SCARCE Charlie CHAPLIN 1940 Souvenir Film Program THE GREAT DICTATOR Photos, VG,
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:23132836 | Country/Region of Manufacture: United States |
| Original/Reproduction: Original |
(It looks much better than the picture above.) SCARCE Charlie CHAPLIN 1940 Souvenir film program THE GREAT DICTATOR photos, story, behind scenes making of facts, short bios. This film program booklet has pages of photos and fact filled pages! PLEASE BE PATIENT WHILE ALL PICTURES LOAD After checking out this item please look at my other unique silent motion picture memorabilia and Hollywood film collectibles! WITH MULTIPLE WINS OF SIMILAR SHAPED ITEMS, SAVE ON SHIPPING COST BY HA...VING THEM SENT TOGETHER $ See a gallery of pictures of my other auctions HERE! This program is vintage, original and not a copy or reproduction. DESCRIPTION: (Original Film Program)"This is the story of the period between two world wars--an interim during which insanity cut loose, liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat." With this pithy opening title, Charles Chaplin begins his first all-talking feature film, The Great Dictator. During World War I, a Jewish barber (Chaplin) in the army of Tomania saves the life of high-ranking officer Schultz (Reginald Gardiner). While Schultz survives the conflict unscathed, the barber is stricken with amnesia and bundled off to a hospital. Twenty years pass: Tomania has been taken over by dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin again) and his stooges Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) and Herring (Billy Gilbert). Hynkel despises all Jews and regularly wreaks havoc on the Tomanian Jewish ghetto, where feisty Hannah (Paulette Goddard) lives. Meanwhile, the little barber escapes from the hospital and instinctively heads back to his cobweb-laden ghetto barber shop. Unaware of Hynkel's policy towards Jews (in fact, he's unaware of Hynkel), the barber gets into a slapstick confrontation with a gang of Aryan storm troopers. He is rescued by his old friend Schultz, now one of Hynkel's most loyal officers. Thanks to Schultz's protection, the ghetto receives a brief respite from Hynkel's persecution. The barber sets up shop again, developing a warm platonic relationship with the lovely Hannah. But things take a sorry turn when Hynkel, angered that a Jewish banker has refused to finance his impending war with Austerlitz, begins bearing down again on the Ghetto. Near the end of the film, when the dictator is expected to make another one of his hate-filled, war-mongering speeches, the barber steps up to the microphones...and Charles Chaplin drops character and becomes "himself, " delivering an impassioned plea for peace, tolerance, and humanity.· Soft cover: 14 pages· Publisher: United Artists· Language: EnglishProduct Dimensions: An Original Vintage Movie Souvenir Program Book (measures 9" x 12") Shipping Weight: 1 pound and 15 ounces. Brief biographies of cast & crew. Behinds the scenes stories of the making of this unique moving picture.” CONDITION: This vintage film program is in VERY GOOD condition with mild patina (hand dirt), discolorations around the edges of the front & back cover and just inside on the first two pages, mild scuffing and bumping to the covers. The whole program is in mostly EXCELLENT condition except for the items mentioned. This piece is worthy of investment!I wish could find a comparable in this condition… but this is the only one I could find. So you could say it’s rare, scare and virtually priceless. Condition wise there is normal use but you have to look hard to find it! SHIPPING:Either: Media rate approximately $3.50 and takes 1-2 weeks or in a flat rate Priority envelope and takes 2-4 days $7-12. Shipping outside the USA is much more expensive and depends upon the location. PAYMENTS: Please pay PayPal! All of my items are unconditionally guaranteed. E-mail me with any questions you may have. This is Larry41, wishing you great movie memories and good luck… BACKGROUND: “In 1938, the world's most famous movie star began to prepare a film about the monster of the 20th century. Charlie Chaplin looked a little like Adolf Hitler, in part because Hitler had chosen the same toothbrush moustache as the Little Tramp. Exploiting that resemblance, Chaplin devised a satire in which the dictator and a Jewish barber from the ghetto would be mistaken for each other. The result, released in 1940, was "The Great Dictator, " Chaplin's first talking picture and the highest-grossing of his career, although it would cause him great difficulties and indirectly lead to his long exile from the United States. In 1938, Hitler was not yet recognized in all quarters as the embodiment of evil. Powerful isolationist forces in America preached a policy of nonintervention in the troubles of Europe, and rumors of Hitler's policy to exterminate the Jews were welcomed by anti-Semitic groups. Some of Hitler's earliest opponents, including anti-Franco American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, were later seen as "premature antifascists"; by fighting against fascism when Hitler was still considered an ally, they raised suspicion that they might be communists. "The Great Dictator" ended with a long speech denouncing dictatorships, and extolling democracy and individual freedoms. This sounded to the left like bedrock American values, but to some on the right, it sounded pinko. If Chaplin had not been "premature, " however, it is unlikely he would have made the film at all. Once the horrors of the Holocaust began to be known, Hitler was no longer funny, not at all. The Marx Brothers, ahead of the curve, made "Duck Soup" in 1933, with Groucho playing the dictator Rufus T. Firefly in a comedy that had ominous undertones about what was already under way in Europe. And as late as 1942, the German exile Ernst Lubitsch made "To Be or Not to Be, " with Jack Benny as an actor who becomes embroiled in the Nazi occupation of Poland. Chaplin's film, aimed obviously and scornfully at Hitler himself, could only have been funny, he says in his autobiography, if he had not yet known the full extent of the Nazi evil. As it was, the film's mockery of Hitler got it banned in Spain, Italy and neutral Ireland. But in America and elsewhere, it played with an impact that, today, may be hard to imagine. There had never been any fictional character as universally beloved as the Little Tramp, and although Chaplin was technically not playing the Tramp in "The Great Dictator, " he looked just like him, this time not in a comic fable but a political satire. The plot is one of those concoctions that makes the action barely possible. The hero, a barber-soldier in World War I, saves the life of a German pilot named Schultz and flies him to safety, all the time not even knowing he was the enemy. Their crash-landing gives the barber amnesia, and for 20 years he doesn't know who he is. Then he recovers and returns to his barber shop in the country of Tomania (say it aloud), only to discover that the dictator Hynkel has come to power, not under the swastika, but under the Double Cross. His storm troopers are moving through the ghetto, smashing windows and rounding up Jews (the term "concentration camp" is used early, matter-of-factly). But the barber's shop is spared by the intervention of Schultz, now an assistant minister, who recognizes him. The barber (never named, just like the Tramp) is in love with the maid Hannah (Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's estranged wife at the time). And he is befriended by his former neighbors. But he and the disloyal Schultz are eventually put in a concentration camp, and then Hynkel has a boating mishap, is mistaken for the barber, and locked into the camp just as the barber and Schultz escape -- with Hynkel's uniform. Now the barber is assumed by everyone to be the dictator. In the classic Chaplin tradition, the movie has a richness of gags and comic pantomime, including Hynkel's famous ballet with an inflated balloon that makes the globe his plaything. There is a sequence where five men bite into puddings after being told the one who finds a coin must give his life to assassinate Hynkel. None of them want to find the coin and there is cheating, but eventually -- see for yourself. And there is a long, funny episode when the dictator of neighboring Bacteria, Benzini Napaloni (Jack Oakie), pays a state visit. Napaloni, obviously modeled on Mussolini, eludes an attempt to make him sit in a low chair so the short Hynkel can loom over him. And when the two of them sit in adjacent barber chairs, they take turns pumping their chairs higher than the other. There is also a lot of confusion about saluting, and Chaplin intercuts shots of the two dictators with newsreels of enormous, cheering crowds. In 1940, this would have played as very highly charged, because Chaplin was launching his comic persona against Hitler in an attempt, largely successful, to ridicule him as a clown. Audiences reacted strongly to the film's humor; it won five Oscar nominations, for picture, actor, supporting actor (Oakie), screenplay and music (Meredith Willson). But audiences at the time, and ever since, have felt that the film comes to a dead end when the barber, impersonating Hynkel, delivers a monologue of more than three minutes which represents Chaplin's own views.Incredibly, no one tries to stop the fake "Hynkel." Chaplin talks straight into the camera, in his own voice, with no comic touches and only three cutaways, as the barber is presumably heard on radio all over the world. What he says is true enough, but it deflates the comedy and ends the picture as a lecture, followed by a shot of Goddard outlined against the sky, joyously facing the Hynkel-free future, as the music swells. It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now. It is fatal when Chaplin drops his comic persona, abruptly changes the tone of the film, and leaves us wondering how long he is going to talk (a question that should never arise during a comedy). The movie plays like a comedy followed by an editorial. Chaplin (1889-1977) nevertheless was determined to keep the speech; it might have been his reason for making the film. He put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler (and was instrumental in directing more millions to Jewish refugee centers). He made his statement, it found a large audience, and in the stretches leading up to the final speech, he shows his innate comic genius. It is a funny film, which we expect from Chaplin, and a brave one. He never played a little man with a mustache again. And now a memory. In 1972, the Venice Film Festival staged a retrospective of Chaplin's complete work, with prints from his own collection. On the closing night, his masterpiece, "City Lights" (1932), was shown outdoors in Piazza San Marco. The lights were off, the orchestras were silenced for the first time in more than a century, and the film played on a giant screen to standing room only. When it was over, and the blind flower girl could see again, and she realized the Little Tramp was her savior, there was much snuffling and blowing of noses. Then a single spotlight sprung from the darkness and illuminated a balcony overlooking the square. A little man stepped out and waved. And we cheered and cheered. The Great Dictator, the 1940 Charles Chaplin World War II (WWII) anti-war black comedy ("Charlie Chaplin in his greatest role"; "The world will be laughing again..."; "2 1/2 hours of hilarity! Twelve thousand feet of laughter chosen from half a million feet of film!"; "The Chaplin millions love! The little tramp is back, converging into a dual role of a power-mad tyrant!"; "Plus a New Chaplin! A Chaplin for the new generation of fans, aiming his mirth at a target of timeliness!"; "The comedy masterpiece!"; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; the movie was Chaplin's first actual talking movie, because his two previous only had music tracks and sound effects, but no dialogue, and this was a fully talking movie, so it was advertised with the tagline "He talks..."; note that this movie was made very early in World War II, and it had actually started production in 1937, long before the U.S. entered, and before the full extent of the Nazi atrocities were even guessed at, but it seems somewhat bizarre to have a movie that makes fun of such events, although the movie ends with a long brilliant speech in defense of pacifism by Chaplin!) starring Charlie Chaplin (Charles Chaplin; nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film; he played two parts, the Hitler-like Adenoid Hynkel, and "a Jewish barber", a twin for Hynkel), Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie (nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film; as the Mussolini-like Benzino Napaloni), Henry Daniell, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Gilbert (as Field Marshal Herring), Maurice Moscovitch, Emma Dunn, Bernard Gorcey, and Paul Weigel. Note that Adolf Hitler found nothing funny about this movie, and he had it banned in Germany!
