24 September 1952: Cries of ‘Good old Charlie’ greet Chaplin as he travels from Waterloo station to the Savoy hotel
Fleet Street, Tuesday“Good old Charlie” is still the cry with which his countrymen greet Charles Chaplin. It was heard a great deal this morning at Waterloo station when he arrived from Southampton. There is always a crowd at Waterloo and it would be too much to say that the hundreds who milled around on Platform 11 as the train came in were there specially. If any political demonstration was expected it did not take place, or was swamped by the simple goodwill of people who were obviously pleased to see “Charlie.”
“Who is Charlie?” a little girl asked insistently of her father. “He’s the greatest comic there ever was,” the man replied. Was he right? That is, perhaps, a matter of medium, a question of whether the screen can in the end maintain a man’s position as the “greatest comic.” But whatever the degree of greatness, there can be no doubt of Chaplin’s popularity.