Triple Trouble (1918 Film) - History and Background

History and Background

Chaplin's contract with Essanay ended at the beginning of 1916 when he went to Mutual; Police (1916 film), released on May 27, was his last authorized title with the company. On April 9, 1916 Essanay had also issued a version of Chaplin's Burlesque on Carmen padded with additional material to bring it to a 4-reel length. Chaplin filed to sue on May 6, but to no avail—on July 8, the court determined that Essanay had the right to reinvent the client work Chaplin had done for them in any way that they saw fit. This opened the door to a number of subsequent Essanay-Chaplin compilations and re-releases such as The Essanay-Chaplin Revue of 1916 and Chase Me Charlie (1918).

According to publicity material that appeared at the time of its release in August 1918, Triple Trouble represented a new wrinkle in Essanay's strategy: "If you bought a piece of real estate and foresaw that its value would quadruple if you held it a certain length of time, what would you do? That's just what we did with Triple Trouble. We knew there would come a time when it would be worth many times its weight in gold. We held this negative in our vaults for the most opportune time of release, which we believe is NOW." Such hyperbole is somewhat disingenuous; in 1915, Chaplin had begun work on Life, his first feature-length comedy, but the studio had stepped in and stopped the production as Chaplin was taking too long—what they really needed was one-reel subjects to fill then voracious public demand for Chaplin's work.

Essanay created Triple Trouble, their last "new" Chaplin comedy, by taking at least one—and perhaps two—sequences that had been intended for the unfinished Life, bridging them with outtakes from Police, and through borrowing the ending from Work (1915 film). In addition, Essanay contrived new material to pad it out to the length of a two-reeler, the standard for comedies by this time; this material was shot in 1918 and directed by character actor Leo White. Though White appeared, most often uncredited, in close to 2000 films, Triple Trouble is the only credit he ever received for direction, and it has been suggested that White was strong-armed into the task. Certainly Chaplin never held it against him, as he continued to hire White as a supporting actor in his own films into the 1940s. Nevertheless, Chaplin's own response was swift; a telegram from Chaplin published in the August 11, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World reads, "THIS IS NOT A NEW CHAPLIN BUT FROM THE ADVERTISING LAYOUT IN TRADE REVIEW MUST BE NOTHING BUT THE DISCARDED PORTIONS OF POLICE THE LAST PICTURE MADE BY CHARLIE CHAPLIN FOR ESSANAY FIRST NATIONAL SHOULD STOP THESE MISLEADING STATEMENTS AND ADVERTISING WHICH MUST BE STAMPED OUT."