you heard it here first

apparently the song 'smile' is currently experiencing a comeback. the tune was composed by chaplin in 1936 for his last silent film, modern times. it was a silent film in the sense of missing dialogue. as in theprevious feature, city lights, however, chaplin had included  sound on the filmstrips themselves. so in the end, technically speaking, the film was far from silent. there were a few words, such as human dialogue filtered through machines (telescreens, radio and a grammophone) and chaplin's tramp sung nonsensical lyrics to the smash-hit 'titine'. (the original lyrics were just as silly, though!) in 1936 'smile' was not yet the song, though, that now everybody has become wild about in the past three or four days, simply for the reason that it still lacked words. the lyrics were added somewhat later and ever since then, people have been messing up the line, 'light up your face with gladness / hide every trace of sadness'.