"Hitler Stole My Moustache," He Says Charlie Chaplin has a grievance. He feels that Adolf Hitler, all powerful Fuehrer of Nazidom, has done him wrong in bringing discredit on the famous Chaplin moustache. The great irony of history is that Chaplin picked his silly little moustache as the most useless adornment he could, think of, states Kyle Chrichton in "Collier's," where he gives an account of an interview he recently had with the famous film comedian.
Chaplin meant that moustache to be a huge joke on all pompousness. Instead of being repulsed by it, Hitler adopted it. So if the Fuehrer sees himself in Charlie's character in the new picture, "The Dictator," he will have only himself to blame. Charlie maintains that Hitler can't very well ask the originator of the design to change his make-up. Obviously it isn't Charlie's fault if he is mistaken for somebody else.
The Dictator," on which Charlie has been working for some time is a universal satire on official stupidity and mendacity, Chaplin has an almost pathological hatred of any form of oppression and persecution. This pathetic little tramp of the screen has never harmed anybody else; he has been his own worst enemy.
At one moment when he was talking Charlie sprang up, held his arm straight out and cried:
Then he dropped his arm and said:
disgustedly, then added: "A lot of high-school fraternity rigmarole. A lot of good little boys all joined in Phi Mumbo Jumbo..."
But anybody who thinks that the new picture is going to be a sermon doesn't know Charlie. If it is true that ridicule and laughter can kill the dictators will never survive this hilarious attack by a little man with the foolish moustache and the big shoes, If they are wise, the murderers who govern Germany will fight this picture to the death—and there is little doubt that they will do that very thing.
The idea for his new picture came to Chaplin last summer, and he has been obsessed by it ever since. He is determined to make it his best effort or bust in the attempt.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.