Chaplin's first Essanay comedy - appropriately titled - was the only film he made at Essanay's Chicago studio. As with his Keystone films, A Film Johnnie and The Masquerader, Chaplin chose to set the action in a film studio. Charlie is hired as a prop man and is soon demoted to a carpenter's assistant at the Lodstone Studio (a play on his former employer, Keystone) before given the chance to act, which ends in disaster. The film was Chaplin's first pairing with cross-eyed comedian Ben Turpin and Features an early film appearance by Gloria Swanson as a stenographer.