Charlie Chaplin
Chaplin in his costume as "The Tramp
Sir Charles "Charlie" Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977) was the most famous actor in early Hollywood cinema, and later also a notable director. His principal character was "The Tramp": a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman who wears a tight coat, oversized pants and shoes, a derby or bowler hat, a bamboo cane, and his signature square mustache. Chaplin was one of the most creative personalities in the silent film era; he acted, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually scored his own films.
Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England, in 1889 to Charles Chaplin, Senior and Hannah Harriette Hill, both Music Hall entertainers. His parents separated soon after his birth, leaving him in the care of his mother. When she was unable to find work and provide for her children in 1896, Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney had to be left in the workhouse at Lambeth, moving after several weeks to Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. His father died an alcoholic when Charlie was aged 12, and his mother suffered a mental breakdown, and was eventually admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum near Croydon. She died in 1928.
Charlie first took to the stage when, aged 5, he performed in Music Hall in 1894, standing in for his mother, who taught him to sing and act. In 1900, aged 11, his brother helped get him the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella at the London Hippodrome. In 1903 he appeared in Jim, A Romance of Cockayne, followed the same year by his first regular job as the newspaper boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes, a part he played into 1906. This was followed by his joining Casey's Court Circus variety show, and the following year he became a clown in Fred Karno's Fun Factory slapstick comedy company. With the Karno American Company, he visited the US in 1910-1913, and his act was seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired Chaplin for his film studio, Keystone.
While Chaplin initially had difficulty adjusting to the Keystone style of film acting, he soon adapted and flourished in the medium. This was made possible in part by Chaplin developing his signature Tramp persona and eventually earning directorship and creative control over his films, which enabled him to become Keystone's top star and talent.
His salary history suggests how rapidly he became world famous, and the skill of his brother, Sydney Chaplin at being his business manager.
Biography
Although "talkies" (movies with sound) became the dominant mode of moviemaking soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making a talkie all through the 1930s. It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and one credit as a singer for the title music of the 1928 film The Circus. The best-known of several songs he composed is "Smile", famously covered by Nat King Cole, among others.
His first sound picture, The Great Dictator (1940) was an act of defiance against Adolf Hitler and fascism, filmed and released in the United States years before it abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. Chaplin played a fascist dictator, clearly modelled on Adolf Hitler (also with a certain physical likeness), as well as a Jewish barber cruelly persecuted by the Nazis. Hitler, who was a great fan of movies, is known to have seen the film twice (records were kept of movies ordered for his personal theater). After the war and the uncovering of the Holocaust, Chaplin stated that he would not have been able to make such jokes about the Nazi regime had he known about the actual extent of the pogrom.
Chaplin's political sympathies always lay with the left. Several of his movies, notably Modern Times (1936), depict the dismal situation of workers and the poor.
Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States, he retained his British nationality. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of "un-American activities" as a suspected communist, and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive files on him, tried to end his United States residency.
Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in "The Kid" (1921)
In 1952, Chaplin left the United States for a trip to England; Hoover learned about it and negotiated with the INS to revoke his reentry permit. Chaplin then decided to stay in Europe and made his home in Switzerland. He briefly returned to the United States on April 2, 1972 for an award ceremony.
Chaplin won the honorary Oscar twice. When the first Oscars were awarded on May 16, 1929, the voting audit procedures that now exist had not yet been invented, and the categories were still very fluid. When it became apparent that Chaplin, who had been nominated for Best Actor and Best Comedy Direction, would fail to win either award for his movie The Circus, the Academy decided to give him a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus". The other film to receive a special award that year was The Jazz Singer.
Chaplin's second honorary award came 44 years later in 1972 and was "For the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century". He came out of his exile and collected his award less than a month before the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Chaplin was also nominated without success for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay for The Great Dictator (1940), and again for Best Original Screenplay for Monsieur Verdoux (1947).
In 1973, he received an Oscar for the Best Music in an Original Dramatic Score for the 1952 film Limelight. Because of Chaplin's difficulties with McCarthyism, the film did not open in Los Angeles when it was first produced. This criterion for nomination was not fulfilled until 1972.
His final films were A King in New York (1957) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1966), starring Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando.
Chaplin's professional successes were repeatedly overshadowed by reports about his private life. In 1918, 28 years old, he married the 16 year old Mildred Harris, followed by a divorce two years later. They had one child who died as an infant. In 1924 he fell in love with the 16 year old Lita Grey during the preparations for his movie The Gold Rush. They married when she became pregnant, and had two sons. They divorced bitterly in 1927, with Chaplin making a record-breaking divorce settlement of $825,000 the following year— the stress of the divorce, which was compounded by a tax dispute, allegedly turned his hair white. The publication of the divorce court records, which included many intimate details, led to a campaign against Chaplin. In 1936, Chaplin secretly married the actress Paulette Goddard. After a number of happy years, this marriage too ended in divorce in 1942. Shortly thereafter, he met Oona O'Neill, daughter of the dramatist Eugene O'Neill, and married her in 1943. This marriage was a long and happy one, with eight children.
On March 4, 1975, after many years of self-imposed exile from his native country, he was knighted a KBE by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1956, but vetoed by the British Foreign Office because the British feared that giving the honour to a known communist supporter would damage British relations with the United States, at the height of the Cold War and with planning for the ill-fated invasion of Suez underway.
Charlie Chaplin passed away on Christmas Day (December 25), 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland and was interred in the Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery in Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. Two months later, on March 3, 1978, his body was stolen from the cemetery, in an attempt to extort money from his relatives. The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva. There is a famous statue of Chaplin in front of the alimentarium in Vevey to commemorate the last part of his life.
In 1992 a film was made about his life entitled Chaplin, directed by Academy Award winner Sir Richard Attenborough, and starring Robert Downey Jr, Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie's daughter, portraying Charlie's mother, her own grandmother), Anthony Hopkins, Milla Jovovich, Moira Kelly, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul Rhys, Marisa Tomei, Nancy Travis, and James Woods.
For the Jamaican musician named Charlie Chaplin, see Charlie Chaplin (singer).
Filmography