Publish Date: July 6, 1925
Cover Story: The Gold Rush
How TIME Covered the News: By the release of his third film, The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin had emerged as a bona fide superstar. He was something of a misfit – a silent actor with a stern disposition who was also capable of turning on the comedic charm. For an audience just starting to understand the potential of cinema, the Tramp was irresistible.
“H. G. Wells was proud to meet him. George Bernard Shaw gave him a couple of hundred well-chosen words. Meanwhile, Genius Chaplin continued to put one foot in front of the other much as before. He sat down in eggs. He held babies in his lap. His salary became $1,000,000 a year. The complicated misanthropy which enabled him, his interpreters declared, to love the public and spurn humanity, did not preclude certain trifling investigation of the tenderer emotions.”