"Keystone" by Louvish

Just received my copy of the English edition, which is nothing special
physically. It's not bound in sewn signatures and the photographs,
printed within the text, are not exceptionally well reproduced. Unless
you're desperate to read it immediately, as I was, there's no reason not
to wait for the American edition due out here in February from the same
publisher. It will probably be identical and much cheaper.

I'm about a third of the way through a rereading of Robinson's Chaplin
biography, in the recent English paperback edition from Penguin which
has been slightly revised and updated since the editions published here.
It really is a wonderful book, filled with prodigious research but
very readable. While resolutely respectful of its subject, as one would
expect from an author who had the cooperation of the Chaplin estate, it
is thoughtfully critical of Chaplin when appropriate.
For example, Robinson fervently laments the cuts made to "The Kid"
in Chaplin's 70s version, and ill-advisedly retained in the recent
edition of the film on DVD. Robinson intimates, without elaborating,
that Chaplin was "persuaded" by someone to make these cuts, on the
grounds that the excised material was too sentimental for a modern
audience. I can't recall if he goes into the matter more fully later in
the book.
Robinson states incorrectly that Sennett never reshot scenes for
the Keystones out of creative concerns, and makes a signal blunder by
identifying Henry Lehrman as a chief prosecution witness against
Arbuckle in his manslaughter trial. In fact, Lehrman stayed as far away
from San Francisco as he could get, dallying with a new fiancee, while
issuing inflammatory proclamations to the press designed to vilify
Arbuckle in the public imagination and to paint Ms. Rappe as a paragon
of violated virtue. He was one of the scummier figures in the scandal,
but not from the witness stand.