About The Gold Rush (1925)
The story behind the film
Charlie Chaplin wrote, produced, directed and starred in The Gold Rush, and he often said it was the film he most wanted to be remembered for. The idea came from two very different sources: photographs of prospectors hauling themselves over the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s, and the story of the Donner Party, the snowbound pioneers of 1846–47 who were reduced to eating leather and worse. Chaplin believed comedy and tragedy were close neighbours, and he decided to find laughs in hunger, cold and isolation.
The Little Tramp heads north as a "lone prospector", is trapped in a cabin during a blizzard with the hulking Big Jim McKay and a wanted man, and later falls for a dance-hall girl named Georgia in a frontier boomtown. It was a long, expensive production by comedy standards, and it was a huge critical and commercial success.
Cast & crew
- Written, produced and directed by Charlie Chaplin
- Charlie Chaplin as the Lone Prospector (the Little Tramp)
- Georgia Hale as Georgia
- Mack Swain as Big Jim McKay
- Tom Murray as Black Larsen
- Malcolm Waite as Jack Cameron
- Henry Bergman as Hank Curtis
Why it's worth watching
The Gold Rush contains several of the most celebrated scenes in all of comedy. Starving in the cabin, the Tramp boils one of his boots and serves it up like a Thanksgiving dinner, twirling the laces like spaghetti. Big Jim, delirious with hunger, starts to see his companion as a giant chicken. Later, waiting for guests who never come to his New Year's Eve dinner, the Tramp sticks forks into two bread rolls and makes them perform a little dance — a moment that is funny and heartbreaking at once. And the climax, with the cabin teetering on the edge of a cliff, is a masterclass in suspense.
What lifts the film above a string of gags is the character. The Tramp is lonely and hopeful, and the jokes come out of who he is, so you care about whether he'll strike it rich and win Georgia.
Fun facts
- At the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, an international poll of film historians ranked The Gold Rush second among the greatest films ever made, just behind Battleship Potemkin.
- In 1942 Chaplin re-released the film with narration he recorded himself, plus music and sound effects; that version received two Academy Award nominations.
- The film was added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry in 1992.
Public-domain status
The original 1925 version of The Gold Rush is in the public domain in the United States: it was published more than 95 years ago, and Wikipedia notes its registration was not renewed. Chaplin's 1942 reissue, with its narration and score, is a separate work and is not what we broadcast. See "Rights & source" below.