Well, good evening. Everybody. Welcome to tonights presentation on Charlie Chaplin who is known universally as an iconic comedian. What is not so generally known perhaps is the political impact of his humor. A subject about which we will learn more this evening. First let me thank our series sponsor Davenport Company not only for their support of tonights lecture, but for the support they have provided for the program over the years. The davenport farm was our very First Corporate sponsor and they have not only continued that support. But have been instrumental in securing additional benefactors as well. I cannot emphasize enough how much the generosity has meant to the development of our program . The university and its students as well as the larger Fredericksburg Community are deeply indebted to them for this. Now speak of this evening, dr. Steven j farnsworth received his ba in history from the university of missouri, kansas city and a ba in government from dartmouth. Followed by both ma and phd degrees in government from Georgetown University he worked for 10 years as a newspaper journalist, but before becoming a professor and has lectured widely on the news media the presidency and elections us and international audiences. A prolific scholar he has written seven books including president ial communication and character the nightly news nightmare spinner in chief and his most recent late night with trump political yearbook and the american presidency. Is also the author or coauthor of dozens of scholarly articles on the presidency the mass media us Public Opinion and virginia politics. His political commentary has appeared in a wide range of Media Outlets including the new york times, washington post. Pbs news hour politico cspan and bbc world he is currently professor of Political Science and International Affairs and director of the center for leadership and media studies at the university of mary, washington. He has taught courses and Political Science journalism and political communication at Georgetown UniversityMcgill University and george mason university. During his tenure at Mary Washington dr. Fonzworth has earned the reputation of being an outstanding teacher. As evidenced by winning the universe is three most prestigious awards for excellence in teaching. They distinction further tested by his being. 2017 recipient of the virginia outstanding faculty award from the state council of Higher Education hell be fun to recalled by great lies patrons for his five previous presentations on president s harry truman. Then the Johnson Richard nixon and Ronald Reagan as well as on iconic entertainer Johnny Carson. Its a pleasure to welcome back to the great lives podium my good friend steve farnsworth. Thank you so much bill. Im delighted to be here and to talk to you about one of the really interesting people in the history of american film. Now you may have heard a rags to riches story or two in your time, but few will ever compare to the bust to boom tale of Charlie Chaplin who went from being a destitute child in a victorian workhouse in london to the most famous man in the world in two decades. Charlie chaplin the worlds first and arguably Largest Global movie star was so effective at offering enigmatic political messages that we are still debating what he was trying to say more than a century after his first signature character appeared on the silver screen. The 81 films that chaplain was involved in as actor or author or director or composer or all of the above represent an unequaled body of work. George bernard shaw who knew a great deal about putting on a compelling presentation said that chaplain was the only genius in Motion Pictures wc fields said he was the most amazing ballet dancer who ever lived and Marcel Marceau said that he would never have become a mime if Charlie Chaplin hadnt been a movie star. Now once you start looking for them you see references to chaplains work just about everywhere. You look in Popular Culture there of course chaplains obvious comedic descendants people like the early van or the young chevy chase and even the manic comedic energy of mel brooks and jim carrey. But there are other impacts as well. Chaplin was a compelling composer and his smile arrangement. This is the theme of the played in the background in the final scenes of modern times became a hit record single decades later for Nat King Cole and there have been some first rate interpretations of this song produced originally by chaplin, but now made famous by Nat King Cole and judy garland and barbara streisand. This was also Michael Jacksons favorites song and you can even look if you look closely at some of Michael Jacksons dance moves they recall the tramp as well chaplin. Was such an inspiration to Michael Jackson that when on one of his trips to london Michael Jackson insisted on touring the neighborhood where chaplain grew up the workhouse where he lived for a while and he even dressed up as the tramp for a promotional photo shoot. He planned to produce a smile album of his own but he was taken from us too soon. As a whole chaplains work is particularly oriented towards political humanism a concern for all humanity particularly for those people facing acute hardship. Champlin in his work routinely asks key questions about whether Vulnerable People can survive. Or even thrive in the face of the societal upheavals of modernization he says above all that the crisis of modernity is particularly acute when you consider it in the context of the growing power of business the greater vulnerability of workers and the factories that in jobs where life may be stressful dangerous and insecure. At this point five generations of filmgoers critics and scholars have now had a chance to dissect the iconoclastic controversial and tumultuous work of chaplain his biography provides an important backdrop for appreciating his legacy as one of historys most effective users of mass media to shape political and cultural messages one key point i think is important to make it the outset a persons selection as meriting great lives treatment does not necessarily mean that their personal lives are one that we should endeavor to emulate. Chaplain had four marriages and a substantial enough record of extramarital activity that he provided lots of material for the divorce lawyers who were arrayed against him. Um his first wife he married to young. His second wife a far younger costar lita gray sought to actually to ruin chaplain in no holes bar divorce case another far younger costar paulette gaddard the marriage fell apart because chaplain was so devoted to his work and so so in different in some cases to his his marriage. Um in the end chaplains fourth and final wife. Una oneill was much younger, but that was a marriage that lasted from 1943 until chaplains death in 1977 at the age of 88. One of the most unusual features and this is quite uncommon for hollywood stars who had significant control over their own films. Was that the tramp character usually did not get the girl in the end. Now that may sound strange for for champlin, but it was in many ways the sadness of love that haunted him throughout his days. His first love was a woman named kelly an irish singer and dancer who charlie met when they were both working in the musical circuit in the london in london. She was 15. He was 19 and he said in his autobiography, although i met her but five times and scarcely any of our meetings had lasted longer than 20 minutes those brief encounters affected me for a long time. He had hoped to reconnect with her on a triumphant return to the uk in 1921. Just after the war and after chaplin had become the biggest name in filmmaking. This was also shortly after his first marriage failed. But once he arrived in the uk, he discovered that the love of his teenage years died three years earlier in the spanish flu epidemic, but in many ways she lives on in characters in many of chaplains films for people who study the autobiography of chaplain. You really can see the extent to which these Life Experiences replicate themselves in his work in one of the ways. I think that chaplains life is so extraordinary is because it gave him such material for such a range of treatments of the human condition. Now to be sure the age differences between chaplain and some of his wives and some of his girlfriends were scandalous even by the indulgence standards of early, hollywood. One spousal age different though was more troubling than the others chaplain and his second wife lita gray. She was a teenage actress who worked with chaplain in one of his first big hits called the kid was they were discreetly married in mexico in 1924 following a surprise announcement of pregnancy. She was 16 and he was 35 which created the possibility that he could have been tried of under California Law for misconduct with a minor. They divorced in 1927 over what she said were his Numerous Affairs and he was ordered to pay the equivalent of almost nine Million Dollars in alimony as well as one and a half million in current dollars for each of the two sons from the first from this marriage. There was this was the largest divorce settlement in at that up to that point in american history. He had eight children with this fourth wife the daughter of eugene oneill. They wait a month after she turned 18 chaplin was 54 at the time and these and these age differences were a particularly powerful weapon in the hands of chaplains critics particularly in the Law Enforcement community who viewed him as a dangerous immoral influence and one particularly threatening to the American Culture given his high visibility. In one of Law Enforcements efforts to drive chaplain from the movies. He was charged for his misconduct with young girls under the man act. This is a law that prohibited moving women across state lines for immoral purposes, but with with chaplain not only hollywood forgives him. But so too did america a jury for acquitted him and people continued to go to his movies chaplain had not a great deal of formal education. He was largely selftaught he toured with young actors starting at the age of 10. He was on the london stage as a teenager and before he was was even 20 years old. He was regularly traveling in a Vaudeville Company music hall gags, aerobatic stunts and the like both of his parents had been entertainers, but they achieved limited success because the father was undone by alcohol the mother suffered from Mental Illness and was machinely institutionalized which left Young Charlie really in a very precarious situation. He lived on the streets briefly. He ended ended up in workhouses and and as a result, he had a great interest in touring. As a performer even as a even as an age where someone wont be in fourth or fifth grade. Now chaplains early years on the stage. And what passed for an education for the boys of the workhouse did not generally create an intellectual. And so what he did to compensate throughout his adult life was read a great deal. He also loved talking with people and any political figure any cultural figure that came his way wanted to meet him. He was very interested in talking with them, but he said that the education of the streets the education of his childhood was a key factor in his success in telling a story other people wanted to see and eventually here. As he said in his autobiography. I did not have to read books to know that the theme of life is conflict and pain instinctively. My clowning is based on this my means of contriving a comedy plot is simple. Its the process of getting people in and out of trouble. Chaplain and hollywood came together. As a result of a lucky break. Chaplain was touring in the uk with the fred carno company which toured the uk theater and musical circuit. They did an extended tour of the United States. And some american producers saw chaplains comedy on stage and encouraged him to come to work for american film. He was hired during this us tour by the keystone company. This is a series of films famous for the keystone cops series of rough and tumble action films during 1914 1915 chaplain appeared in 35 Keystone Films where he created the tramp which became a worldwide sensation almost immediately this character known to us all even now with his small size his his hat and his very distinct. Look of big shoes big pants and a tiny coat inspired games toys and dolls and that made chaplains character the first multimedia product. He went in the words we use today viral like nothing else of its day. By the time chaplain was 26. He had jumped to a series of different studios and at this point signed for an annual contract of 16 Million Dollars in todays money. This made him one of the highest paid people in the world at the age of 29 in 1919. He cofounded United Artists where he had complete control of his films this served his purposes both for making money, but also having great control over his work. This was of course. By this point chaplains tramp was the dominant character of global Popular Culture years later chaplain admitted that the tramp was created almost by accident. He was about to go on stage and he needed a trip to the wardrobe room to outfit a new character. This is what chaplain said about the tram. I had no idea about this character, but from the moment, i was dressed the clothes and the make makeup made me feel the person he was i began to know him and by the time i walked onto the stage, he was fully born. You know, this fellow is a minnesot many sided person a gentleman a tramp a poet a dreamer a lonely fellow always hopeful of romance and adventure. Now chaplain doesnt talk all that much about the evolution of the tramp in his in his film and in this quote he suggests that the character was largely fully formed, but the tramp did undergo an adjustment as the years went by the early tramp was much more violent and combative than the than the later tramp in order to connect more with the audiences the tramp evolved a bit to be a more humanistic more sympathetic a character and that helped build his appeal. Now when we think about the political messages of champlin, its important to remember that its not doctrine air chaplins work conveyed a mixture of conservative and liberal themes and i would argue that his ideological fluidity in terms of his messages help explain his widespread and enduring mass appeal. The fact that chaplain did always side with the vulnerable rather than the powerful endeared the tramp to a movie going public after all if youre trying to appeal it to a mass audience a character who connects more with the experiences of lower middle class and lower class people will have more of an opportunity to sell tickets than one that connects with the elite. Now its worth knowing of course that chaplains political messages when they did occur generally were not strident or intense so they didnt really have the likelihood of driving his viewers away. Theres one exception though, and that is of course the toughest nails parity of adolf hitler in the great dictator. This is a film of course famous for the scene in which theres a a balloon painted globe that chaplain is tossing up into the air during the film. That would be the one exception and ill talk a little bit more about that film in a moment. Now chaplain repeatedly was warned by his halfbrother. Sid who was also his Business Manager not to go too far in attacks upon american politics and culture in an early film the immigrant his brother urge charlie to delete a scene that juxtaposes a shot of the statue of liberty seen by people on a boat coming to the United States and then followed almost immediately with immigrants who were corralled with rope. Like livestock to keep them from getting off the boat. And said was also concerned years later about his brothers contemplated hitler satire the film that becomes the great dictator because of the us being neutral at that point of visa v the war in europe the immigrant image by the way of a moment ago the rope and the cattle reference that becomes that state in the film and it became the most iconic moment of that film. In the course the the treatment of hitler was an extraordinary commercial success, although of course, it was banned in germany. It was and also a great political success the the reality is that that Winston Churchill who was a chaplain fan was excited by this film. He thought it was extraordinary and really helped galvanize the British Public against hitler. And fdr in the United States thought that chaplains speech. Its at the end of the great dictator where chaplain himself is talking really more than the character that he plays is a is a key moment in terms of thinking about a better world and during his 1941 inauguration. This was for his third term fdr wanted that speech as part of the Inauguration Day festivities. And so chaplain repeated it. The political orientation of chaplain like the travels of the lit