on in his career, generally a period where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for (though he is definitely more settled feeling here). Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'His Musical Career' has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the best efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'His Musical Career' is one of his funniest and most charming efforts from this period. Sure the production values are not as audacious. Appreciated the busier story than most from some other 1914 efforts of his, though occasionally it was a bit hard to follow and still a bit flimsy. 'His Musical Career' for early Chaplin is pretty good and it showed that Chaplin was starting to settle.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with more shades than before of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. There is more sympathy and emotion than most of his efforts from this period.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'His Musical Career' is still very funny, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox