The Pictorial’s favorite website this week goes to the beautifully designed Association Chaplin website. Charlie Chaplin’s official website, it has grown over the past few years into an impressive, exhaustive resource for all things Chaplin. Download pictures, buy movies and merchandise, and read fabulous biographies, interviews and essays about cinema’s first pioneer … and one of its only true geniuses. From behind the scenes insights into the City Lights score, to a calendar of Chaplin screenings worldwide, Association Chaplin is the definitive go-to-source for anyone who loves the little tramp.
… And while we’re on the subject, in a disgustingly belated homage to one of my favorite writer/director/actor/composer/humanists of all time (his 120th birthday was last week–and he’s also the subject of our most recent Pictorial), I’m posting this clip from Charlie Chaplin’s first talkie–and his last stint as The Little Tramp. 1940’s The Great Dictator. This quick, 2 minutes of film captures everything I love so dearly about Charlie’s tramp: the dignified scavenger with a bottom line, and dandified manner. Sincere, madcapped, loveable, made up entirely of acute angles and a 24 karat heart of gold.
Chaplin himself may have been, as Marlon Brando put it, a “mixed bag,” but name one human being that isn’t. (Including Mr. Brando.) Whatever his quirks, foibles, faults and inperfections, in my humble opinion, his gift outweighs any of that.
And anyway, always remember, like the man himself said, “a day without laughter is a day wasted.”
The Kitty Packard Pictorial 
The Great Dictator – speech
terrific speech. i love it for many reasons, but especially because it’s the first time the world gets to see Charles Spencer Chaplin the Man– not Charlie Chaplin the Tramp.