Eighty years ago, Nevada County was the center of the entertainment universe.  And it was all because of a Little Tramp.

In 1924, Charles Chaplin and his beloved tramp character filmed scenes from his silent movie classic “The Gold Rush” in and near Truckee.  “The Gold Rush” is acclaimed as one of the best and most influential films ever produced. In 1998, the American Film Institute chose “The Gold Rush” as one of the 100 greatest films ever made.   Chaplin referred to the film as “the picture that I want to be remembered by.” It was the highest grossing silent-era film comedy.  The famous scenes of the Little Tramp eating a boiled shoe, battling with a teetering cabin that is seesawing on the edge of a cliff, and performing a remarkable dance using two forks stuck into bread rolls remain among cinema’s most indelible images.

By 1924, Charlie Chaplin was the most famous entertainer in the world and, arguably, the most famous person in the world … period.  He was also the highest paid actor.  In 1916, his contract called for a paycheck of $10,000 a week (in today’s purchasing power, that would be about $175,000 weekly), but, by 1924, with his popularity at its zenith, no studio could afford him.  Along with partners Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, two of the most popular film stars of the era, Chaplin founded United Artists in 1919 to independently make and distribute their own films.  The distribution contract called for Chaplin to receive 50% of the profits from his movies and retention of their copyrights after a few years.

Chaplin was fascinated with the story of the Donner Party and he endeavored to develop a movie that built upon the themes of enduring great hardships in pursuit of immense riches or a better life.  He chose Alaska’s Yukon Gold Rush of 1898 as his setting.

Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” followed his usual pattern of production – there was a basic outline of the story but there was not an actual script.  Chaplin had utilized the same filmmaking methods for years, a mixture of skeletal story and constant experimentation and retakes. Roland H. “Rollie” Totheroh was Chaplin’s cinematographer on The Gold Rush.  Totheroh was the primary cameraman on virtually all Chaplin’s pictures throughout the Little Tramp’s career.  Chaplin usually used only one camera and would ultimately produce more than 230,000 feet of film – almost 43 hours of film. However, several cameras were used to film the opening sequence of the movie.  The final film would be 1½ hours long.  The motion picture took seventeen months to complete. Most films in those years were completed in less than 30 days.  It cost $923,886 – the most expensive comedy of the entire silent-film era.

“The Gold Rush” was revolutionary in placing film comedy in the context of an actual historical event. And Chaplin decided to enhance the historic authenticity by filming on location.  Location filming was not a new idea, but the scope of the location filming for “The Gold Rush” was unprecedented.  Charlie chose Truckee as the ideal location to recreate the famous trail that led into the Yukon -- the Chilkoot Pass.  Chaplin intended to film the exterior scenes of the film exclusively in Truckee. 

Truckee had been used a number of times prior to 1924 as an outdoor location by the famous film comedian Buster Keaton.  Chaplin and Keaton were close friends and Chaplin was well aware of Truckee’s desirability as a location.  Given his interest in the Donner Party and his personal knowledge, it is not surprising that Chaplin decided to use Truckee. Filming began in February 1924, and lasted until April 28 of that year.

Chaplin restaged the snow-covered Chilkoot Pass for the film’s opening sequence.  In the scene, hundreds of desperate miners struggle to climb the steep, narrow path that reaches through the pass and to the Yukon Territory.  In order to provide the requisite accuracy, a ridge near Donner Summit in today’s Sugar Bowl Ski Resort was used.  The Truckee Ski Club cleared a path for the single-file trail that led over the pass.  Chaplin arranged for six hundred men to be brought by train from Sacramento to serve as extras.  The scene was shot entirely in one day and remains what film critic Jeffrey Vance calls “the most spectacular image of silent-film comedy.” 

Chaplin had planned to film extensively in Truckee and in parts of nearby Placer County.  Where they lodged is somewhat open to question.  Some accounts indicate that Chaplin and his crew may have set up residence in the Swedish House Hotel downtown.  Today, the Swedish House is a bed-and-breakfast called the East River Inn.  More likely, they stayed at the Summit Hotel near Donner Summit to be closer to the filming locations.   Wherever they finally settled, they expected to stay for quite awhile.  However, the Sierra winter weather turned nasty and bitterly cold. Many crew members and extras came down with colds and Chaplin contracted influenza.  After attempting to film in the difficult conditions and exposing thousands of feet of film, Chaplin decided to suspend filming in Truckee and concentrate on using controllable (and, undoubtedly, warmer) studio sets.  Much of the Truckee and Placer County footage ended up on the cutting room floor.  Other than the Chilkoot Pass sequence, only one other scene in the final cut of the movie was filmed near Truckee – a scene in which the Little Tramp slides down a snowy slope.

The final scenes for “The Gold Rush” would be completed in May 1925.  On June 26, 1925, “The Gold Rush” lavishly premiered at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre.  Interestingly, the theater owner, Sid Grauman (who would become renowned as the owner of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where movie star shoeprints are permanently displayed in the concrete sidewalks) had participated in a gold rush and traveled to Truckee to serve as an advisor to Chaplin.

The film opened to wide acclaim … and great profit.  “The Gold Rush” would gross $6 million.

In Truckee today, a giant reproduction of Chaplin’s Little Tramp is painted on the side of the Capital Theater, a fitting reminder of the winter eight decades ago when one of the most famous people in the world made Nevada County his base of operations.

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Chasing Chaplin

By David Bunker
Sierra Sun
April 22, 2005

High on the slopes of Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, Jack Totheroh, 90, stepped gingerly from the idling snow cat. Holding a faded black and white photograph in front of his eyes, he squinted against the stark winter sun and matched the picture with the snowy cliffs in the distance.

Eighty-one years after his father, Rollie Totheroh, came to Truckee to film Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” Totheroh made it to the location of the opening scene of the movie.

“The Gold Rush” opens with a line of hundreds of fortune seekers climbing a rugged mountain pass — what today is known as the Palisades at Sugar Bowl. The shot, which includes a tent and cabin village, was groundbreaking for 1924.

“It was considered to be one of the most outstanding feats in terms of logistics,” said David Totheroh, Rollie Totheroh’s grandson.

One of the essential ingredients to the opening sequence was a lot of extras willing to scale the Palisades. The film crew found their answer on the streets of Sacramento.

“They brought in three carloads of hobos from Sacramento,” Totheroh said. “They got to spend the day with the king of all tramps — Charlie Chaplin.”

In the end the dramatic opening sequence was one of the few shots that made the final cut into the film after months of winter shooting. Chaplin and Rollie Totheroh grew tired of the uncomfortable filming conditions, and eventually bolted to a studio in Southern California to finish the film.

“Chaplin and my grandfather were not that happy about working in the cold weather,” David Totheroh said. “This was a tough gig.”

Hunting down history
For Jack Totheroh, his son David Totheroh, and a few fellow film buffs, standing on the same ground Chaplin used as a set for his film was the crowning moment of a weekend trip that closely mirrored Chaplin’s journey 81 years ago. The group rode the train, stayed at the East River Inn — where it is rumored Chaplin lodged — and spent time on Donner Summit retracing filming locations.

The facts of Chaplin’s stay have grown scarce over the intervening eight decades. Truckee legends grew, often intertwined with the facts of the “Little Tramp’s” stay in town, said David Totheroh.

What is known is that Chaplin stayed for parts or all of February through April of 1924 to film “The Gold Rush.”

In their visit to Truckee, the Totherohs relied on photographs, letters and other verifiable evidence to track down Chaplin’s steps. Even after visiting the Truckee Donner Historical Society and Donner Summit resident Norm Sayler, an avid collector of Donner Summit history, not all of the group’s questions were answered.

But using three photographs, they tracked down the exact location where Chaplin stood posing for the three shots in the movie. Apart from the opening movie shot, they found the locations of scenes where a windblown Chaplin stood on the flank of Mount Lincoln and a slope Chaplin slid down near a volcanic outcropping.

In the hunt for these film locations, the party used a intimate knowledge of Chaplin films. But even that is not as useful as a “sixth sense,” said Bonnie McCourt, David Totheroh’s girlfriend who has been on Chaplin film location searches across the state. And McCourt said that Gerald Smith, a longtime Chaplin fan who pointed out the slope that they believe Chaplin slid down 81 years ago, has exactly that sense.

“The man has radar,” McCourt said.

A Chaplin cameraman
Rollie Totheroh was Chaplin’s cameraman for 38 years, a tenure unheard of in the film business then or now. Their relationship, which began in 1916 ended in 1953, when Chaplin was discouraged from returning to the United Sates by a Federal Bureau of Investigation paranoid over communism at the time. Chaplin, seeing the writing on the wall, went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland.

“As far as I know there is no film actor/cinematographer relationship that has lasted as long,” David Totheroh said.

David Totheroh, who now lives in Rollie Totheroh’s old home in Southern California, remembers sitting by his grandfather as a child and soaking in stories of Chaplin, the Prohibition and the bitter cold of a little town called Truckee.

Descending Sugar Bowl in a snowcat provided by the ski resort, the group took one last glance up the hill. Alongside the black and white photos of Chaplin and Rollie Totheroh, the mark of change over the last 81 years was clear. Skiers and snowboarders zipped by spots that were once a stage for one of the world’s greatest comedians.

For Jack and David Totheroh the weekend was a way to reconnect with their memories, and retrace the steps of the “Little Tramp” on the anniversary of the day he was shooting.

“We are here on the day these shots were taken,” David Totheroh said.

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Roland H. "Rollie" Totheroh
(November 29, 1890 – June 18, 1967)

Rollie Totheroh worked as Cinematographer on Charles Chaplin's movies for over thirty years from the earliest Mutual years in 1915 to Monsieur Verdoux (1947).  Totheroh was instrumental in filming all of Chaplin's masterpieces, including The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). Totheroh was the man with whom Chaplin had the longest working relationship, other than with his Chaplin's brother Sydney Chaplin.

Totheroh was born in San Francisco and before becoming a cameraman for Essanay studios in Niles, California, he worked as a newspaper illustrator. Totheroh also played minor league baseball for a time.  According to a Totheroh family story, Rollie and Charlie first met on a baseball field outside of the Essanay Studios.  Totheroh appeared in a few early silent films as an actor as well.

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Chaplin and the Gold Rush
Image files

Chaplin 1 – the film poster for “The Gold Rush”
Chaplin 2 - A scene shot in Truckee that was not used in the final film
Chaplin 3 – A quintessential Chaplin moment – the Dance Hall scene in “The Gold Rush”
Chaplin 4 – Filming near Truckee
Chaplin – Totheroh
Chaplin and Totheroh – from City Lights (1931) – Totheroh on the right behind the camera
Chaplin and Totheroh – from Monsieur Verdoux (1947) – Totheroh standing at the right