Charlie Chaplin gets birthday 'doodle' from Google

(CNN) -- He's a comedy and cinema legend, a man still cited as an inspiration decades after his death.
And now, in honor of what would have been his 122nd birthday, Charlie Chaplin has inspired one of the most ambitious Google "doodles" ever.
On Friday, the space on Google's homepage that usually contains its multicolored logo instead featured a black-and-white YouTube tribute to Chaplin, whose birthday is Saturday.
The short "silent" film is Google's first-ever video doodle and was created with the help of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.
"True pieces of art, Chaplin's films still feel fresh today even though some of them are nearly a century old," Ryan Germick, a member of Google's Doodle team, wrote on the company's official blog. "We hope that our homepage gets people talking about his work and the many virtues of silent film."
The project is the work of the Google Doodle team, which is devoted to sprucing up Google's plain search page with colorful images to commemorate holidays or other noteworthy dates or events.
The video was shot in Niles, California, the site of several of Chaplin's iconic silent films, including "The Tramp," and features the entire Google Doodle team.
Team member Mike Dutton mimics Chaplin, who, in the two-minute video, attempts to make money by drawing his own doodle before tricking a mean police officer into buying him breakfast.

The video will remain on Google's page through Saturday, according to the blog post.
In a recent interview, Doodle team creative leader Ryan Germick told CNN that the drawings started out as a way to humanize the search page, but became more elaborate as time went on.
"It's definitely something we try to mix up and keep surprising," said Germick (who doubles as the aforementioned mean cop in the video). "Our hope is you come to the Google homepage, and we're really thankful for that. We want to give back and try something fun."