In 1921 there was only one movie more successful than Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. Rex Ingram’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse earned slightly more than Chaplin’s with a final figure of $9 million made in the box office. Since then, both films have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid was the first film in which Chaplin acted, directed, and authored. This six-part comedy partially fueled Chaplin’s meteoric rise to stardom and The Kid is still regarded as a silent-film era classic. This significance was clearly apparent to the owner of the Liberty Theatre in Portland, Oregon, who extended the film’s stay for longer than usual because of its appeal and success. In order to advertise the extended showings, the Liberty Theatre adopted a grassroots marketing strategy that employed a local five year-old named John Ross White who was paid to dress as Jackie Coogan and wander the streets of downtown Portland in order to promote the film. White was accompanied by his father who was dressed as Charlie Chaplin. Jackie Coogan, who co-starred alongside Chaplin, was one of the first child-stars in film history at a similar age to the youngster named John.
The Oregon Daily Journal claimed that for their services, the White family was paid “nearer the three figure mark than the checks of most clerks, stenographers, or school teachers.” Whether or not this was the case, the outlandish story that this promotional strategy produced earned the Liberty Theatre a newspaper write up that was undoubtedly more intriguing than any advertisement. Strategies such as this were surprisingly common, especially following Charlie Chaplin’s later films when theater owners hosted Charlie Chaplin look-alike competitions in order to draw large crowds of adoring fans.
