re: who is considered the greatest/biggest movie star of all time?

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Has nothing to do with the discussion.

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If Marilyn isn't #1 female movie star (NOT ACTRESS) - of all time, who is? One of the Hepburns? Bette Davis? Garbo?

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Lucille Ball?

Shirley Temple?

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During 1915, Chaplin became a cultural phenomenon. Shops were stocked with Chaplin merchandise, he was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about him.[86] In July, a journalist for Motion Picture Magazine wrote that "Chaplinitis" had spread across America.[87] As his fame grew worldwide, he became the film industry's first international star.[88] When the Essanay contract ended in December 1915,[89][note 9] Chaplin – fully aware of his popularity – requested a $150,000 signing bonus from his next studio. He received several offers, including Universal, Fox, and Vitagraph, the best of which came from the Mutual Film Corporation at $10,000 a week.[91]

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A contract was negotiated with Mutual that amounted to $670,000 a year, which Robinson says made Chaplin – at 26 years old – one of the highest paid people in the world.[92] The high salary shocked the public and was widely reported in the press.[93] John R. Freuler, the studio President, explained, "We can afford to pay Mr. Chaplin this large sum annually because the public wants Chaplin and will pay for him."[94]

Mutual gave Chaplin his own Los Angeles studio to work in, which opened in March 1916.[

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and his popularity continued to grow worldwide. Harper's Weekly reported that the name of Charlie Chaplin was "a part of the common language of almost every country", and that the Tramp image was "universally familiar".[107] In 1917, professional Chaplin imitators were so widespread that he took legal action,[108] and it was reported that nine out of ten men who attended costume parties dressed as the Tramp.[109] The same year, a study by the Boston Society for Psychical Research concluded that Chaplin was "an American obsession."[109] The actress Minnie Maddern Fiske wrote that "a constantly increasing body of cultured, artistic people are beginning to regard the young English buffoon, Charles Chaplin, as an extraordinary artist, as well as a comic genius."

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One journalist wrote, "Nobody in the world but Charlie Chaplin could have done it. He is the only person that has that peculiar something called 'audience appeal' in sufficient quality to defy the popular penchant for movies that talk."[

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In 1998, the film critic Andrew Sarris called Chaplin "arguably the single most important artist produced by the cinema, certainly its most extraordinary performer and probably still its most universal icon".[403] He is described by the British Film Institute as "a towering figure in world culture",[404] and was included in TIME magazine's list of the "100 Most Important People of the 20th Century" for the "laughter [he brought] to millions" and because he "more or less invented global recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art".[405]

The image of the Tramp has become a part of cultural history;[406] according to Simon Louvish, the character is recognisable to people who have never seen a Chaplin film, and in places where his films are never shown.[407] The critic Leonard Maltin has written of the "unique" and "indelible" nature of the Tramp, and argued that no other comedian matched his "worldwide impact".[408] Praising the character, Richard Schickel suggests that Chaplin's films with the Tramp contain the most "eloquent, richly comedic expressions of the human spirit" in movie history.[409] Memorabilia connected to the character still fetches large sums in auctions: in 2006 a bowler hat and a bamboo cane that were part of the Tramp's costume were bought for $140,000 in a Los Angeles auction.[410]

As a filmmaker, Chaplin is considered a pioneer and one of the most influential figures of the early twentieth century.[1] He is often credited as one of the medium's first artists.[411] Film historian Mark Cousins has written that Chaplin "changed not only the imagery of cinema, but also its sociology and grammar" and claims that Chaplin was as important to the development of comedy as a genre as D.W. Griffith was to drama.[412] He was the first to popularise feature-length comedy and to slow down the pace of action, adding pathos and subtlety to it.[413][414] Although his work is mostly classified as slapstick, Chaplin's drama A Woman of Paris (1923) was a major influence on Ernst Lubitsch's film The Marriage Circle (1924) and thus played a part in the development of "sophisticated comedy".[415] According to David Robinson, Chaplin's innovations were "rapidly assimilated to become part of the common practice of film craft."[416] Filmmakers who cited Chaplin as an influence include Federico Fellini (who called Chaplin "a sort of Adam, from whom we are all descended"),[329] Jacques Tati ("Without him I would never have made a film"),[329] René Clair ("He inspired practically every filmmaker"),[328] Michael Powell,[417] Billy Wilder,[418] and Richard Attenborough.[419] Andrei Tarkovsky praised Chaplin as "the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old."

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I just don't see Monroe as much of a movie star.

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This is tough because of time, modern media saturation, dilution (modern stars simply don't have the cachet of a Cary Grant or Frank Sinatra, for example - and can't achieve it, regardless of what they do).

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Feral

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