Today we remember Charlie Chaplin on his 134th birthday. In 1938, he was the world’s most famous movie star when he began to prepare a film about the bigliest monster of the 20th century. Chaplin looked a little like Adolf Hitler. Hitler had the same little mustache as Chaplin’s Little Tramp character. Taking advantage of the resemblance, Chaplin wrote a satire in which the demented dictator and a Jewish barber from the ghetto would be mistaken for each other. That film, The Great Dictator, is Chaplin’s first talking film and the highest-grossing of his career, although it would make his life incredibly difficult and directly contributed to his leaving the USA.
In 1938, Hitler was considered to be the essence of evil by many Americans. But, powerful political isolationists strongly insisted on a nonintervention policy when it came to dealing the rise of fascism in Europe, plus the rumors of Hitler’s plans to exterminate the Jews were welcomed by the many anti-Semites in the USA. The earliest American detractors of Nazism were accused of being un-American, probably even communists. Hitler was considered an ally.
The Great Dictator ends with a long speech denouncing dictatorships, and extolling democracy and individual freedoms. For liberals, this sounded like true American values, but to many conservatives, it sounded like a bunch of commies.
“You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness…“
If Chaplin had not been an early fighter against fascism, he probably wouldn’t have made The Great Dictator. When the horrors of the Holocaust began to be known, Hitler was no longer funny.
Chaplin was internationally popular in this era. He was mobbed by fans when he visited Berlin in 1931, which pissed-off the Nazis. They published a book titled The Jews Are Looking At You (1934), where they described Chaplin as “a disgusting Jewish acrobat” (although Chaplin was not Jewish).
Chaplin wasn’t the first artists to mock the Nazis. The Marx Brothers released Duck Soup in 1936, with Groucho Marx playing a dictator named “Rufus T. Firefly”. This crackling comedy had a sinister undercurrent about what was happening in Europe. Two short films The Three Stooges, You Nazty Spy! (1940) and I’ll Never Heil Again (1941) also made fun of Hitler.
Even after The Great Dictator, the great Ernst Lubitsch, a German exile, made To Be Or Not To Be (1942) with Jack Benny as an actor who becomes embroiled in the Nazi occupation of Poland.
But, Chaplin’s film made fun of Hitler himself. Chaplin later wrote that it would not have been funny at all, if he had not yet known the full extent of what the Nazis were up to. The film’s mocking of Hitler got it banned in fascist-leaning Spain and Italy, and even in neutral Ireland. But in the USA and Britain, it made a powerful impact that is hard to imagine today. Except for maybe Mickey Mouse, Chaplin’s Little Tramp character was the most recognizable and loved in the world, and although Chaplin was technically not playing the Little Tramp in The Great Dictator, he still looked like him.
In 1940, much of the world took notice because Chaplin used his own beloved comic persona against Hitler, ridiculing him as a buffoon. Film fans totally bought the movie’s humor. The film was a hit, and it received five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay for Chaplin, Best Score for Meredith Willson, and Best Supporting Actor for Jack Oakie for his portrayal of “Benzino Napaloni”, Dictator of Bacteria, a spoof of the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.
Chaplin put his Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler. Plus, he was instrumental in raising millions of dollars for Jewish refugee centers. It is a very funny film and a fearless one. Chaplin never played a little man with a mustache again.
Chaplin was critical of the many injustices he saw taking place his adopted country, the good old USA. He became a target of Right-Wing Conservatives. Congressperson John Rankin of Mississippi demanded that Chaplin be deported. In response to an interrogator from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1948, Chaplin said:
“I consider myself as much a citizen of America as anybody else and my great love has always been here in this country. At the same time I don’t feel I am allied to any one particular country. I feel I am a citizen of the world. I feel that when the day comes and we have the barriers down and so forth so the people come and go all around the world and be a part of any country, and I have always felt that about citizenship.”
In 1952, the Attorney General, J. Howard McGrath, announced that Chaplin, who was on a sailing vacation, would not be permitted back in the USA unless he could prove his “moral worth”. Chaplin was furious and refused to return, and chose to live in Switzerland.
He did not return to the USA until 1972, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Chaplin an Honorary Oscar. Chaplin was initially hesitant about accepting. His return attracted a lot of attention from press. At the ceremony, he received a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest in Academy Award history. Visibly emotional, Chaplin accepted his award for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century“.
