Silent movies - A Dog's Life

Today I got two Chaplins for you. I don't mean two Chaplin movies, but two Chaplins in one movie - Charlie and his brother Sydney.
Let's have a look at "A Dog's Life" from 1918.

Here's the plot with spoilers.

The Little Tramp is trying to make the best of his life in the streets although he's sleeping rough, is sometimes forced to steal food, and has his run-ins with the law.

It's not that he doesn't want to work, but at the agency the others keep pushing him out of the way and in the end there's no job left for him.
Then he meets Scraps. The little stray has found a bone which attracts a lot of other dogs, and Charlie saves Scraps from the fight.

I'll happily admit that this made me feel
all mushy right away. The rest of the
pack raided a grocer's shop in the meantime.

At a coffee stall, Scraps takes the chance to steal some sausages and the Tramp stuffs himself with food every time the proprietor isn't looking.

A hilarious scene. The stall owner is Sydney Chaplin, by the way.

Now that they had something to eat, the Tramp heads for a dance hall. Unfortunately, the "Green Lantern" offers free dancing, but doesn't allow dogs, and they get thrown out.
He won't leave Scraps outside, though, and cleverly hides him. If only the tail wouldn't peek out through a hole in the pants, wagging like crazy.

There's a new singer and hostess in the bar who moves the audience to tears with her sad song.
The bar owner, however, wants his guests happy ... and thirsty! "If you smile and wink, they'll buy a drink."
So she tries her luck with the Tramp. After a bit of confusion, he asks her for a dance which turns out interesting, to say the least.
As the bartender finds out he has no money to buy drinks, however, he throws him out.

Flirting 101.

Outside, two villains mug a drunk gentleman and take his wallet. Being followed by police, one of them buries it in a hole next to the Tramp's favored sleeping spot.
Luckily, Scraps finds the wallet and they head back to the "Green Lantern".
Meanwhile, the singer has got herself sacked for refusing to dance with another customer. She's desperate because the owner doesn't want to pay her, but the Tramp shows her the money he has found and says they will settle in the country.
Too bad that the villains overhear them and take the wallet back. The Tramp doesn't give up that quickly, though, and manages to get the money back. 

"Giving" the villain his arms - a splendid performance.

The villains chase him to the coffee stall, during the struggle the wallet falls on the ground - from where Scraps successfully recovers it while the villains get arrested by the police and the Tramp escapes, leaving the poor stall owner behind confused and the worse for wear.

In the end, you see the happy couple on their farm and a bassinet stands on the floor - not with one baby, but a whole litter!

There are two things clearly standing out in this movie.

1. Scraps (called Mutt in real life) absolutely stole the show. Sorry, Charlie and Edna and the others, you were funny, but we all know who was the real heroine here.
2. The singer's dress. I just couldn't get over this masterpiece of fashion design. We should all wear dresses like that, women, men, children.
It looked like a long whitish skirt with a black diaphanous top over which there was kind of a black apron whose two parts were connected at the hips with black strips. But wait, there's more! Uhm, a flapping piece of curtain fastened to the back?
"We still need a dress for Edna. Oh hey, there's still some leftover fabrics here. I can do something with that!" Absolutely brilliant 😂

Not only Scraps leads a dog's life in the movie, but also the Tramp and the singer, even if not literally.
The association between the scenes of the Tramp losing the fight for a job at the agency and Scraps the one for the bone is obvious.
All three of them are forced into that life which actually makes it extra heartwarming to see them get their happy ending (even if founded on ill-gotten money). I was fully prepared to see them go down a lonely road into an uncertain future, but I liked this much better.

I also enjoyed the gags very much and the "choreography" that Chaplin was so good at.
32 minutes well spent indeed.

P.S. Did you notice something about the pictures? The familiar cane is missing. I guess a cane and a leash would have been too much.

Nostalgia - Chinook

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

As you know, I'm a cat person. I love dogs, but like to say that I would be a better dog aunt than dog mom. On the other hand, I'm a fantastic cat mom (ignore Gundel and den Dekan laughing their furry little butts off in the back).
Nevertheless, I have a lot more Steiff dogs than cats. Just as real dog breeds look much more differently from one another than cat breeds, Steiff made a lot more different dogs than cats, possibly for just that reason.

One of them is Chinook.
Have you ever heard of Chinook who gave his name to a whole breed which has been the official state dog of New Hampshire since 2009?
Chinook's story, however, already began over 100 years ago, with Arthur Treadwell Walden of the Wonalancet Farm and Inn. Walden had worked in the Klondike during the gold rush, delivering supplies and mail, and thus gained experience with sled dogs. There he met a Native American guide and his dog named Chinook.

Walden and Chinook (public domain via
Wikimedia Commons)

After his experience in the Klondike, Walden decided to breed sled dogs himself, strong but also fast.
In 1917, three pups were born to a Greenland Husky - a descendant of Admiral Peary's lead dog for his North Pole expedition, Polaris - and a Mastiff/St. Bernard-type mix. Walden's wife called them Rikki, Tikki, and Tavi, after the Jungle Book, but eventually Rikki was renamed in honor of the original Chinook.

He was a "sport of nature" meaning he didn't resemble either of his parents - traits he passed on to his own descendants. Also he was not only an outstanding sled dog, but also a very gentle one.

Mountan Laurel Ajax
(by Muu-karhu on Wikipedia, free use)

In 1927, Admiral Richard Byrd chose Walden to run the dog teams (half of which were Chinook's descendants) during his first Antarctic Expedition (1928 - 1930).
Walden accepted only after being guaranteed that no dogs would be shot to save supplies.
In January 1929, Chinook disappeared from the camp and never returned (if you are ready for some tissue work, have a look at the newspaper article from 1930 on the blog you find under 1. in my sources).
His legacy, however, lived on in the rare dog breed called Chinook.
When Walden returned from the Antarctic, he found part of his farm had been sold due to his wife being ill, and he also sold his dogs to another breeder, but still had an influence on the breed.
If you are interested in more history, please check my sources towards the end of the post.

Now to my own Chinook.
When we first saw the Steiff Chinook in the Cieslik book, it was love at first sight. Over the years we were lucky enough to find two of them, both lying down, so we both got one when we split up. Otherwise I might have had to fight for him ;-)

Steiff's Chinook came in three versions and different sizes, lying down, standing, and sitting (the last one without or with a neck mechanism moving the head if you turned the tail). The one with the neck mechanism is the rarest with 257 items, but "Chinook - Byrd's Antarctic Expedition Dog" (that's what the tag says) is generally almost as rare as the real breed.
According to the Cieslik book, only 2,493 were made between 1930 and 1931. However, they captioned a picture of what looks like Walden with Chinook to me with the name Byrd, and according to Steiffgal's blog, the production time was between 1930 and 1932. Both agree on them being rare, though.

Here's my own Chinook who is usually in my dog cabinet, surrounded by other wonderful Steiff dogs.

So his wool plush is not as vibrant in color anymore, his harness is gone, and his collar is very worn, but isn't he gorgeous, anyway?
I love his face so much.

You can only wish to look as good at more than 90 years old. Imagine what that would be in dog years!

Sources:

1. Heather Wilkinson Rojo: "Chinook's Great Adventure at the South Pole" in "Nutfield Genealogy", posted May 21, 2020 (there are several posts about Chinooks on this blog)

2. Arthur Treadwell Walden on Wikipedia

3. Chinook Owners Assocation: History (with a lot of historic pictures)

4. Chinook Club of America Inc: Chinook History (also with historic pictures)

5. Jürgen and Marianne Cieslik: Knopf im Ohr. Jülich, Cieslik, 1989

6. My Steiff Life (Steiffgal's blog)

And here's a little extra (I would recommend to turn the music off, but that's just my personal opinion).