Released between The Kid and The Pilgrim, Charlie Chaplin’s Pay Day (1922) is often overshadowed his by earlier and later works. It is however a simple, delightful comedy, unusually casting the tramp character as a working man. His virago wife, played by the veteran expert in such roles, Phyllis Allen, awaits her deceiving husband’s pay day and subsequent late night return home with rolling pin held aloft, although hen-pecked Charlie is hilariously ingenious in his attempts to thwart her. The film is divided into distinct “acts”. In the first part Charlie is seen as a workman on a building site (shot on location on a new building in construction close to the studio) pining over the boss’s daughter, and having difficulties with an elevator which at least has a delightful habit of delivering other people’s lunch to him. The [fantastic scene][1] in which Chaplin’s brother Sydney throws Charlie bricks to pile up on a scaffolding is a credit to both brothers’ music hall training and skills, and to Rollie Totheroh’s trick camera work. The second “act” shows the workman on a night out and gives Chaplin the possibility for a drunk act of the kind that brought him fame in the English music halls before his cinematic career. In the finale, he returns home in the small hours and tries to hide from his wife by sleeping in the bathtub – in spite of the fact that it is full of washing. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46UkG7pW5AE&list=PLyU6zePFLJ-DHO9i0CaXuyKc4pWa8Zvvs&index=78