Chaplin Showcases Foster

Over the weekend, I re-watch Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times. I'm not a huge Chaplin fan -- his Tramp character is a jerk to everybody, and he often punches down from even his lower position as a tramp -- but Modern Times does offer some interesting commentary on life here at the end of 2025. Working in a job that drives him crazy, dealing with automation, a wealthy business class that idles away their time in the office while simultaneously yelling at employees to work harder and faster... the parallels are easy to spot.

What stood out in this viewing, though, was that Chaplin's boss at the start of the movie is 'busy' putting together a jigsaw puzzle in his office while the workers toil away on the factory floor. The boss soon tires of the puzzle and reaches for the funny pages of the newspaper. And what is plainly visible is a full page showcasing the Tarzan comic strip...

I did some digging but couldn't pinpoint which specific installment it was, but Dave was able to help me out and discovered it was the October 7, 1934 strip...

That's a Sunday strip, of course, and it was Hal Foster doing the artwork at that time. While the daily strip had begun in 1929, the Sunday strip had only been running since 1931. It had been started by Rex Maxon, but Foster took over the Sundays beginning on September 27, 1931 and stayed on them until 1937 when he left to start Prince Valiant.

Modern Times began filming on October 11, 1934 so it seems likely this particular scene was one of the earliest ones shot and they simply used the most recent Sunday paper that was available. If filming had begun much later, they likely would've needed more lead time to prep the paper. You see, in the earliest 'talkies' the sound engineers had a lot of difficulty with newspapers. The microphones were either so close/sensitive that they picked up all the paper rustling noises that would overshadow people's voices, or the microphones were so far away/weak that they couldn't even capture people speaking in the first place. There was some time, then, where any large papers used on film were basically soaked to dampen the rustling noises.

(One of the films where this abundently evident -- to me, at least -- is in the Marx Brothers picture The Cocoanuts. The large map Groucho holds during the viaduct/vy not a chicken joke is visibly drenched. The Cocoanuts was technically a few years before Modern Times so things may have improved by the time Chaplin was filming but he wrote and directed it like it was a silent picture, having all of the sound added in afterwards. This was an artistic choice on his part; he felt that having the Tramp speak would ruin much of the character's appeal. But as a side benefit to this, he didn't need to worry about how loud the newspaper rustling might be since there was no audio being recorded during filming in the first place.)

In any event, I find it interesting/entertaining to come across older movies and shows that feature comics as background props, and see if I can track down what exactly they are. (Although obviously this time, I had some help! Thanks again, Dave!)

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