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Harry Lang, Motion Picture, New York, January 1938.

Harry Lang, actor and writer

(...) Photo, National Vaudeville Artists‘ Year Book 1927

„What Chaplin is going to do“

Editorial content. „Chaplin To Quit Famed Dumb Role

      By Harry Lang

      You saw the headlines, didn‘t you?

      Noted comic will give up heart-breaking tramp to play

      ,straight‘ in his next film. And he will talk out loud!         

      The news flashed across the country‘s newspapers, just

the other day. Was reprinted in London, Paris, the world

over. It started talk and interest aplenty, for Chaplin is still one

of the gods of the Hollywood Olympus.

      But believe me, whatever talk the news started in the

outlands, it was nothing – NOTHING, mind you! – compared

to the storm of babble and chatter it launched right in

Hollywood itself. Hollywood at once wanted to know the answers

to two questions: First – ,Is it true?‘

      In this story, I‘ll answer that question as well as it can be

answered now. Chaplin‘s own press-agent issued a half-baked

sort of denial a day or two after the news broke. But in

Hollywood, nobody paid any attention whatever so to the formal

statements from Chaplin‘s studio. You see, Hollywood

has learned one fact, by the time: that is, that Chaplin‘s studio

officials are usually the last persons in Hollywood to know

what Chaplin is going to do. They admit it.“ (...)

      „I know that the other day, after watching himself

in a talkie test strip, he said, half to himself, half to a handful

of cinema biggies who saw it with him:

      ,I want to make one more picture. I want to talk. And sing.

And I want that to be my swan song...‘“

Redaktioneller Inhalt

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