Charlie Chaplin Articles

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists (Film Daily, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists (Film Daily, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

Charlie Chaplin: the Man (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Attached is a three page article about Charlie Chaplin that first appeared in 1930 and contains far more information about the man than you might possibly care to know:

He is a splendid boxer and a keen boxing fan…He plays bridge well…He loves traveling and dislikes flying…He likes to be alone…He likes to talk…He swears now and then…He did not go to school…

Henri Landru, Monsieur Verdux and Charlie Chaplin (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Attached is an article about the Charlie Chaplin film, Monsieur Verdux (1947) and the monstrous beast Henri Landru -the French murderer on whom the story is loosely based. This article was written by Gordon Kahn, remembered chiefly in our own time as one of the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters of the post-World War II period. Not too long after this article was written he went into self-exile in Mexico.

Charlie Chaplin W.W. II Radio Address (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

Within the toasty-warm confines of the attached PDF lie the text of a speech that Chaplin delivered over the war-torn airwaves in 1942. Wishing only to encourage the citizenry of London and Washington, D.C. to be of stout heart in their battle against the Fascist powers, Chaplin’s address was titled, Give Us More Bombs Over Berlin.

Charlie Chaplin and His Popularity (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

The Irish playwright St John Ervine (1883 – 1971) wrote this article for VANITY FAIR in an attempt to understand Charlie Chaplin’s broad appeal; rich and poor, highbrow and lowbrow, all enjoyed his movies.

Mr. Chaplin is the small boy realizing his ambitions.

Charlie Chaplin Wanted to be Taken Seriously (Current Opinion, 1922)

We have all seen it many times before: the well-loved, widely accepted comedian who decides that being adored by the masses is simply not enough. For too many comic talents, sadly, there comes a time when they slip on one banana peel too many and it occurs to them that they want the world to appreciate them for their ability to think. Comics who fill this description might be Al Frankin, Woody Allen or Steve Martin.


This article tries to understand why Chaplin wanted to play a tragic part in a 1921 London stage adaptation of William Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
We have seen such behavior in comics many times before, they hadn’t.

The Illegal Comedy in Occupied Paris (Yank Magazine, 1945)

In Nazi occupied Paris there was a secret underground movie theater (93 Champs Elysees) operating throughout the entire four year period and it charged an excessive sum of francs to gain entry. Guess which Chaplin film was shown?

Charlie Chaplin Sounds-Off on Hollywood (Life Magazine, 1922)

The number of movie stars who have found Los Angeles a disagreeable spot in which to live and work is a far larger number than you could ever imagine; however, for those of you who are keeping just such a list, here is proof-positive that Charlie Chaplin hated the dump, too.

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