How do I get permission to sculp caricature figurines of early film
stars (chaplin, arbuckle, laurel and hardy, etc.) enabling me to sell
them at craft shows?

Hi larrymoo,

In order to get permission to create caricatures of famous
personalities, you must identify who owns or controls the rights to
license products or "likenesses" of that person.

Often the owner of the license rights turns over management and
marketing of those rights to an agency.

The way you could go about it is to do a Google search on each person,
with the terms: licensed likeness.

For example, I did one for you  ---

Search terms:  Charlie Chaplin licensed likeness

Led me to :   http://www.licensingmedia.com/news/html/051002-3.html


Which contained this information –

" Bliss House, Inc.
Founded in 1985 Bliss House is one of America's top-ten independent
licensing agencies. It successfully launched the worldwide Babar and
Curious George licensing programs, in each case reaching over 60
licensees in less than two years. These long-lived programs have
generated widespread respect for the quality of their products. Bliss
House built Charlie Chaplin from 4 licensees in the U.S. to 70 in less
than two years. It co-founded the first licensing program in
conjunction with a major advertising agency - The DMB&B Licensing
Group; General Motors and Anheuser Busch-Europe were the first
clients. Bliss House was nominated in 1997 as Licensing Agency of the
Year by LIMA, the worldwide professional licensing association.
Current Bliss House clients include: CBS's SURVIVOR, Monty Python,
Carlton International's SPACE: 1999, The Prisoner, Sparky the Fire
Dog, Buster Keaton, Funky Girlz, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
and The Art of H.A.& Margret Rey."

Further search on  "Bliss House" netted me this ----

BLISS HOUSE
http://www.blisshouse.com/index%20NEW.html

Take a good look at their website. They explain licenses and provide
lists of their clients (the licensors)  and licensees for specific
likenesses.

Another way you could find out who owns (or manages) the licensing
rights to specific characters or individual likenesses, is to post
separate questions here for each person you are interested in. I am
sure that in most cases, researchers here would be able to find the
license holder and provide you with appropriate contact information.

I say post the names as SEPARATE QUESTIONS  because researchers will
not post partial answers. If you list 10 names in one question, and
researchers can only find the license holders of 6 of those, you will
never get an answer.

Good luck with your venture!

Thank you for your question,

K~