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The Dictator and the Tramp
March, 2009Edited by Frank Scheide
University of California Press
He was a music hall comic, a famous but lonely tramp, an artist who mocked Hitler and a suspected communist. Controversy and acclaim followed the life and art of Charlie Chaplin, the subject of a new series of books edited by professor of communication Frank Scheide.
During his career, detractors charged that Chaplin was a communist degenerate while supporters countered that he was a comic genius and a victim of McCarthyism.
Today, scholars and film critics consider Chaplin one of the major filmmakers and artists of the 20th century. In the book series, contributors place him in a contemporary historical perspective.
The first volume in the new series, "Chaplin: The Dictator and the Tramp," features essays by several authorities on Chaplin and early film. They examine "The Great Dictator," a 1940 Chaplin film recently re-released internationally on DVD, as well as "The Tramp and the Dictator," a recent documentary about the movie by filmmaker Kevin Brownlow.
Contributors include co-editor Hooman Mehran; Glenn Mitchell, author of "The Chaplin Encyclopedia," and David Robinson, Chaplin's principal biographer.
Chaplin's film "Limelight" will be the focus of the next book in the series, due out in April 2005.
For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.chaplinreview.com/.