Charlie Chaplin: The Great Dictator

The Concluding Speech from:
The Great Dictator

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~ for JohnO

and those whom attend the kingdom of God

Charlie Chaplin
16 April 1889 - 25 December 1977

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the tramp

AN INTRODUCTION

Critic Edmund Wilson once rhetorically inquired, "Have we [Americans] ever turned out anything that was comparable artistically to the best German or Russian films?" Few disagreed with his answer: "I can think of nothing except Charlie Chaplin, who is his own producer and produces simply himself." But Chaplin's "self" was not so simple.

vaudville days Charlie Chaplin was first introduced to America in 1910 as a vaudeville clown with the highly renowned Fred Karno Company. The country did not respond warmly. Charlie's comic flair failed to catch an audience until the epochal one-reeler Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) in which he slipped his slight frame into Fatty Arbuckle's baggy pants and squeezed into Chester Conklin's tight jacket. In that moment the Tramp was born, and with him a long parabola of triumph and humiliation. The arc of Charlie's career is described as one bred of deprivation and encompassed nearly every cinematic skill, from acting, producing and directing to the writing of scenarios and scores, gags and tragedies. The Tramp has been called the most popular comic figure of the 20th century; with this breakthrough persona, Chaplin brought elements of pathos and comedy together for the first time on the screen and created enduring film classics whose appeal transcends age, geography, culture - and time.

Charles Spencer Chaplin had risen from the darkest of London slums. His father was an alcoholic; his mother sewed blouses for 1 and 1/2 pence each. This, a severe fall from a more graceful earlier childhood of which Charlie so eloquently describes in his autobiography:

3 Pownall Terrace, Lambeth
'Our circumstances were moderately comfortable; we lived in three tastefully furnished rooms. One of my early recollections was that each night before Mother went to the theatre Sydney and I were lovingly tucked up in a comfortable bed and left in the care of the housemaid. In my world of three and a half years, all things were possible; if Sydney, who was four years older than I, could perform legerdemain and swallow a coin and make it come out through the back of his head, I could do the same; so I swallowed a halfpenny and Mother was obliged to send for a doctor.

Every night, after she came home from the theatre, it was her custom to leave delicacies on the table for Sydney and me to find in the morning - a slice of Neapolitan cake or candies - with the understanding that we were not to make a noise in the morning, as she usually slept late.

Hannah Chaplin
Mother was a soubrette on the variety stage, a mignonne in her late twenties, with fair complexion, violet-blue eyes and long light-brown hair that she could sit upon. Sydney and I adored our mother. Though she was not an exceptional beauty, we thought her divine-looking. Those who knew her told me in later years that she was dainty and attractive and had compelling charm. She took pride in dressing us up for Sunday excursions, Sydney in an Eton suit with long trousers and me in a blue velvet one with blue gloves to match. Such occasions were orgies of smugness, as we ambled along Kennington Road.

London was sedate in those days. The tempo was sedate; even the horse-drawn tram-cars along Westminster Bridge Road went at a sedate pace and turned sedately on a revolving table at the terminal near the bridge. In Mother's prosperous days we also lived in Westminster Bridge Road. Its atmosphere was gay and friendly with attractive shops, restaurants and music halls. The fruit-shop on the corner facing the Bridge was a galaxy of colour, with its neatly arranged pyramids of oranges, apples, pears and bananas outside, in contrast to the solemn grey Houses of Parliament directly across the river.

This was the London of my childhood, of my moods and awakenings: memories of Lambeth in the spring; of trivial incidents and things; of riding with Mother on top of a horse-bus trying to touch passing lilac-trees - of the many coloured bus tickets, orange, blue, pink and green, that bestrewed the pavement where the trams and buses stopped - of rubicund flower-girls at the corner of Westminster Bridge, making gay boutonieres, their adroit fingers manipulating tinsel and quivering fern - of the humid odour of freshly watered roses that affected me with a vague sadness - of melancholy Sundays and pale-faced parents and their children escorting toy windmills and coloured balloons over Westminster Bridge; and the maternal penny streamers that softly lowered their funnels as they glided under it. From such trivia I believe my soul was born.'

What followed this "birth" was something which might be considered death. Charlie's beloved mother, Hannah, began to show the strains of a life with an alcoholic. Charles Chaplin, Sr. (also a music hall entertainer of more prominence and popularity) drifted apart. And before Charlie was two years old, he was fatherless; Charles Sr. had abandoned his family.
Charles Chaplin, Sr.

It was at this time that Hannah's health, both physically and mentally, began to decline quite rapidly. And by the time Charlie was five years old, she was institutionalized in the Cane Hill Asylum. She was never to be fully well again. Throughout Charlie's and Sydney's childhoods, Hannah's sanity came and went. During periods of remission she would be discharged from the asylum and forced, with her boys, to seek refuge in the dreaded workhouse for a few days while seeking a humble room somewhere by way of a home for her little family.
Circled center: At aged 7, Charlie's face already assumes a distinctive individuality amongst the other children at the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children where Charlie stayed from June 1896 to January 1898.

This tragic pattern was endlessly repeated. During Hannah's absences, Charlie and Sydney experienced the workhouses for brief periods before the Board of Guardians placed them in various charitable institutions. In these institutions, Charlie and Sydney actually found some relief and Sydney was sent for merchant navy training . This decision on the part of the authorities was to pay dividends. Sydney was diligent and made a success of it and, a very few years later, put to sea for several journeys which resulted in money to aid his poverty-stricken mother and struggling young brother. But this separation was difficult on Charlie who had grown very close to his brother, and who found himself entirely alone. Charles, Sr. was now living with another woman by whom he had a child and, although ordered to contribute towards the maintenance of his two sons, failed to do so.

Charlie, aged 12, 1901- the year his father died.
This picture of unending gloom continued throughout Charlie's childhood and adolescence. When Hannah was again admitted to the asylum, Charles, Sr. was court-ordered to take in Charlie and Sydney. This resulted in disaster. The two young boys were given little attention and could not get along with their father's common-law wife. When Hannah was eventually discharged, the whole nightmare started over again.

Nevertheless, Charlie and Sydney pushed on and in 1910, Charlie found solace in the Fred Karno Company - the most famous, imaginative and successful troupe of entertainers in Britain. The company set sail for the United States to do an extended tour, beginning at the Colonial Theatre in New York. And Charlie, who left his troubled life behind, would never again be subject to the bleak workhouses of London. From this point forward, Charlie would evolve into the everlasting Tramp of which time has no effect and of whom belongs to all of humanity.

Probably Chaplin's finest film is The Great Dictator. A biting and satirical verdict on fascism, it was his first dialogue film which broke him through the silent age and into the "talkies." An anti-Nazi film and spoof of Adolf Hitler; The Great Dictator was a most prophetic film which nearly cost Chaplin his life due to its content. It was a forecast of something terrible yet to come.

By the time it was released in New York in 1940, Europe had been plunged into war. Earlier that same year, American cinema audiences had watched newsreels of Hitler strutting through Paris after the fall of France, surrounded by his leather-coated generals. But this seemed of little noting in the states. Chaplin won the New York critics over with The Great Dictator and received the Award for Best Actor. And the film's gross of $2 million made it the top money-earner of 1941. This was well and good, but far from Chaplin's point of effort made to expose Hitler and Nazis as dangerous.

Much later, when the full horror of the Nazi regime was revealed, some felt that The Great Dictator was tasteless, laughing in the face of unimaginable barbarism. What remains clear, however, is that it was made as an unequivocal counterblast against the criminal idiocies of fascism, and made at a time when isolationism was still a powerful force in the States, leaving Hollywood majors - with the sole exception of Warner Bros. - unwilling to produce explicitly anti-Nazi films. This was Chaplin's finest hour.

In The Great Dictator, Paulette Goddard plays Hannah, a strong woman who stands her own in battle against enslavement. Hannah joins forces with Chaplin who cast himself in the dual role of Hynkel, the ranting, vainglorious emperor of Tomania, and his double, a downtrodden little Jewish barber. Inevitably, their identities are confused, with the barber becoming a bemused ruler and delivering this concluding and pleading speech to the world:

I'm sorry,
but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone
- if possible -
Jew, Gentile - black men - white.
We all want to help one another.
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's happiness -
not by each other's misery.
We don't want to hate
and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone.
And the good earth is rich
and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be
free and beautiful,
but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls -
has barricaded the world with hate -
has goose-stepped us into misery
and bloodshed.
We have developed speed,
but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance
has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical;
our cleverness, hard and unkind.
We think too much
and feel too little.
More than machinery
we need humanity.
More than cleverness,
we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities,
life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio
have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these things
cries out for the goodness in man -
cries out for universal brotherhood -
for the unity of us all.
Even now
my voice is reaching millions
throughout the world -
millions of despairing men, women,
and little children -
victims of a system
that makes men torture
and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say:
'Do not despair.'
The misery that has come upon us
is but the passing of
greed -
the bitterness of men
who fear the way of human progress.
The hate of men will pass,
and dictators die,
and the power they took from the people
will return to the people.
And so long as men die,
liberty will never perish.

Soldiers!
Don't give yourselves to these brutes -
who despise you - enslave you -
who regiment your lives -
tell you what to do -
what to think and what to feel!
Who drill you - diet you -
treat you like cattle
and use you as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves
to these unnatural men -
machine men with machine minds
and machine hearts!
You are not machines!
You are men!
With the love of humanity
in your hearts!
Don't hate!
Only the unloved hate -
the unloved and the unnatural!

Soldiers!
Don't fight for slavery!
Fight for liberty!

In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke,
it is written
that the kingdom of God
is within man-
not one man
nor a group of men,
but in ALL men!

In you!

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 fulfil that promise.
They never will!
Dictators free themselves
but they enslave the people.
Now 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 the happiness
of us all.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy,
let us unite!

Hannah, can you hear me?
Wherever you are, look up!
Look up, Hannah!
The clouds are lifting!
The sun is breaking through!
We are coming out of the darkness
into the light!
We are coming into a new world -
a kindlier world,
where men will rise above their greed,
their hate and their brutality.
Look up, Hannah!
The soul of man has been given wings
and at last he is beginning to fly.
He is flying into the rainbow-
into the light of hope.
Look up, Hannah!
Look up!

-CHARLES CHAPLIN, The Great Dictator

AN AFTERTHOUGHT

Chaplin comments on the speech in his autobiography:

'...The Great Dictator opened at the Capital to a glamorous audience who were elated and enthused. It stayed fifteen weeks in New York, playing two theatres, and turned out to be the biggest grosser of all my pictures up to that time.

But the reviews were mixed. Most of the critics objected to the last speech. The New York Daily News said I pointed a finger of Communism at the audience. Although the majority of the critics objected to the speech and said it was not in character, the public as a whole loved it, and I had many wonderful letters eulogizing it.

Archie L. Mayo, one of Hollywood's important directors, asked permission to print the speech on his Christmas card. What follows is his introduction to it:

Had I lived at the time of Lincoln, I believe I would have sent you his Gettysburg speech, because it was the greatest inspirational message of his period. Today we face new crises, and another man has spoken from the depth of an earnest and sincere heart. Although I know him but slightly, what he says has moved me deeply...I am inspired to send you the full text of the speech written by Charles Chaplin that you, too, may share the expression of Hope.'

in the beginning...

"My own concept of humor is...
the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears to be normal behavior.

In other words, through humor we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity. Because of humor we are less overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life. It activates our sense of proportion and reveals to us that in an overstatement of seriousness lurks the absurd."

-Charles Chaplin,
My Autobiography, 1964

Journey onward!

"Abner"

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

http://www.amazon.com/
My Autobiography / CHARLES CHAPLIN by Charles Chaplin; Published by the Penguin Group; Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014; Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England; First Plume Printing, December, 1992; Published by arrangement with Random House UK.

Charlie Chaplin: Comic Genius by David Robinson; Copyright 1995 Gallimard; English-language edition copyright 1996 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, and Thames and Hudson Ltd., London; Printed and bound in Italy by Editorale Libraria, Trieste.

The Life and Times of CHARLIE CHAPLIN by Robyn Karney and Robin Cross; First published in 1992 by SMITHMARK Publishers Inc., 112 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016