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The Great Dictator Clippings 94/369

Theodore Strauss, New York Times, New York, August 18, 1940.

Charlie Chaplin and his technical aids are herein supervising

a set-up preparatory to shooting a rally sequence for

„The Great Dictator,“ which is scheduled to have its world

premiere on Broadway next month.

(...) Photo, New York Times, Aug. 18, 1940

„Hardly a parallel to be found for a film“

Editorial content. „NOTES ON THAT NEW CHAPLIN FILM

      Beneath His Long Cloak He Is Said to Conceal

      A Masterpiece

      By Theodore Strauss

      SH-H! Don‘t tell this to more than a hundred, but unless

we got a wrong tip The Great Dictator will be strutting

across the screens of two local theatres come early September,

and in the event that you don‘t recognize him beneath

all those medals, his name is Charles Chaplin.“ (...)

      „And there you have as much as one of Mr. Chaplin‘s

henchmen dared to divulge sotto voce. In the

annals of motion picture distribution there is hardly

a parallel to be found for a film, one of the most

eagerly anticipated productions in Hollywood‘s history,

to have arrived within a month of its world première

with such scanty public knowledge of it.

      * * *

      But Mr. Chaplin has never been a talkative man,

on screen or off. He does not merely close a set,

he closes his lot, and what is done behind the high fences

is as closely guarded as if he were experimenting

with a new secret weapon to exterminate millions. His

numerous actors, proverbially talkative, seem to

inhale secrecy with the very ozone they breathe. Even

Mr. Oakie, that garrulous wag, hasn‘t opened

his mouth. And when a magazine of rational circulation

attempted to reproduce a portrait of The Great

Dictator, purloined from a frame of film, Mr. Chaplin

saw that a legal injunction was clamped upon

the publication for trespass.

      No doubt there are reasons. Quite aside from

the principle involved in the latter instance,

Mr. Chaplin, when in the throes of production, is much

too much involved in the innumerable details

of a many-sided task to devote time to the more prosaic

matter of exploitation. For the important fact is the

single fact: Chaplin has made another film. The rumors add,

incidentally, that it is a masterpiece.“

      The Great Dictator world premiere is in New York Oct. 15, 1940

      at the Capitol and Astor Theatres.

      Capitol Theatre, 1645 Broadway (at 51st Street), New York. 

      Astor Theatre, 1531 Broadway (at 45th Street), New York.

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