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Frank P. Gill, Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, March 15, 1941.

Frank P. Gill

(...) Photo, Detroit Free Press, April 25, 1941

& THE OLD CHARLIE CHAPLIN

      The WPA got him

(...) Photo, Detroit Free Press, March 6, 1941, front page.

& FORGOTTEN MAN

      Goodby to Baggy Pants

      By the United Press

      HOLLYWOOD, March 5  Charlie Chaplin tonight bade

goodby to the shabby little man with the baggy pants and the

cane who brought him fame and fortune.

      The veteran screen comedian announced that he was

heading for New York to start work on a new picture

un which, instead of the long-familiar tramp character, he will

play a refugee in a full-dress suit, drunk and lost in the

big city.

      It‘s Roosevelt‘s Fault

      Asked why he was abandoning the baggy-pants character

he had portrayed for so many years, Chaplin explained:

      „President Roosevelt didn‘t do him any good. The President

started talking about the forgotten man and my little fellow

lost his job. Now he‘s on the WPA.“

(...) Detroit Free Press, March 6, 1941, front page

      WPA, Works Progress Administration,

      renamed 1939 Works Projects Administration.

„Chaplin has shown surprising lack of judgment“

Editorial content. „New, Satirical Chaplin

      Savagely Mocks Hitler

      BY FRANK P. GILL

      Free Press Motion Picture Editor

     A new Charlie Chaplin, whom Hitler and history have

transformed from a laughable and lovable clown

into a self-conscious satirist, has arrived on the screen of the

Michigan this week in his latest production The

Great Dictator.

      The new Chaplin, like the old, can still send an audience

into shrieks of laughter, but his humor, hitherto sly and

subtle, is now barbed and his pantomime is tinged with acid.

International events are in the director‘s chair and

Chaplin is the star performer.

      The old Chaplin besides being a master comedian, was

also a shrewd judge of pacing and tempo in all his

productions which had a smoothness and completeness

of detail that made them outstanding among film

laugh creations.

      The new Chaplin, however, has lost some of this adroitness,

and the resultant production is uneven and patchy.

There are moments of high humor, comparable in many ways

to the best this little comedian has ever produced.“ (...)

      „Lack of Judgment Shown in Some Scenes

      In between these comic highspots, are whole sequences

that seem out of place and ill presented. The events

they typify are far too tragic and too near to many who see

them to be injected into a comedy script as release

from laughter. In some of these scenes, notably in the comic presentation of storm troopers acting as Keystone

cops of old, Chaplin has shown surprising lack of judgment,

and the cast he has gathered around him do little

to raise the standard of the scenes.“ (...)

      Michigan Theatre, 238 Bagley Street, Detroit.

Redaktioneller Inhalt

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