Saw something interesting on Lileks’ Daily Bleat today. (Why, yes, things are kind of slow for me at work today; how can you tell?) If you click on over there and scroll down a-ways, you’ll see that he’s scanned a wonderful old newspaper photo of Times Square, circa 1952. But that photo isn’t quite what it seems…

Lileks directs our attention to a movie-theater marquee visible on the photo’s right-hand side. Zooming in, we can see that the marquee is advertising a film called Limelight, which should sound familiar to movie buffs: it was the last significant film made by the legendary Charlie Chaplin. Except the name above the title on this marquee isn’t Charles Chaplin… it’s Charles Brade. Who the hell, you may be asking, is Charles Brade? Good question.

According to Lileks, this photo was taken one month after Chaplin’s entry visa was revoked by his political enemies. (Briefly, Chaplin lived in the U.S., but he was a British citizen with unpopular political views and a dodgy personal life; he went to Europe in ’52 for a vacation and was subsequently denied permission to re-enter the country.) The news service evidently retouched the photo to remove his name.

It was a pointless gesture, of course, because everyone at the time surely knew that Limelight was Chaplin’s film, directed by and starring him, and I’d also imagine that news of him being banned from the country had been reported. But he was officially persona non grata by the time the photo ran, so my guess is that some editor somewhere balked at giving the impression of sanctioning or supporting him.

(Quick tangent: Limelight was also banned in the U.S. for twenty years; when it was finally shown here in 1972, Charlie was allowed to return and accept an Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score.)

So what’s the big deal about a doctored 54-year-old photo? For one thing, it’s a useful reminder that we should be skeptical of the images we see in the media, especially these days when images can be so easily manipulated. But it’s perhaps more interesting to realize that manipulated images in the media are nothing new. I think people tend to believe that this sort of tinkering has only been around since the invention of Photoshop, but really all the computer has done is make it easier for people to do the things we’ve been doing all the way along. Just a little food for thought, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood blogger…