Charlie Chaplin

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Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977), the famed actor and director, was also a composer and wrote music for many of his films. Chaplin described himself as a "hummer": he couldn't write the music down himself but hummed the music to an assistant. His most famous songs are "Smile" from the film Modern Times (1936) and the theme from Limelight (1952), but his musical activity started much earlier than that. In 1916 he formed the Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing Company and published what he described in his autobiography as "two very bad songs" called "Oh! That Cello" and "There's Always One You Can't Forget."

The short-lived Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing Company published a third piece in 1916: a curious march entitled The Peace Patrol. Chaplin's sense of humor is apparent throughout the piece, especially in the quote from Brahms's Hungarian Dance no. 5.

Charlie Chaplin files	MP3	MIDI
The Peace Patrol March	mp3	midi