The Consul, the Tramp & America’s Sweetheart

by: John Morogiello (Comedy Drama)

Charlie Chaplin is set to abandon his persona as the Little Tramp and make his first talking picture (The Great Dictator, for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’s new Pickfair movie studio.  The German counsel objects, threatening sanctions that would jeopardize the nascent studio’s existence. A comedy about art, politics, free speech, commerce, anti-Semitism, and what it means to be an American.