Easy Street (film)
| Easy Street | |
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| Directed by | Charles Chaplin Edward Brewer (technical director) |
| Produced by | Henry P. Caulfield |
| Written by | Charles Chaplin Vincent Bryan Maverick Terrell |
| Starring | Charles Chaplin Edna Purviance Eric Campbell |
| Cinematography |
Roland Totheroh George C. Zalibra |
| Edited by | Charles Chaplin |
| Distributed by | Mutual Film Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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19 min USA, Germany 24 min (restored version) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
Easy Street is a 1917 short action-comedy film by Charlie Chaplin.
In a slum called Easy Street, the police are failing to maintain law and order.
The Little Tramp is sleeping rough outside a mission near the streets of a lawless slum. He is reformed somewhat at the mission where there is singing and religious education. His religious awakening is inspired by a beautiful young woman who pleads for him to stay at the mission.
Spotting a help wanted ad for a job at the police station, the Little Tramp accepts and is assigned the rough-and-tumble Easy Street as his beat. Upon entering the street he finds a bully roughing up the locals and pilfering their money. The Little Tramp gets on the wrong side of the bully and following a chase the two eventually come to blows culminating in the Little Tramp inventively using a gas lamp to render the bully unconscious.
The bully is taken away by the police but manages to escape from the station and returns to Easy Street. After a long chase the Little Tramp manages to knock the bully unconscious by dropping a heavy stove on his head from an upstairs window. On returning to his beat on Easy Street the unruly mob knock the Little Tramp unconscious and drop him into a nearby cellar where he manages to save the aforementioned beautiful young woman from a nasty drug addict after accidentally sitting on the drug addict's needle. Supercharged by the effects of the drug he takes on the mob and heroically defeats them all and as a consequence restores peace and order to Easy Street.
In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios, purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples and sound effects, and re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures. Chaplin had no legal recourse to stop the RKO release.
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