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Geek Discussion: Does Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 Film ‘The Circus’ Show Someone On A Cell Phone?
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Who doesn’t love a good mystery?

Many of you who have a strong love of films and what goes into making them probably watch a lot of the special features that come on DVDs and Blu-rays. For some of us, they can sometimes be just as good or even better than the movie we’ve just seen. There’s just something about seeing all of the many steps of creating a movie and seeing the cast and crew on the set doing their thing that’s simply fascinating to witness. Along with these great making of features, there’s often plenty of other features that concentrate on various parts of a movie’s journey to the big screen and our waiting eyes.

One such movie fan and filmmaker named George Clarke, while checking out some of the special features on Charlie Chaplin‘s 1928 film, The Circus, noticed something rather strange. The feature showcased the film’s premier at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and at one moment, it would appear that a woman walks by the camera while talking on a cell phone! Did we mention this was 1928?!

Be sure to head on over to the other side to check out the video in which Mr. Clarke talks about how he spotted this curious occurrence, and what he thinks could be going on…including the possibility that someone unlocked the secrets to time travel.

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‘Catcher In The Rye’ Author J.D. Salinger Dies At 91
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As always, the sad news seems to come all at once. It’s being reported that the highly-private legendary author J.D. Salinger has passed away at the age of 91. The cause of death was of natural causes, and indications are that Salinger was healthy until recently when illness took on.

The author was something of an enigma. His classic, The Catcher in the Rye is a book that’s so prominent that it feels like it has been around for hundreds of years, even though it was only published in 1951. Over the past few years, just discovering that Salinger was still alive somewhere on this planet felt like some sort of fictional mythology created in his legend, but it was all so true and fascinating to think about.

Salinger himself had a story worthy of books (and a film we’re all but guaranteed to see some day). He was born in Manhattan in 1919 to a Jewish cheese salesman father and a half-Scottish, half-Irish Catholic mother. His father wasn’t big on his talents as an actor and writer and pressed that he learn business, which saw Salinger head to Austria to work at a meat-importing company. This ended up being a close call as he eventually left Austria only a month before the Nazi forces invaded and took over. Not long after this he fell in love with a girl who eventually went on to marry Charlie Chaplin.

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Hitler in Hollywood
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If you thought Hitler was funny on the TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, you should see his movies.

Believe it or don’t — Hitler was played for laughs in several American movies just before World War II. Before the horrors of the holocaust and other Nazi atrocities were discovered, Hitler was often portrayed by Hollywood as a clown. And it all started with Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in the classic anti-war comedy The Great Dictator in 1940. The title dictator was named Adenoid Hynkel, tyrant of Tomania — but everyone could see it was supposed to be Hitler. In the film, Chaplin depicts Nazi politics as laughable and Hitler as arrogant, stupid, and crazy.

So for the next several years, even after World War II erupted, Hitler was always portrayed as a joke. For example, in the short comedy film The Devil With Hitler (1942), the Board of Directors in hell threaten to replace the Devil with Adolph Hitler, unless the Devil can trick Hitler into performing a good deed. Hitler is played by actor Bobby Watson as a moron who brags about his skills as a two-handed house painter.

Apparently this little movie (it was only 44 minutes long) was popular enough for a sequel. In That Nazty Nuisance (1943) again Bobby Watson played Der Fuhrer. This time Hitler, Mussolini, and a Japanese madman named Suki Yaki (perhaps Hollywood was unaware of Hirohito), journey to a tiny island for a secret meeting. Their conference is ruined by a shipwrecked American sailor and a pretty island girl. The humor is the kind of broad burlesque that men today wouldn’t watch because it’s too corny and predictable and women today wouldn’t watch because it’s too much like The Three Stooges.

Better (or at least not as silly) was Hitler Dead Or Alive (1942). Bobby Watson played Hitler (imagine making a career out of playing Hitler for laughs), who was targeted for assassination by American gangsters. The plot centered on a rich American who offered a million-dollar bounty on Hitler. Three American crooks (Ward Bond, Paul Fix, and Warren Hymer) muscle their way into Germany to collect the reward. Viewing the assassination of Hitler as just another hit on another mob boss, the trio joins the Canadian Air Force, hijacks a plane, and heads into the Fatherland for a confrontation. It’s explained that the crooks speak fluent German because they had a bootleg beer racket during prohibition in Wisconsin. They are captured by the Gestapo and escape a prison camp with help from the anti-Nazi underground. They finally capture Hitler, and then shave his mustache and cut his hair. When the Nazi’s catch up with them, they don’t believe this “inferior specimen” is their beloved Fuhrer and he’s shot. The film concludes with the idea that even if Hitler was killed the German military would simply find someone to impersonate him to keep the Nazi ideal alive. The crooks realize that Hitler is just a symbol, and (sadly) Nazism would continue to thrive without him.

Then there was The Strange Death Of Adolf Hitler (1943), which stole bits of plot directly from The Great Dictator. This time Ludwig Donath plays an actor who is given plastic surgery by the Gestapo to look like Hitler. Why? Because they want to install their own Hitler so they can control him. However, the actor is anti-Nazi and tricks the Gestapo — only to be killed by his own wife who thinks he really is Hitler.


If Germany won the war?

1963’s They Saved Hitler’s Brain (also known as The Madman Of Mondoras and The Return Of Mr. H) is another Hitler movie of note. Many sources list this odd film as a comedy, considering it funny the way Plan 9 From Outer Space was funny — the so-bad-it’s-good comedy. Trust me, it isn’t. It’s a really, really boring story that was actually an uncompleted 1950s movie with added footage. Hitler’s head (in what appears to be a pickle jar) barks orders to dimwitted henchmen.

Now many of you are probably saying: “Hold up there, Mr. Pouncey! Aren’t you forgetting about the numerous times Mel Brooks has played Hitler for laughs?

No, I’m not.

The first time Brooks successfully used Nazis for laughs was in the original version of The Producers (1968). However, this movie featured a bad (and, it was implied, stoned) actor called LSD doing a bad impersonation of Hitler. Although Hitler and Nazism are essential to the plot, Hitler-as-a-real-person isn’t there. I enjoyed this film (and the movie version of the stage play released in 2005), but it’s really a satire on Broadway, with Nazi’s and Hitler as a subplot.

Brooks also gave us To Be Or Not To Be (1985), a remake of a much funnier movie (directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1942 and starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard). Hitler actually does have a cameo in this movie (he’s played by Roy Goldman), and although Nazism is addressed more directly than The Producers, Hitler and his boys aren’t the stars — they’re just bit players.

Now, what are we to make of all this? Is the best way to defeat evil by making fun of it until no one takes it seriously? Or, by trivializing evil as stupidity, do you simply help mask its true nature? Don’t ask me — I’m just a guy who’s seen far too many movies.

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