Limelight (1952) on Netflix
In 1914 London, Calvero, a once-famous stage clown, saves a young ballerina, Thereza 'Terry' Ambrose, after a suicide attempt. He nurses her back to health while trying to revive his own career.
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Featurette
Plot summary
A stage clown whose best years are behind him, Calvero smells gas in his building in London in 1914 and breaks into a flat, where he finds Thereza 'Terry' Ambrose lying unconscious. He brings a doctor, and the physician's advice is that the attempted suicide should not be reported to the police, since it is a criminal offense. Terry is evicted from her own apartment, and Calvero lets her stay in his rooms two floors up, keeping the matter from their landlady. Her legs are paralyzed, and the doctor tells Calvero the trouble is psychological rather than physical. Calvero, who is trying to revive his own career, tells Terry that life is worth living and supports her as she recovers.
Cast
- Stapleton Kentas Claudius
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Limelight (1952)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Limelight was re-released in the United States in 1972, which gave the two-decades-old film its first Los Angeles screening and put it in contention at the 45th Academy Awards, where Charlie Chaplin won the only competitive Oscar of his career.
- While traveling to Britain to promote Limelight, Charlie Chaplin learned the United States had refused him a re-entry visa over his alleged communist sympathies and the criticism of his personal life; many American theaters then refused to play the film.
- The American Legion led protests against Limelight, and on the strength of them Charles Skouras, president of National Theatres and its subsidiary Fox West Coast Theatres, blocked the film's release in Los Angeles.
- Chaplin thought the part too small and did not write it for Buster Keaton, but cast him after learning Keaton was going through hard times, including a divorce that cost him most of his fortune; their duet is the only time the two performed together on film.
- Chaplin's biographers assumed Calvero was based on his own father, a music-hall performer who lost his audience and drank himself to death in 1901, but Chaplin insisted in his 1964 autobiography and his 1974 book My Life in Pictures that the character drew on stage actor Frank Tinney.
- Although Limelight is set in London, it was filmed entirely in the Hollywood area: the street where Calvero lives was a redressed set at Paramount Studios, the music hall scenes were shot at RKO-Pathé studios, and some exterior scenes used back-projected London footage.
