Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin’s early years with his vaudeville-actress mother introduced him to the stage and the outlet that performance could provide. When moviemaker Mack Sennett saw Chaplin on the New York stage in 1912, he knew that he had spotted an unusual talent. Within two years—playing a mustachioed, duck-footed tramp in one two-reel comedy after another—Chaplin was well on his way to becoming one of the greatest film stars of all time. By the 1920s, having formed United Artists with his friends Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith, Chaplin was directing and writing his own films. Among his most noted accomplishments were his satiric commentary on the machine age, Modern Times (1936), and his acerbic portrayal of Adolph Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940). In this poster, we see the inimitable tragicomic actor with his iconic cane, bowler hat, and mustache.