When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

Charlie Chaplin came up in vaudeville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mastery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skepticism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent picture “a universal means of expression,” whereas the talkies, as they were then known, “necessarily have a limited field.” Nevertheless, he was too astute a reader of public tastes to believe he could stay silent forever, though he onl