From the moment the titles appeared, with Chaplin’s hand, in mock pretension, writing out his own name on a chalkboard, then making a pistol of his fingers and pointing them at a figure of the Tramp, the laughter at every performance popped and sizzled like sparks off a wildfire. In some theaters, the bolts on the seats needed to be retightened, and in others, the straw stuffing needed to be repaired where patrons had dug their fingernails into it.

No one cared that he woke up at the end. No one cared that it wasn’t as good as A Dog’s Life. The white feathers ceased to come in the mail. The editorials about Chaplin-the-slacker stopped. The country equated his film with the war’s being on its downswing, as if, by containing it, projecting it, and pointing out its risible parts, Chaplin had caused the war to be won. Through some magisterial process like increasing mercury in its flagon, Chaplin had by his own wit become a hero, and made the country feel like a nation of heroes for appreciating him.

Shoulder Arms was a massive success. With one artistic stroke, he had been vindicated in every conceivable way. People assumed he must be happy.

On November 4, he announced that his new film would be called Jack of All Trades and would feature the Little Fellow as handyman on a farm. “We’ll have a pastoral,” he explained. “It will give him a whole new landscape to find trouble in.” But he could have set it on the moon, for all anyone cared. First National invited him to spend as much time and money as he needed, on whatever scenario he wanted. The New Republic noted that this was one of the rare times in history when an artist could work without the slightest restraint; who knew what wonders would come of a genius’s unfettered imagination?

On the first day of work on Jack of All Trades, Chaplin arrived at the studio at eight o’clock. As his car came down De Longpre, someone cried out, “He’s here!” and the whole crew lined up to flank the car and to yell out encouragement.

He brought along a talisman. When his studio opened, he had started a list. He kept it folded in his desk drawer, annotating it as necessary, and now, married, he kept it in his pocket, and he touched it when his car drove past the gates.