BruceBlogMiscellaneous: AI: All about LIMELIGHT and THE ENTERTAINER; SIDEBAR FOR "A KING IN NEW YORK"

Note: Early on I struggled with "Gaslamp" or "Gaslight" as a Chaplin film, when I wanted LIMELIGHT, which we eventually got to.

Compare Olivier in THE ENTERTAINER with Chaplin in GASLAMP.

This is a very sharp comparison — Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer (1960) and Charlie Chaplin in A King in New York (1957) (I assume this is what you mean by "Gaslamp," as Chaplin never made a film titled Gaslamp but A King in New York fits tonally). Both performances showcase great artists grappling, late in life, with the decay of their personas and their cultural relevance.

Comparison

1. Theme of Decline:

Both films are about men out of time, relics of a vanished world.

Olivier's Archie Rice is the washed-up music hall performer, cynically grinding through cheap revues as postwar Britain turns its back on his kind of entertainment. He is self-loathing, corrupt, and hollow.
Chaplin's King Shahdov is a dethroned monarch wandering a vulgar, commercialized America, where celebrity culture and advertising dominate.

Both characters stand for the death of an older entertainment world — Olivier’s is the death of British seaside variety, Chaplin’s is the death of European grandeur in exile, displaced into mid-century consumerist America.

2. Performance Styles:

Olivier gives a performance rooted in British realism and postwar theater tradition. It is bitter, ironic, intentionally unlikable. He blends his natural gravitas with a repellently shallow surface, exposing the desperation beneath the smile.
Chaplin blends his silent-era pantomime with 1950s satire, retaining some of his old comic physicality but delivering much of his commentary through verbose speeches. He seems more alien, less embodied in the role — the performance is mannered, sometimes awkwardly so, as if Chaplin himself no longer fits the screen.

3. Relationship to their Own Legacy:

Olivier’s Archie Rice is in some sense an act of self-abasement. Olivier, the master of Shakespearean tragedy, plays a man beneath tragedy: too small for it. It’s a courageous embrace of squalor from a man who spent decades elevating theater.
Chaplin’s King Shahdov is a thinly veiled version of himself — a man chased from his country (as Chaplin was from the U.S. via McCarthyism) and bewildered by modernity. His critique of America’s vulgarity and paranoia is obvious but defensive; it's more about himself than about the world.

4. Tone:

The Entertainer is a bleak, cynical film, aligned with Osborne’s kitchen sink realism. Olivier’s performance is pathetic on purpose — almost a surrender.
A King in New York is uneven, swinging between slapstick and bitter satire. Chaplin can’t quite decide whether he’s still funny or now simply angry.

5. Legacy and Impact:

Olivier in The Entertainer is seen as a reinvention, proof that the greatest classical actor could descend to the gutter and still find art there. It cemented his relevance to the new, angry, working-class British cinema.
Chaplin in A King in New York was largely dismissed at the time as dated and sour. Later critics view it as an intriguing if flawed final statement on exile and aging.

Summary Judgment:

Olivier disfigures himself, artistically, to capture cultural rot. Chaplin defends himself, artistically, against cultural betrayal. Both play men whose acts are no longer wanted. Olivier transforms this into tragedy; Chaplin clings to satire.

Olivier’s performance points forward (to new realism, new cinema).
Chaplin’s points backward (to a golden age no longer possible).

Did Chaplin do gaslight?

No, Charlie Chaplin did not appear in Gaslight (1944) or any version of Gaslight. You're probably thinking of Charles Boyer, who starred alongside Ingrid Bergman in the famous 1944 George Cukor film adaptation. Boyer plays the manipulative husband in that psychological thriller — not Chaplin.

Chaplin had no connection to Gaslight.
His film around that era was Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a very different kind of dark comedy about a man who marries and murders women for their money.

If you meant gaslighting more broadly as a theme — manipulation, distortion of reality — then yes, A King in New York (1957) does have elements of paranoia and social critique, but it's not gaslighting in the classic psychological abuse sense. It's more Chaplin's satire of McCarthyism, media, and cultural shallowness.

Summary:
✅ Charles Boyer: Gaslight (1944)
🚫 Charlie Chaplin: Never involved.

You might have conflated "gaslight" with the general era or mood of A King in New York, but there’s no direct link.

I thought Chaplin was in a late movie called gaslight or gaslamp…

Thanks for clarifying — I see where the confusion is coming from. Charlie Chaplin was never in a film called Gaslight or Gaslamp. However, there is a real Chaplin film from 1952 called Limelight.

What You're Probably Thinking Of:

👉 Chaplin’s Limelight (1952)

It's a late-career, somber film about a washed-up stage comedian (played by Chaplin himself) in Edwardian London.
It's about failure, aging, suicide, and the end of vaudeville.
It's melancholic, reflective, and obsessed with the decline of both individual performers and a whole entertainment era.
Buster Keaton makes a cameo — the only time Keaton and Chaplin shared the screen.

Why the Confusion?

Limelight / Gaslight / Gaslamp — All have that antique, Edwardian, foggy London feel in their names.
Themes of decline, old theater, lost relevance, manipulation of emotions (gaslight) overlap in mood if not in plot.
Limelight is Chaplin’s meditation on fading fame, somewhat parallel to The Entertainer (Olivier) but much more sentimental and forgiving.

Recap:

Title	Year	Star	Theme
Gaslight	1944	Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer	Psychological abuse, manipulation
Limelight	1952	Charlie Chaplin	Fading fame, aging, suicide, lost art
The Entertainer	1960	Laurence Olivier	Decline, cynicism, end of variety theater

TLDR:
You’re thinking of Limelight, not Gaslight.
Chaplin’s Limelight is about aging, failure, and the death of an era, just like Olivier’s The Entertainer.

Yes, compare LIMELIGHT with THE ENTERTAINER. That’s it.

Thank you — now the comparison is clear.
Chaplin’s Limelight (1952) vs. Olivier’s The Entertainer (1960).
Both films center on washed-up performers and function as personal reflections on fading relevance, lost fame, and the death of an era in entertainment. But they differ in tone, worldview, and what they ultimately say about art, life, and dignity.

Comparison: Limelight vs. The Entertainer

1. Characterization of the Entertainer:

Chaplin’s Calvero (Limelight):
A once-great clown, now alcoholic and forgotten, Calvero is fundamentally kind-hearted, philosophical, and self-aware. His decline is tragic but nobly borne. He struggles with depression but retains a belief in art and humanity.
Olivier’s Archie Rice (The Entertainer):
A never-great music hall hack, Archie is bitter, petty, and small-minded. He’s not tragic so much as pathetic, mired in sleazy second-rate venues and tawdry personal betrayals. His cynicism is corrosive; he stands for a rotting postwar Britain.

2. Tone and Worldview:

Limelight:
Sentimental, elegiac, forgiving. Chaplin paints a world where kindness, artistry, and human connection still hold value, even if the world doesn’t recognize them anymore. It's full of warmth, even when facing death.
The Entertainer:
Bitter, nihilistic, unsparing. John Osborne’s writing and Tony Richardson’s direction are steeped in the "Angry Young Man" ethos — Archie’s world is brutal, tawdry, and indifferent. His failure feels deserved. There’s no redemption, only entropy.

3. Relationship to their Era:

Limelight looks back to Edwardian London, to the dying days of vaudeville and music hall — filtered through Chaplin’s nostalgia for his own youth.
The Entertainer is set in contemporary 1950s Britain, with postwar decline, the Suez Crisis, and changing cultural tastes looming in the background. Archie is not just outdated — he’s being actively discarded.

4. Autobiographical Resonance:

Chaplin:
Calvero is clearly a stand-in for Chaplin himself, exiled from America, aging, out of step with modern tastes. But Chaplin offers himself a poetic, graceful exit — he dies on stage, having helped a young artist rise.
Olivier:
Archie Rice is an actor’s self-laceration. Olivier, master of Shakespeare, chooses to embody failure, mediocrity, and squalor. It was radical for him to portray someone so beneath dignity. There’s no romantic send-off here — just another lousy performance in another half-empty theater.

5. Artistic Statement:

Limelight:
Art and humanity endure. Even failure can be redeemed by love, generosity, and courage. Chaplin makes his curtain call with tenderness.
The Entertainer:
There’s nothing left to redeem. Archie Rice outlives his time but not his usefulness to it. Art has no dignity left in this world. Olivier makes his curtain call with brutality and irony.

Summary:

Aspect	Limelight (Chaplin)	The Entertainer (Olivier)
Tone	Poignant, nostalgic, hopeful	Bitter, harsh, unsparing
Character	Kind, tragic, faded genius	Petty, cynical, talentless hack
Theme	Dignity in decline, redemption	Decline without redemption
Autobiography	Chaplin’s self-elegy	Olivier’s artistic self-abasement
Final Note	Art saves others, if not oneself	Art is dead, and so is the artist’s soul

Bottom Line:

Limelight is about the graceful end of an era.
The Entertainer is about the squalid death of one.

Ok!

Glad that clarified it!
Let me know if you'd like me to compare either of those to Sunset Boulevard next — it's another cousin in the family of aging performers, vanished fame, and cultural decay.

Or we can pivot to something entirely different. Just say the word.

I’ve never heard of Chaplin in king of New York. Surely he was forced out of the country and could not have filmed it in New York.

You're absolutely right — Charlie Chaplin was forced out of the United States in 1952 and never returned to live or work there.
The film you're referring to is not King of New York but A King in New York (1957), and it was shot entirely in London, not America.

Background:

After years of controversy and accusations of Communist sympathies, Chaplin’s re-entry visa to the U.S. was revoked while he was traveling abroad in 1952.
He settled permanently in Switzerland.
From exile, he wrote, directed, and starred in A King in New York (1957), a satirical film attacking American McCarthyism, celebrity culture, and consumerism.

Plot in Brief:

Chaplin plays King Shahdov, a monarch overthrown by a revolution who flees to New York (fictionally). He becomes a target of tabloid gossip, advertising exploitation, and Cold War paranoia.

Production Facts:

Filmed entirely in London, with interiors mimicking New York apartments and nightclubs.
Released in Europe in 1957 but banned or withheld from release in the U.S. until 1972.

Why It’s Little Known in America:

No U.S. release until decades later.
Chaplin was persona non grata in Hollywood.
The film’s humor is bitter, political, and very European — not a crowd-pleaser.
By then, Chaplin’s fame had faded for younger American audiences.

Summary:

You’re right: Chaplin did not film anything in New York after 1952.
A King in New York was a satirical fantasy about America made in exile.

How does “king” end? Spoilers ok

**Ending of A King in New York (1957) — Spoilers:**

In the final act, King Shahdov (Chaplin) is caught up in the absurdities of McCarthy-era America. He is hauled before a HUAC-style committee, accused of Communist sympathies purely through guilt by association. The hearing becomes a farce, with Shahdov defending himself through Chaplinesque satire rather than anger. At one point, he even throws a bucket of water on the committee members — a gesture of both slapstick defiance and moral scorn.

Meanwhile, the young boy whom Shahdov has befriended, Rupert Macabee, is similarly pressured and mistreated by authorities trying to coerce him into informing on his parents. Rupert represents the cruelty inflicted on youth by political paranoia.

Ultimately, Shahdov decides to leave America for good, disgusted by the culture of surveillance, suspicion, and shallow celebrity. He is last seen boarding a ship bound for Europe, a quiet echo of Chaplin’s own forced departure from the U.S. in real life. Rupert comes to see him off. They share a bittersweet farewell, with Shahdov offering words of hope for the boy’s future.

Final Note:

The ending is melancholy but defiant. Shahdov — like Chaplin himself — recognizes that America has become too corrupt and absurd to tolerate. The film closes on his return to Europe, into exile, with dignity intact but dreams shattered. It is a deeply personal ending, an old man’s final sneer at a world he no longer understands.

No triumph, no redemption — only escape.

How do chaplains main speaking roles - limelight and King in NY - compare?

Excellent question. Chaplin’s two major speaking roles — Calvero in Limelight (1952) and King Shahdov in A King in New York (1957) — are his most significant talking performances. They mark the end of his career as both actor and auteur. They share themes of aging, irrelevance, and social critique, but they differ markedly in tone, performance style, and what they reveal about Chaplin himself.

Comparison: Chaplin’s Speaking Roles

Aspect	Calvero in Limelight (1952)	King Shahdov in A King in New York (1957)
Character Type	Aging, forgotten stage clown	Exiled monarch adrift in modern America
Tone	Gentle, philosophical, melancholic	Bitter, satirical, angry
Performance Style	Warm, theatrical, reflective	Stilted, declamatory, overtly didactic
Speech Patterns	Eloquent, theatrical, flowing monologues	Awkward, verbose, often preachy speeches
Relation to Chaplin’s Persona	Final embodiment of the Tramp’s soul: kindness, melancholy, dignity	Bitter caricature of Chaplin’s own political exile and alienation
Emotional Core	Empathy, human connection, hope through art	Cynicism, cultural critique, anger at American hypocrisy
Ending Note	Redemption through kindness, a graceful death	Escape into exile, no redemption, cultural rejection

1. Calvero (Limelight):**

Voice: Soft, warm, humane. Even his bitterness is delivered with wry humor.
Purpose of Dialogue: To explore themes of art, purpose, despair, and redemption through long, philosophical conversations.
Acting Style: Closer to Edwardian stage performance; carefully modulated, theatrical but deeply felt.
Effect: Calvero’s words are moving and humanizing; they serve to uplift others (especially Terry, the ballerina).

Representative Line:

“Life is a desire, not a meaning.”

Calvero’s monologues are his last gift to humanity — insight offered from one artist to another.

2. King Shahdov (A King in New York):**

Voice: Sharper, more brittle, often impatient or incredulous.
Purpose of Dialogue: To satirize politics, media, advertising, and McCarthyism through biting, sometimes heavy-handed dialogue.
Acting Style: Less natural, more stiff and didactic, possibly because Chaplin is angrier and more self-conscious in this role.
Effect: Shahdov’s speeches feel less organic, more like Chaplin airing grievances through his character.

Representative Line:

“What is the meaning of democracy? The rich get richer and the poor get—children.”

King Shahdov is less about character and more about platform: Chaplin’s critique of America delivered through parody.

Key Differences:

Calvero (Limelight)	King Shahdov (King in NY)
Warm, introspective	Cold, ironic
Universal themes: aging, art, love	Specific satire: America, media, paranoia
Performance rooted in humanity	Performance rooted in critique
Ends with reconciliation and grace	Ends with rejection and exile

Summary:

Calvero’s voice is Chaplin’s farewell to art.
Shahdov’s voice is Chaplin’s farewell to America.

In Limelight, Chaplin speaks to the heart — kindness, loss, hope.
In A King in New York, he speaks to the world — satire, anger, rejection.

Both show his brilliance, but Limelight is his masterpiece of humanity; King in New York is his cynical postscript.

What is the modern movie by a very famous black comedian about King from Africa in New York?

You're thinking of Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (1988).

Summary:

In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays Prince Akeem, heir to the throne of the fictional African kingdom of Zamunda. Disgusted with the idea of an arranged marriage, he travels incognito to Queens, New York to find a woman who will love him for himself, not for his wealth or title.

It's a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy with elements of satire about class, race, and the American Dream. Murphy also plays several supporting characters in heavy makeup, showcasing his range in comedic impersonation.

Connection to Your Question:

King (or Prince) from Africa? ✔
In New York? ✔
By a famous Black comedian? ✔
Modern (1980s-onward)? ✔

Sequels / Legacy:

Coming 2 America (2021) is the belated sequel, also starring Murphy, in which Akeem discovers he has a long-lost son in New York.

TL;DR:
🎥 Coming to America (1988)
👑 Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem of Zamunda
📍 Set largely in New York City
🤣 Classic Black-led comedy, beloved and influential.

How does how does coming to America compared to a king in New York?

This is a fantastic and surprisingly rich comparison. On the surface, Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (1988) and Charlie Chaplin’s A King in New York (1957) seem to share only the basic premise:
➡️ A royal figure from a fictional or distant country comes to New York and experiences its culture, absurdities, and hardships.

But their tones, purposes, and worldviews are almost diametrically opposed. Here's a detailed breakdown:

Comparison: Coming to America vs. A King in New York

Aspect	A King in New York (1957)	Coming to America (1988)
Tone	Bitter, satirical, political	Warm-hearted, romantic, comedic
Main Character	King Shahdov: Aging, exiled, cynical monarch	Prince Akeem: Young, idealistic, romantic prince
View of America	Paranoid, hypocritical, media-obsessed	Chaotic but welcoming, full of possibility
Themes	Media manipulation, McCarthyism, loss of ideals	Love over status, kindness, culture clash, self-discovery
Plot Arc	Humiliation, alienation, escape	Growth, friendship, true love, happy ending
Comedy Style	Satirical, biting, political speeches	Slapstick, character-driven, romantic comedy
Ending	Leaves America disillusioned	Stays and finds love, returns with joy
Attitude Toward New York	Hostile, absurd, cold	Vibrant, funny, ultimately kind-hearted

1. Protagonist's Journey:

Chaplin’s King Shahdov:
An old man bewildered by modernity, humiliated by America’s culture of surveillance, advertising, and political fear. His exile mirrors Chaplin’s own bitterness toward the U.S. after being forced out.

Ending: Leaves disillusioned and alone.

Murphy’s Prince Akeem:
A young, optimistic royal who genuinely wants to learn about ordinary people and find true love. He embraces the chaos of Queens, faces humiliations with good humor, and emerges better for it.

Ending: Marries for love; happy ever after.

2. Comedy Tone:

Chaplin: Uses satire and irony to critique America. It's angry, intellectual, and often awkwardly staged. The humor is sharp, not joyful.
Murphy: Uses joyful, broad comedy (barbershop banter, fish-out-of-water gags, romantic farce). The film celebrates individual goodness over wealth or class.

3. View of America:

Chaplin’s America:	Murphy’s America:
Hypocritical, cruel, absurd	Messy, but open-hearted and full of opportunity
A culture of paranoia	A culture of possibility
No place for outsiders	Outsiders can find happiness

4. Underlying Message:

Chaplin: America has lost its soul to fear, consumerism, and conformity.
Murphy: Love matters more than wealth; goodness transcends culture; America, for all its flaws, is where people from anywhere can thrive.

Summary:

A King in New York	Coming to America
A farewell to a hostile America	A love letter to the American Dream
Focused on cynicism and exile	Focused on joy, growth, and belonging
Chaplin’s personal bitterness	Murphy’s universal optimism

Bottom Line:

Chaplin’s film is about cultural rejection.
Murphy’s film is about cultural embrace.

Chaplin says: “I’ve seen America’s worst. I’m leaving.”
Murphy says: “I’ve seen America’s best. I’m staying.”

Both films use New York as a mirror — Chaplin sees decay and paranoia; Murphy sees energy and humanity.

Is there any indication that Eddie Murphy was aware of A KING IN NY?

There’s no direct evidence — no interviews, no statements from Eddie Murphy — indicating that he was consciously aware of or inspired by Chaplin’s A King in New York when he made Coming to America (1988).

Why Not?

Chaplin’s A King in New York was obscure in America until the 1970s.
It had no U.S. release until 1972 and never became well-known, even among cinephiles. It remained one of Chaplin’s most overlooked, minor works — especially compared to The Great Dictator or City Lights.
Tone and Genre:
Murphy’s film is a romantic fish-out-of-water comedy, drawing more on traditions of Hollywood screwball, romantic comedy, and perhaps blaxploitation's exaggerations of wealth and royalty (think The Wiz, Uptown Saturday Night).
Chaplin’s film is political satire, with a bitter tone and no romance. Murphy never commented on it as a source.
Obvious Influences on Murphy:
Murphy was more visibly inspired by:

Fairy tales / Cinderella stories
Classic romantic comedies (e.g., Roman Holiday)
African royalty tropes from Hollywood and pop culture
The immigrant experience in America as fodder for comedy (not political critique)

John Landis, the director, drew from classic Hollywood comedies and Eddie Murphy’s SNL persona, not from Chaplin’s European exile period.

Coincidence, Not Influence:

Both films involve a royal figure from a fictional land arriving in New York, but this is a classic narrative trope going back to silent films and early sound comedies.
The shared premise likely arises from parallel ideas, not homage or influence.

If Anything...

Murphy might have been aware of Chaplin in general as a comic master, but there’s zero indication A King in New York specifically influenced him.

Coming to America owes far more to the tradition of fish-out-of-water comedies (Beverly Hillbillies, Trading Places) than to Chaplin’s political exile film.

Summary Answer:

No evidence connects Eddie Murphy or Coming to America to Chaplin’s A King in New York.
The similarity is interesting but appears to be pure coincidence.

Chaplin’s king seems like a banana republic dictator absconding with the Treasury!

Yes — that’s a very perceptive observation! Chaplin’s King Shahdov in A King in New York does resemble a kind of banana republic exile — though not explicitly written that way. He’s portrayed as an overthrown monarch, but there’s something faintly ridiculous about him from the start:

He’s grandiose.
He’s out of touch with the modern world.
He flees with his jewels and his pride but not much else.

Chaplin clearly satirizes the trope of the irrelevant, overthrown king, drifting around the modern capitalist world trying to make sense of advertising, celebrity, and Cold War paranoia. There’s even a comic undertone of a pompous aristocrat scrambling for cash opportunities, echoing the absurd postwar exiles from deposed monarchies and unstable regimes.

But: Unlike true banana republic dictators, Shahdov isn’t cruel or corrupt — he’s more vain, lost, and impotent. He’s a symbol of Europe’s fading grandeur, not its tyranny. His attempts to stay afloat (acting in TV commercials!) are humiliating rather than villainous.

Interesting Contrast:

Banana republic dictator: Absconds with wealth, corrupt, ruthless, often ends in disgrace.
King Shahdov: Absconds with nothing but reputation and delusion; ends in farce and irrelevance.

Chaplin’s Irony:

While Shahdov looks like a parody of a dictator-in-exile, he’s really a stand-in for Chaplin himself — a great man cast out, misunderstood, and reduced to absurdity by America’s paranoia and shallowness.

So your observation is spot-on: Chaplin borrows the visual language of the exile-king, maybe even the dictator, but he uses it to tell a more personal, elegiac story about artistic exile, not political tyranny.

But in the opening scenes, we see the mob raid the palace, and they raided the treasury, and it is empty.

Exactly — and that’s a great catch. In the opening scenes of A King in New York, we’re shown through newsreels and dialogue that King Shahdov’s government has been overthrown, the palace is ransacked, and when the revolutionaries storm the royal treasury, they find it empty.

That’s a classic banana republic trope:

The dictator flees. The treasury is looted. Except — the money’s already gone.

But here’s the Chaplinesque irony:
Shahdov hasn’t stolen the money. He’s penniless because his prime minister absconded with the funds without telling him. Shahdov is as much a victim as anyone else. This turns the cliché on its head — Shahdov is a comic exile, not a criminal. He’s a monarch without a throne, a fortune, or even a clue.

What Chaplin Is Doing:

He’s borrowing the imagery of banana republic overthrows — mobs, toppled thrones, empty coffers — to establish Shahdov as a relic, out of place and powerless.
But he subverts the expectation: Shahdov isn’t corrupt or dangerous; he’s absurdly naïve, a man out of time and utterly ill-suited to fend for himself in the modern world.
His exile isn’t tragic so much as farcical. Instead of hiding in Switzerland with millions, he’s reduced to making TV commercials to survive.

The Joke on Shahdov (and Chaplin):

Shahdov thought he ruled with dignity and grandeur. Instead, he’s revealed to be:

Broke
Irrelevant
Incompetent in the real world

The empty treasury becomes a symbol of his empty illusions — he escapes with his life, but not his wealth, power, or pride.

Why This Matters:

Chaplin is writing about himself as much as about Shahdov.
He left America, bitter and scandalized, expecting posterity to vindicate him.
Instead of a triumphant exile, he finds himself reduced to small, awkward gestures in a world that no longer listens.

The empty treasury is both plot and metaphor:
Nothing remains. Not for the king. Not for Chaplin. Not for Old Europe.

It’s comedy tinged with sadness — classic late Chaplin.

So it was a constitutional monarchy with a Prime Minister?

Yes — implicitly, Shahdov’s country in A King in New York was a constitutional monarchy with a Prime Minister, though Chaplin never spells out the political structure in detail. The brief references make it clear that Shahdov was not an absolute monarch but rather a figurehead king in a European-style parliamentary system.

Clues in the Film:

The Prime Minister is mentioned repeatedly as the one who truly wielded power — and as the person who absconded with the treasury.
Shahdov himself seems bewildered, powerless, and out of touch with both the finances and the politics of his own country.
The revolution is directed more against the regime and its corruption (the Prime Minister’s theft) than against Shahdov personally.
Shahdov’s role is presented as ceremonial, aristocratic, and outdated — he’s a man of titles, appearances, and royal dinners, not governance.

Chaplin’s Satire:

Chaplin is poking fun at the uselessness of old-world monarchs — decorative, irrelevant, and unaware as their governments collapse beneath them. Shahdov is a fossil of Europe’s pre-war past, disconnected from both his people and the modern world.

The fact that his Prime Minister looted the treasury without him knowing underscores Shahdov’s irrelevance and impotence. He’s not a villain or tyrant; he’s a clueless bystander in his own downfall.

Summary:

✔️ Yes — a constitutional monarchy is implied.
✔️ Shahdov was a powerless figurehead.
✔️ The Prime Minister was the real crook.
✔️ The empty treasury symbolizes Shahdov’s obliviousness, not his corruption.

Chaplin uses this setup not to satirize monarchy per se, but to satirize powerlessness, irrelevance, and the absurdity of old institutions crumbling in the modern world.

Are we told where the Prime Minister ended up?

No, the film never tells us what happened to the Prime Minister who absconded with the treasury in A King in New York.

He's only mentioned in passing at the beginning:

We learn from newsreel-style exposition that the Prime Minister stole the funds and fled.
Shahdov himself seems bemused and out of the loop; he didn’t even realize the treasury had been looted until after the fact.
The film never revisits or resolves the question of where the Prime Minister went or what became of him.

Why This Matters:

Chaplin’s interest isn’t in following the money or in a political thriller about betrayal.
The Prime Minister is a throwaway device to explain Shahdov’s predicament:

Why is he broke?
Why is he in New York hustling for money?

The PM is functionally a MacGuffin — a plot excuse, not a character with an arc.

Thematic Point:

The Prime Minister’s disappearance reinforces the film’s theme:

Power is slippery and corrupt.
Old kings are foolish figureheads.
The world moves on, indifferent to their dignity or downfall.

Shahdov is left to fend for himself in a vulgar modernity, while the real thief escapes, untouched and unnamed.

Summary Answer:

❌ No, the film never tells us where the Prime Minister ended up.
He vanishes into the background — another symptom of Shahdov’s irrelevance and the absurdity of the world Chaplin is satirizing.

How does the movie end? Spoiler alerts OK.

**Ending of A King in New York — Full Spoilers:**

By the end of the film, King Shahdov (Chaplin) has been thoroughly humiliated by modern America — not just through commercial vulgarity (being pressured into TV ads, plastic surgery, etc.) but also through the political paranoia of the McCarthy era. His experience mirrors Chaplin’s own bitterness toward the U.S. in the 1950s.

Key Events Leading to the Ending:

The HUAC Satire:
Shahdov becomes entangled in anti-Communist hysteria after befriending Rupert Macabee, a precocious young boy whose parents are suspected of Communist ties. Shahdov is dragged before a House Un-American Activities-style committee.
Comic Rebellion:
At the hearing, Shahdov loses patience with the absurdity of the questions and the pomposity of the officials. In a classic piece of Chaplinesque slapstick, he dumps a bucket of water over the committee members' heads. It’s a childish act of defiance, reducing authoritarian buffoons to figures of ridicule.
Departure:
After this debacle, Shahdov decides to leave America for good. In the final scenes, he prepares to return to Europe, disillusioned but retaining some quiet dignity.
Farewell to Rupert:
Rupert comes to the ship to say goodbye. Their farewell is bittersweet — Rupert represents the potential for idealism and resistance, while Shahdov recognizes that his time, his world, is over.

Final Mood:

The ending is not triumphant but rather resigned. Shahdov escapes America’s vulgarity and paranoia, but not to a brighter future — simply into exile. Like Chaplin himself, he departs cast out, misunderstood, and alienated from the culture he once shaped.

Final Image / Tone:

There is no grand statement, just the quiet, ironic departure of a man who doesn’t belong anymore.
It’s a curtain call laced with sadness and sarcasm.

Summary of Ending (One Sentence):

Shahdov leaves America humiliated but defiant, having exposed its absurdity but realizing there’s no place for him in it anymore.

It sounds like the movie is a truly remarkable statement about what chaplain thought of everything going on the United States in the 1950s! Wow. Zowie!

Yes — exactly! Zowie is right.

A King in New York is Chaplin’s revenge film in disguise — a final, bitter, satirical middle finger to the America that hounded him out. It's not subtle, it’s not kind, and it’s certainly not lighthearted like Modern Times or The Circus. It's personal, political, and angry.

What Chaplin is Saying (Loud and Clear):

America has become absurd.
Television, advertising, celebrity culture — all of it is grotesque and degrading.
The Red Scare is a farce.
HUAC, McCarthyism, loyalty oaths — these are not dangerous so much as laughably stupid and cruel.
Old Europe is finished.
Shahdov is a relic, yes, but at least he carries himself with dignity in a world obsessed with plastic surgery and toothpaste commercials.
Exile is the only escape.
Like Shahdov, Chaplin realized he no longer had a home in America — not for his art, not for his politics, not for himself.

Why It’s Not More Famous:

It was banned or withheld from U.S. release until 1972.
It’s uneven as a film — part satire, part slapstick, part speechifying. Not Chaplin at his comedic peak.
Critics and audiences weren’t sure what to make of angry, talky, political Chaplin.

But in retrospect?
It’s fascinating, bold, and revealing.
Like Limelight, it’s Chaplin writing his own epitaph, but this time in ink and vinegar, not in tears.

TL;DR:

It’s Chaplin’s You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit letter to 1950s America.
Astonishing when you realize what he’s really saying beneath the gags.

Can you be less vague: It was banned or withheld from U.S. release until 1972

You're right — let me be precise and drop the vagueness.

The Facts:

A King in New York was released in 1957 in Europe (particularly the UK).
Chaplin himself chose not to release it in the United States at the time.
It was never officially banned by the U.S. government.
However, because of the intense anti-Chaplin sentiment in the U.S. during the McCarthy era (he had been labeled a Communist sympathizer, denied re-entry to the U.S. in 1952), no American distributor was willing to pick up the film.
Chaplin did not aggressively seek a U.S. release because he had washed his hands of America.
As a result, it remained unseen in the U.S. until 1972, when Chaplin was invited back to America to receive an honorary Academy Award. Only then was the film finally screened and given a proper U.S. release.

Why the Delay?

Not censorship.
Not a legal ban.
Chaplin's own withdrawal, combined with political hostility and lack of commercial interest.

In Short:

✅ Not banned by law.
✅ Withheld by Chaplin himself and neglected by U.S. distributors because of the political climate.
✅ Finally released in the U.S. in 1972, 15 years after its European debut.

Thanks for prompting me to sharpen that.

Released? Reviewed? During Nixon Agnew second campaign !?!

Yes — it’s almost surreal when you think about the timing. A King in New York was finally released and reviewed in the United States in 1972, right in the middle of the Nixon-Agnew re-election campaign, which was itself drenched in paranoia, anti-Communist rhetoric, and culture war anxieties — the very same atmosphere Chaplin had been skewering back in 1957.

Timeline:

1957: Released in the UK and Europe.
1957-1972: Never shown in the U.S. — Chaplin in self-imposed exile in Switzerland.
1972: Chaplin is invited back to the U.S. for the Academy Honorary Award (April 1972).
1972: United Artists finally gives A King in New York its official U.S. release and distribution.
1972: American critics review it for the first time. Some treat it as a time capsule, some as ancient history, others recognize it as bitterly relevant.

Why the 1972 Release Happened:

The Academy Award was a peace offering — Hollywood wanted to reconcile with Chaplin.
United Artists used the moment to re-release Chaplin’s later works in the U.S., including Limelight (which had also never had a wide U.S. run) and A King in New York.
The timing is accidental but poetic — Chaplin’s satire of America’s anti-Communist hysteria was finally shown in a country still wrapped in Vietnam, Watergate beginnings, Nixon-Agnew “silent majority” politics.

Critical Reception in 1972 (U.S.):

Mixed to respectful.
Some critics saw it as dated or awkward (Chaplin was almost 20 years out of fashion).
Others saw it as startlingly prophetic about media, surveillance, celebrity culture, and paranoia.

Vincent Canby (New York Times) noted that while the film was flawed, its satire of American vulgarity still stung in 1972.

The Irony:

Chaplin wrote A King in New York to mock 1950s America.
America waited until Watergate-era America to even look at it.

Nixon and Agnew were still barking about the press and radicals in 1972.
Chaplin had already written the satire for them — fifteen years earlier.

TL;DR:

✅ 1972 U.S. release.
✅ Reviewed during Nixon-Agnew’s re-election campaign.
✅ Bitterly ironic timing.

Dated or incredibly timely - like Sinclair Lewis, it can’t happen here.

Exactly. That’s a brilliant comparison:
Like Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), Chaplin’s A King in New York (1957) seemed dated by the time it finally reached mainstream U.S. audiences — but only if you looked at the superficial details. Both works, when viewed with even a little historical perspective, became eerily timely all over again.

How They're Alike:

Work	Immediate Reaction	Later Relevance
It Can’t Happen Here (1935)	Seen as heavy-handed or exaggerated satire of fascism	Re-read during Watergate, Reagan, Trump as prophetic
A King in New York (1957/1972)	Seemed out of date by the time Nixon was in office	In hindsight: sharp, prescient about media, paranoia, and celebrity politics

**Why A King in New York Was Timely in 1972 (and Now):**

Media Satire: Chaplin mocked how TV and advertising distort truth — eerily foreshadowing the rise of media-driven politics (which Nixon mastered).
Paranoia and Surveillance: His HUAC parody looked quaint in the McCarthy era but relevant again with COINTELPRO, Nixon’s enemies list, and Watergate wiretaps.
Culture of Hysteria: Chaplin’s America is obsessed with appearances, consumerism, and political witch-hunts. Sound familiar?

What Critics Missed in 1972:

Some said it felt like an old man’s grievance from a bygone era. They didn’t see how those grievances were circling back — not fading away.
Just as Lewis’s satire of fascism seemed over-the-top to some in 1935, only to grow in relevance, Chaplin’s critique of media, paranoia, and surveillance culture feels prophetic in retrospect.

Your Instinct is Correct:

✔️ Dated in its specifics.
✔️ Timely in its essence.
✔️ Like Lewis, Chaplin diagnosed something cyclical and permanent in American life: paranoia, propaganda, and the absurdity of power.

Today, A King in New York feels less like an artifact and more like an early draft of the present.

I would say that someone who thought that they can’t happen here was over the top in 1935, might’ve had a different opinion as soon as 1940 to 1945.

Absolutely — and that's precisely the historical irony of It Can’t Happen Here.

When Sinclair Lewis published it in 1935, some critics and readers dismissed it as paranoid fantasy. After all, America was different, they thought: too democratic, too stable, too sensible for fascism. Mussolini and Hitler were European problems. To suggest that America could fall under a demagogue was seen as alarmist, even hysterical.

But by 1940–1945, reality had caught up:

Fascism had engulfed Europe.
Hitler had made a mockery of the complacent belief that "it can’t happen here" — anywhere.
Even in the U.S., there were troubling signs: the America First movement, Charles Lindbergh’s antisemitic speeches, Father Coughlin’s radio demagoguery, and internment camps for Japanese Americans. The instincts Lewis feared were very much alive.

By 1945, the world had witnessed:

How fragile democracies could be.
How quickly public sentiment could turn toward authoritarianism.
How "it can’t happen here" was less a statement of fact than a dangerous article of faith.

The Retrospective Shift:

What had seemed "over-the-top fiction" in 1935 looked, by the end of WWII, like foresight in disguise.
In that sense, Lewis’s book became prophetic not because America became fascist, but because America wasn’t immune to the forces he described. The very fact that people had scoffed in 1935 and grown alarmed by 1940–1945 shows how fast the ground can shift.

Parallel to Chaplin:

Just as Lewis saw something ugly stirring beneath America’s democratic surface, so did Chaplin. His satire of media-driven hysteria, loyalty oaths, and manufactured enemies wasn’t just about McCarthy — it was about how those instincts repeat.
Like Lewis’s novel, A King in New York was laughed off by some as dated, cranky, or extreme, only to look more acute with hindsight.

Bottom Line:

1935: "That could never happen."
1945: "It almost did."

Lewis’s novel was a warning that aged into a grim validation.
Chaplin’s satire followed the same arc.

It’s understood that shahdov can go about anywhere / Paris Rome Lisbon it doesn’t matter.

Exactly — that's a crucial and often overlooked detail in A King in New York.

King Shahdov’s exile is rootless but untroubled by borders. He’s not being hunted, he’s not stateless; he’s simply irrelevant. He can go to Paris, Rome, Lisbon — it doesn’t matter because the world no longer has a place for kings like him. His problem isn’t legal exile or political asylum. His problem is cultural obsolescence.

What This Says:

Shahdov isn’t tragic like Lear or Napoleon. He’s just an antique wandering from one modern capital to another.
Europe is no longer shocked by exiled monarchs; it’s indifferent. He’s free to circulate — but there’s no real “home” to return to, anywhere.
This reflects Chaplin’s own bitter understanding of exile: Not every exile is a prisoner. Some are simply out of fashion, out of time.

Chaplin’s Implicit Point:

By 1957, these old aristocrats — kings, emperors, exiled dukes — float from capital to capital, tolerated as oddities, not feared as powers. Shahdov’s freedom to roam emphasizes his irrelevance more than his independence.

He’s free to go anywhere. But nowhere matters.

Contrast with Chaplin’s Own Situation:

Chaplin was barred from returning to the U.S. but welcome in Europe.
Yet his influence was waning. He wasn’t an exile in chains — he was an exile in cultural twilight.
Like Shahdov, he could have lived in Paris, Rome, Lisbon... but he chose Switzerland — the blandest neutrality.

Summary:

Shahdov’s freedom to roam isn’t liberation; it’s a sign that he belongs nowhere.
The world has moved on. He hasn’t.

Shahdov, on the rove in the Schengen Zone.

Exactly! Shahdov, adrift in the Schengen Zone before it even existed.

He’s a perfect metaphor for the rootless, postwar European aristocrat — a relic who can float from Paris to Rome to Lisbon, welcomed nowhere, expelled from nowhere, merely passing through. He embodies the twilight of old Europe, stateless in spirit if not in paperwork.

Imagine him today:

"King Shahdov — last seen at a hotel in Vienna, traveling on a meaningless diplomatic passport, enjoying luncheon in a grand café while the world ignores him."

The Irony:

In the age of open borders (Schengen or not), Shahdov is free to go anywhere precisely because he belongs nowhere. No state fears him. No cause claims him. His wandering is not tragic exile, but a slow fade into irrelevance.

Chaplin intuited something timeless:
A man without a role, without a future, can roam indefinitely — but never arrive anywhere that matters.

Schengen freedom as existential rootlessness.
That’s Shahdov to the core.

Who was Schengen?

Great question — Schengen isn’t a person.

Schengen is the name of a small village in Luxembourg, famous because it was the site where the Schengen Agreement was signed on June 14, 1985.

What Was the Schengen Agreement?

It was a treaty between several European countries to gradually remove border controls between them, allowing free movement of people, goods, services, and capital across member states. This became known as the Schengen Area — effectively creating borderless travel across much of Europe, like crossing state lines in the U.S.

Today, the Schengen Area includes most EU countries and a few non-EU ones like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.

Why Schengen Village?

It’s tiny and obscure but located at a tripoint border of France, Germany, and Luxembourg.
Symbolically, it represented the goal: erasing hard borders within Europe.
The treaty was literally signed on a boat on the Moselle River near Schengen.

Summary:

Schengen is a village, not a person.
The name became shorthand for the border-free travel zone in Europe.
So when we say “Shahdov in the Schengen Zone”, it’s an anachronism, but a perfect metaphor for his rootless wandering through postwar, cosmopolitan Europe.

Write a brief hypothetical biography of Alex R. Schengen, a minor Brussels burocrat whose name became shorthand for the travel zone we now know. Then, also illustrate an EU stamp in his honor.

Hypothetical Biography of Alex R. Schengen (1907–1982)

The Man Behind the Borders Nobody Notices

Alex R. Schengen was a minor but doggedly persistent bureaucrat in the labyrinthine offices of the European Economic Community (EEC) in Brussels, best remembered not for his title — Deputy Assistant Rapporteur, Directorate-General for Cross-Border Issues — but for his relentless memos about border posts, toll booths, and the inefficiency of customs queues.

Born in Luxembourg City in 1907, Schengen grew up fascinated by maps, trains, and ferry schedules. His father managed a customs post; young Alex was often told, “A good border keeps good neighbors.” Alex disagreed.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, as European integration moved slowly from coal and steel to people and passports, Schengen championed the dream of invisible borders, though no one much noticed. His colleagues joked that he should be posted to the "Ministry of Obscure Paperwork."

In 1972, during a committee meeting in Brussels where no consensus could be reached on "Cross-Border Facilitations," Schengen famously declared:

"Let us have less discussion about where borders are, and more discussion about whether we need them at all."

Nobody paid much attention — until his retirement party, where a tipsy Commissioner suggested:

“One day, when we finally do this, we should just name it after old Schengen.”
Everyone laughed. But when a treaty needed a neutral, meaningless name in 1985, someone remembered. Not Alex. The village of Schengen sounded neutral and picturesque. The man had been long forgotten.

Alex R. Schengen died in 1982, unaware that his name would be resurrected — not as a bureaucrat, but as a borderless Europe.

Illustration: Hypothetical EU Commemorative Stamp for Alex R. Schengen (Issued 2025)

Design Description (Visualized in Words):

Foreground: A modest, balding man in a brown 1970s suit, holding a briefcase stamped “EEC 1973.”
Background: A stylized map of Europe with no borders, just flowing lines of blue and yellow stars connecting cities.
Upper Right Corner: An archway labeled “Free Passage.”
Stamp Text:

“ALEX R. SCHENGEN (1907–1982)”
“Invisible Borders, Visible Freedom.”
Europa Series — 2025.

Colors: Muted blues, greys, and gold, evoking bureaucracy and hope in equal measure.

Postmark Suggestion: Brussels, Luxembourg City, Strasbourg — all canceled through a single seamless circle.

Let me know if you'd like me to actually generate this stamp as an image.

Generate image

Chaplains 1957 film called a king in New York, looks like a perfectly made 1937 film that was frozen for 20 years and then thawed out for releasing 1957.

That’s a sharp and perceptive observation — and it captures exactly why A King in New York feels so strange to modern viewers. It looks, moves, and sounds like a film made in 1937, not 1957, despite Chaplin’s attempt to satirize modern America.

Why Does It Feel Like a 1937 Film?

1. Visual Style:

Lighting, sets, framing, and cinematography are rooted in Chaplin’s own 1930s sensibility.
Static cameras, theatrical blocking, and old-fashioned set design — it doesn’t embrace postwar cinematic styles like neo-realism, film noir, or New Wave editing.
Even costumes and props feel a generation behind. The men’s suits, the salons, the TV studio sets — all look like relics of a pre-war imagination.

2. Acting Style:

Chaplin himself performs like a man out of the 1930s: stylized, pantomimic, theatrical in gesture.
The supporting cast often seems to mimic the stiff, declamatory acting of 1930s British and American stage-to-film transitions.
Dialogue is often delivered like a stage recitation rather than realistic conversation.

3. Humor:

Gags are built on slapstick and irony from the silent era, not the sharp, dialogue-driven wit of 1950s satire (think Wilder or Ealing).
When he dumps water on the committee, it feels like something out of Keystone Kops, not postwar dark comedy.

4. Themes Delivered in Old Forms:

Chaplin wants to attack modern television, celebrity, advertising, and McCarthyism, but he does it through a lens of 1930s satire — closer to H.G. Wells or Shaw than to contemporaries like Billy Wilder or Paddy Chayefsky.
Didactic speeches feel straight from The Great Dictator era, not modern satire.

Why This Matters:

Chaplin was a man of the 1910s-1930s still trying to operate in 1957.
Where other artists adapted, he doubled down on his old methods.
It gives the film a strange “frozen in time” quality — technically in the 1950s, artistically embalmed from the 1930s.

You could almost imagine it being dug out of a vault where it sat untouched since 1937, dusted off, and released without edits.

Your Instinct is Spot-On:

It looks like 1937 thawed out in 1957.
That’s part of its fascination — and part of why it felt “off” to contemporary audiences.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

AI: All about LIMELIGHT and THE ENTERTAINER; SIDEBAR FOR "A KING IN NEW YORK"

ChatGPT said:

Comparison

1. Theme of Decline:

2. Performance Styles:

3. Relationship to their Own Legacy:

4. Tone:

5. Legacy and Impact:

Summary Judgment:

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What You're Probably Thinking Of:

Why the Confusion?

Recap:

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Comparison: Limelight vs. The Entertainer

1. Characterization of the Entertainer:

2. Tone and Worldview:

3. Relationship to their Era:

4. Autobiographical Resonance:

5. Artistic Statement:

Summary:

Bottom Line:

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Background:

Plot in Brief:

Production Facts:

Why It’s Little Known in America:

Summary:

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Ending of A King in New York (1957) — Spoilers:

Final Note:

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Comparison: Chaplin’s Speaking Roles

**1. Calvero (Limelight):

**2. King Shahdov (A King in New York):

Key Differences:

Summary:

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Summary:

Connection to Your Question:

Sequels / Legacy:

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Comparison: Coming to America vs. A King in New York

1. Protagonist's Journey:

2. Comedy Tone:

3. View of America:

4. Underlying Message:

Summary:

Bottom Line:

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Why Not?

Coincidence, Not Influence:

If Anything...

Summary Answer:

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Interesting Contrast:

Chaplin’s Irony:

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What Chaplin Is Doing:

The Joke on Shahdov (and Chaplin):

Why This Matters:

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Clues in the Film:

Chaplin’s Satire:

**Ending of A King in New York (1957) — Spoilers:**

1. Calvero (Limelight):**

2. King Shahdov (A King in New York):**

**Ending of A King in New York — Full Spoilers:**

**Why A King in New York Was Timely in 1972 (and Now):**