Charlie Chaplin

A Re-recording of the Original 1931 Score

Conducted by

CITY LIGHTS Carl Davis

The City Lights Orchestra

Charlie Chaplin

CITY LIGHTS
1.

Overture/Unveiling the Statue

4:15

2.
3.

The Flower Girl (La Violetera)

Evening/Meeting the Millionaire

3:03

4.

At the Millionaires Home

3:55

5.

The Nightclub - Dance Suite

5:08

6.

The Limousine

2:24

7.

The Sober Dawn

3:02

8.

The Party & the Morning After

2:37

9.

Eviction/The Road Sweeper/

At the Girls Home

7:43

5:42

10. The Boxing Match

4:49

11. The Burglars

3:12

12. Reunited

7:33

A Re-recording of the Original 1931 Score

Conducted by

Music composed by Charles Chaplin

La Violetera composed by Jos Padilla

Carl Davis
The City Lights Orchestra

Re-issue of the recording of chaplins City Lights

March 1989 saw a seismic change in the worlds perception of Charlie Chaplins work in
the cinema with the irst live screenings of his masterpiece City Lights in London at the
Dominion Theatre. I had painstakingly transcribed Charlies original score recorded in 1930,
for performances with orchestra. Within days requests were being made for performances
in such diverse locations as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Liverpool and Edinburgh. Many
more followed and other conductors took up the mantle. After a year or so of continuing
demand I suggested to my colleagues at Photoplay that they asked the Chaplin Estate if
we could continue the exercise. Eventually The Gold Rush (in its 1925 cut) and The Kid
followed. But City Lights was special who can ever forget the inal scene, musically worthy
of Puccini. As I begin over 20 years later another round of performances I look forward to
conducting music that, like the ilm, plunges from the heights of irresistible comedy to
extreme pathos. Charlie, you taught us all.
Carl Davis, February 2012

City Lights The Story

A group of civic dignitaries are assembled for the unveiling of a monument representing
Peace and Prosperity. The veil falls to reveal, cradled in the arms of Prosperity, the
wretched igure of the Tramp. After getting hooked by his trousers on the sword held aloft
by a recumbent statue, he lees from the angry assembly.
Later in the day, after a series of mishaps with police, insolent newsboys and a trapdoor
in the pavement, he comes upon a blind lower-seller. He is moved by her pathos and beauty,
while the chance slamming of a car door leads her to believe he must be a rich man.
That evening he dissuades an erratic and alcoholic millionaire from suicide. This new
acquaintance proves an afectionate and generous friend when drunk, but distant and
hostile in his sober moods, the morning after. Finding the lower girl absent from her place
on the street corner, the Tramp visits the poor room where she lives. He learns that she is
ill, but that a costly operation in Switzerland could restore her sight. In an efort to raise the
money he works as a street cleaner and as a prize ighter.
Luckily he again encounters the millionaire, who gives him the money he needs. He is
able to pass it onto the girl before he is accused of robbing the millionaire once again sober
and forgetful and is thrown into gaol.
Months later he is released, and by chance passes the elegant lower shop in which
the now-cured lower girl is established, always hoping to meet her benefactor whom she
supposes to be rich and handsome. She is amused by the passing vagrant, takes pity on him,
and gives him a lower and a coin. Pressing them into his hand, she recognises him by touch.
They stare at each other. She can see now.

City Lights
City Lights is Charles Chaplins most perfect ilm;
yet the making of it was the most critical period
of his career.
By the time he began work in May 1928 the
irst all-talking pictures had begun to arrive on the
screen. The talkie revolution afected everyone
in pictures, but for Chaplin the problems were
particularly acute. He had arrived in Hollywood
at the end of 1913, when the ilm industry was
still in its infancy. In January 1914 he created
the character of the Little Tramp which, within
little more than a year, was to achieve worldwide fame. By the end of the 1920s, Charlie the
Tramp was the most universally recognised and
universally loved ictional representation of a
human being the world had ever seen.
This universal recognition had been
achieved precisely because the Tramp had been
created in silent pictures. He communicated
with his audience in the worldwide language
of mime. If the Tramp now found a voice
and expressed himself in words, the great
international audience would at once be
shrunk. In any case, what language would the
Tramp speak? Would his voice have the accents
of Chaplins native London, or of the Bronx, or of
California?
5

Chaplin agonized over the problem and then took a bold decision. He told his
collaborators, the press and the world at large that sound ilms were a fad that would pass
in a year of two. It is unlikely that he believed this himself, but it served to justify his decision
to make a silent ilm on the titles he called it A Comedy Romance in Pantomime using
sound technique merely to provide a synchronized musical accompaniment and efects.
I did not wish to be the only adherent of the
art of silent pictures, he said later, nevertheless,
City Lights was an ideal silent picture, and nothing
could deter me from making it. The Tramp, alone
in the hostile city, meets a fellow waif, a blind girl.
He also makes the acquaintance of an eccentric
alcoholic millionaire who is overwhelmingly
friendly when drunk, but embarrassingly denies
all knowledge of him when sober.
Moved by the blind girl, the Tramp
foolish, mischievous, downtrodden, quixotic,
resourceful, incorrigibly resilient, incorrigibly
romantic battles to scrape together the money
for the operation that will restore the girls sight.
The pathetic irony is that sight will enable her
to see the wretched state of the benefactor of
whom she has built such a romantic image in her
mind.
Chaplin had decided upon the poignant
scene that ends the ilm even before he began
to shoot and before the rest of the story was
worked out. There is no reason to amend the opinion of the great American critic James
Agee on this last sequence of City Lights; It is enough to shrivel the heart to see, and it is the
greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies.
The perfection of City Lights Alistair Cooke said that it runs with the ease of water
6

over stones was not achieved without

pain. No doubt anxious about his rashness
in persisting with a silent ilm, Chaplin was
nervous throughout the production: there were
sackings and replacements. At one moment he
even dismissed his leading lady, Virginia Cherrill.
Virginia was a 20 year old divorce and Chicago
socialite, whom he chose because of her ability
to look both blind and beautiful, but she did
not take her work as an actress as seriously as
Chaplin expected from his collaborators. When
Chaplin eventually reinstated her, Virginia took
her revenge by asking for a bigger salary. The
studio records reveal that Chaplin worked
tirelessly day after day to win the performance
he wanted from Virginia. During further long
periods the studio was inactive as Chaplin
agonised over the story at this time he still
worked without an advance scripts, improvising
the ilm as he went along. The production of City
Lights in the end took more than two and a half
years.
When it was inally ready for release in January 1931, Chaplin was nervous about the
reception of a ilm which might seem archaic to a public which had seen talking pictures
like Little Caesar, The Blue Angel, All Quiet on the Western Front and Sous les Toits de Paris. In the
outcome it exceeded the triumph of The Kid and The Gold Rush and remains one of his best
loved ilms.
The Los Angeles premire was one of the most glittering social occasions the ilm
capital remembered; though the elegant audience practically rioted when the manager of
the newly built Los Angeles Theatre stopped the ilm after the third reel to put up the lights
7

and deliver a lecture on the beauties of the

building. Chaplins fury was only appeased by
the minutes-long ovation at the end.
The British premire took place at the
Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road,
London, on 27th February 1931. Despite
pouring rain, vast crowds packed the streets
in the hope of seeing Chaplin, but they were
frustrated; the nervous management had
smuggled him and his press representative
into the theatre in the afternoon. During the
show, Chaplin sat between George Bernard
Shaw and Lady Astor. He was somewhat
apprehensive about the reaction of the great
dramatist but relieved when Shaw laughed
and cried along with the rest of the audience.
Afterwards a reporter asked him if he thought
Chaplin could play Hamlet. Why not, replied
Shaw. Long before Mr Chaplin became
famous, and had got no further than throwing
bricks, or having them thrown at him, I was
struck with his haunting, tragic expression.
David Robinson 1989

Chaplin and Music

Charles Chaplin remembered precisely the moment when, as he said, music irst entered
my soul. As a small boy, living in poverty in Kennington, he heard a pair of street musicians
playing The Honeysuckle and the Bee on clarinet and harmonica at Kennington Cross. It
was here that I irst discovered music, or where I irst learned its rare beauty, a beauty that has
gladdened and haunted me from that moment.
His powerful response to music was closely
linked to his comic pantomime, which was
from the start marked by a strong rhythmical,
balletic character. Music played an important
part in the presentations of the Karno comedy
sketch company with whom young Chaplin
toured the vaudeville circuits before going into
pictures. He recalled that Karno would achieve
comic contrast by accompanying the grossest
slapstick with delicate 18th century airs.
As soon as he was able to aford
instruments, Chaplin taught himself to play the
violin and cello, and spent hours improvising
on piano and organ. In 1916 he published
three songs of his own composition. Later he
wrote and published theme songs for The Kid,
The Idle Class and The Gold Rush. In the silent
period it was usual to commission professional
arrangers to compile suitable accompaniments
for ilms from published music: these were
then performed live by whatever instrumental
combinations each cinema could aford. There
9

is every indication however that as early as A

Woman of Paris (1923) Chaplin was involving
himself closely in the musical preparation.
For City Lights, his irst picture with
synchronised sound, Chaplin announced
that he would compose the musical
accompaniment himself. The music was
delegated to a team of arrangers with Arthur
Johnston as head orchestrator. I really didnt
write it down, Chaplin said, in an excess
of modesty; I la-laed and Arthur Johnston
wrote it down, and I wish you would give him
credit, because he did a very good job. It is all
simple music, you know, in keeping with my
character.
Chaplin had very clear ideas of what
he wanted. He did not, for instance, want
the arranger to make the music funny, like
a cartoon ilm. I wanted no competition,
I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of
grace and charm... I tried to compose elegant
and romantic music to frame my comedies.
The recording was done under the
direction of Alfred Newman, United Artists
music director. Sheaves of notes evidently
taken down at Chaplins dictation during the
sessions reveal his concern with every phrase
and note and instrument.
The recording techniques of the time
could not do full justice to the music however;
10

and Chaplin was certainly disappointed with the

result. His assistant Henry Bergman commented,
the terrible technical deiciencies of the
medium are too apparent, I dont think they
will ever overcome them. Thirty-ive of the very
inest artists played the score for City Lights so
beautifully on the set. Through the mechanics of
the microphone it became something else.
More than half a century later, Carl Davis
re-recorded some passages of the score for use
in Kevin Brownlow and David Gills Unknown
Chaplin. They were all astonished by the quality
of the music, and concurred with Bergmans
view of the inadequacies of the original
recording. They suggested to Lady Chaplin that
the music might be entirely re-recorded. She
felt that Chaplin himself would have welcomed
the possibility, and from then on generously
supported the project.
At irst it all looked quite easy, since the
original score and instrumental parts were
preserved a few missing fragments of the
conductors score could be made from the parts.
When the written score was compared with
the original recording however, considerable
diferences became apparent. It was clear
that extensive revisions had taken place in the
recordings. Originally the corrections would
have been made on slips stuck over the parts;
but these had become detached and lost. Only
11

12

by painstaking comparison of the recording

and the score was Chaplins inal approved
version eventually reconstituted.
It was evident that Chaplin had constantly
sought to simplify, to get rid of arrangements
that were too complicated, says Carl Davis; In
this way he was making the score stronger and
also less distracting. It was a process of intense
simpliication. Album producer Nic Raine
commented sympathetically, The man who
did it must have wept. He did some wonderful
arranging, but Chaplin pared it down.
The musicians all listened to the original
recording before performing each cue, and
would occasionally claim or disclaim notes on
the strength of what they heard. They were
impressed with the original performances
and worked to capture the instrumental styles of the period: it was essential to get the
right sound as well as the right notes. Kenny Baker, who performs on trumpet, particularly
admired the work of his 1931 counterpart: Such a wet sound he achieved.
As the work progressed, Davis, Gill, Brownlow and the players were more and more
impressed by the quality of the original music. Even so, they did not anticipate the extent,
of the problems of itting score to ilm, given the precision and subtlety of Chaplins
counterpointing of his musical themes. In the end several additional recording sessions were
needed to do justice to Chaplins conception.
From the start Lady Chaplin had approved the idea of a series of live performances,
before the release of the newly recorded synchronised version. This was perhaps the irst
time that a score written for sound synchronisation has been performed, with the ilm, live
before an audience. These performances make exceptional demands on the conductor and
13

his musicians, since Chaplin matched his score so precisely to the image, primarily intending
it for recording in the studio, fragment by fragment.
Everyone concerned in the project, however, agreed that they are more than rewarded
in the outcome, by their fuller recognition of Chaplins extraordinary musical understanding..
David Robinson 1989

The City Lights Orchestra

Conducted by Carl Davis
Leader: Erich Gruenberg
Orchestra Manager: Paul Wing
Recording Supervised by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill
Produced: Nic Raine
Sequenced: James Fitzpatrick

14

Recorded: CTS Studios

Engineer: Dick Lewzey
Edited at The Hit Factory (London)
Engineer: Steve Shin
Music published by Bourne Co.
La Violetera composed by Jos Padilla
ditions Durand-Salabert-Eschig

15

Extract From my Autobiography by Charles Chaplin

Published 1964
One happy thing about sound was that I could control the music, so I composed my own.
I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to
the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical
arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain
that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grave and charm,
to express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete. Sometimes
a musician would get pompous with me and talk of the restricted intervals of the chromatic
and the diatonic scale, and I would cut him short with a laymans remark; Whatever the
melody is, the rest is just a vamp. After putting music to one or two pictures I began to look
at a conductors score with a professional eye and to know whether a composition was overorchestrated or not. If I saw a lot of notes in the brass and woodwind section, I would say:
Thats too black in the brass, or too busy in the woodwinds.
Nothing is more adventurous and exciting than to hear the tunes one has composed
played for the irst time by a ifty piece orchestra.
An October 21st 1940 article in the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News by Bruno David Ussher
quotes Chaplin as saying Film music must never sound as if it were concert music. While
it actually may convey more to the beholder-listener than the camera conveys at a given
moment, still it must be never more than the voice of that camera.
Though Chaplin resisted including dialogue in ilms for some years after the introduction
of sound, nevertheless the advent of sound enabled him to compose music for City Lights
and release the ilm in 1931 with a complete synchronised score to enhance the images.

16

Photograph Trevor Leighton

Carl Davis
Carl Davis (1936- ) grew up in the New York of the 1940s and 1950s that period of intense
creative activity in ballet, modern dance, musicals and opera all of which he absorbed with
delight! However, a committed Anglophile from childhood, he moved to London in 1960.
Specialising in radio, T.V., ilm and theatre, Carl Davis successes include The World at War
(Thames 1973); Hollywood (Thames 1980); Goodnight Mr. Tom (ITV 1999); Pride and Prejudice
(BBC 1996) and recently Cranford (BBC 2007) and a sequel in 2009. His feature ilms include The
French Lieutenants Woman, Champions, and Ken Russells The Rainbow. In 1980 a new period
17

began with the creation of scores for silent ilms beginning with Napoleon and continuing
with a series of silent ilm classics commissioned by Channel Four. In 1981, he collaborated
with Barry Humphries on his Last Night of the Poms recently revived in 2009. In 1991, he
collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney on his Liverpool Oratorio commissioned for the 150th
Anniversary of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The 1980s also saw the world
of ballet opening up to him, with Gillian Lynnes A Simple Man (1987) for the BBC and The
Northern Ballet Theatre as well as A Christmas Carol (1992); Aladdin for Scottish Ballet (2000)
which recently revived in Tokyo by The National Ballet of Tokyo with new choreography by
David Bintley; Cyrano (2007) choreographed by David Bintley for Birmingham Royal Ballet.
This ballet was revived in the autumn of 2009, culminating in several performances at the
Sadlers Wells. Carl Davis completed a full length score for The Lady of the Camellias (2008)
for the National Ballet of Croatia, choreographed by Derek Deane, who also conceived and
choreographed Alice in Wonderland (1996) for the English National Ballet. Carl and Jean Davis
have been collaborating with their daughter, Hannah on a series of full-length feature ilms.
First, Mothers and Daughters in 2004 and second, The Understudy in 2008. In 2005 Carl Davis
was awarded the CBE (Hon.) for the signiicant contribution he has made to the world of
music as both composer and conductor over the years. In 2009, Carl Davis, his wife Jean and
daughter Jessie Stevenson, together with Charles Padley, formed the Carl Davis Collection.
His 75th birthday celebration season in 2011/12 includes the revival of Napoleon for its
US premire at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in March 2012, the premire of a cello
Ballade for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the premire of a dramatic choral
work based on the story of the Kindertransport and the new BBC series Upstairs Downstairs.
Website: www.carldaviscollection.com

18

Also available from

Alice in Wonderland

The Understudy

Cyrano

Cranford

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The World at War

Napoleon

Give Me a Smile

Carls War

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Up in Lights

Ben Hur

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Heroines in Music
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The Beatles for Orchestra

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19

Cast and credits

The Tramp
The Blind Girl
Her Grandmother
The Millionaire
Boxer
Referee
Butler
Mayor / Janitor
Street Cleaner / Burglar
Burglar
Newsboys
Man on lift
Flower shop assistant
Cop
Woman who sits on cigar
Extra in restaurant scene
Extra in restaurant scene
Boxer
Boxer who leaves in a hurry
Boxer
Knocked out boxer
Victorious boxer, later knocked out

Charles Chaplin
Virginia Cherrill
Florence Lee
Harry Myers
Hank Mann
Eddie Baker
Allan Garcia
Henry Bergman
Albert Austin
Joe Van Metter
Robert Parrish, Charlie Hammond
Tiny Ward
Mrs. Hyams
Harry Ayers
Florence Wicks
Jean Harlow
Mrs Pope, Jean Harlows mother
Tom Dempsey
Eddie McAuliffe
Willie Keeler
Victor Alexander
Tony Stableman

Production Chaplin United Artists

Producer/Director/.Scenario/editing Charles Chaplin
Photography
Cameramen
Assistant Directors
Art Director
Production manager

Roland Totheroh
Mark Marlatt, Gordon Pollock
Harry Crocker, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin
Charles D Hall
Alf Reeves

Music composed by Charles Chaplin (except La Violetera composed by Jos Padilla)

Original musical Arrangement Arthur Johnston
Original musical Direction Alfred Newman
1989 restoration of Charles Chaplins score by Carl Davis
City Lights photographs Copyright Roy Export S.A.S

CDC015

Charlie Chaplin CITY LIGHTS

CITY LIGHTS
1.

Overture/Unveiling the Statue

4:15

2.
3.

The Flower Girl (La Violetera)

Evening/Meeting the Millionaire

3:03

4.

At the Millionaires Home

3:55

5.

The Nightclub - Dance Suite

5:08

6.

The Limousine

2:24

7.

The Sober Dawn

3:02

8.

The Party & the Morning After

2:37

9.

Eviction/The Road Sweeper/

At the Girls Home

7:43

10. The Boxing Match

Charlie Chaplin CITY LIGHTS

5:42

4:49

11. The Burglars

3:12

12. Reunited

7:33

Music composed by Charles Chaplin

La Violetera composed by Jos Padilla

City Lights Photographs c Roy Export S.A.S

p 1989 Roy Export Company Establishment
c 2012 Threefold Records
All rights of the manufacturer and of the owner of the
recorded work reserved. Unauthorised hiring, lending,
public performance, broadcast and copying of this
recording prohibited. MCPS. Made in Poland.

A Re-recording of the Original 1931 Score

Conducted by

Carl Davis
The City Lights Orchestra

CDC015

Carl Davis

Carl Davis

Charlie Chaplin