A Night Out

Upon finishing "His New Job," Chaplin had enough of the cold midwestern weather and decided to return to California where Essanay had a small studio 30 miles outside of San Francisco. Part studio owner and cowboy actor Max Anderson had earlier established a facility to shoot and edit his Westerns for the mountainous typography.

For his next film, February 1915's "A Night Out," Chaplin was yearning to find a leading comic actress similar to Keystone's Mabel Normand, but without all the drama associated with filming with her. There are varying stories how Chaplin discovered a 19-year-old secretary, Edna Purviance, to be selected for that acting position. Either through an audition, spotting her in a San Francisco lobby, or through an introduction, Chaplin was intriqued with her looks and picked Purviance despite his reservations she never had acted in front of a camera before.

Despite her humble opinion she had stunk up the joint in her first film, Purviance performed well enough in "A Night Out" to continue a stretch of 33 films where she was that funny lady opposite of Chaplin. To boot, she also had a romantic relationship with him for the next three years.

"His Night Out" is also noteworthy as being the first movie where Chaplin met cameraman Rollie Totheroh, who was working with Anderson and his Westerns.. Totheroh would soon become Chaplin's director of photography throughout his career, all the way until the mid-1950's.