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Sir Charles Spencer
Chaplin, (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977) was the most famous actor
in early to mid 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 in, directed, scripted, produced, and
eventually scored his own films.
* * * *
Biography
He was born in Walworth,
London, England to Charles, Sr. and Hannah Harriette Hill, both Music
Hall entertainers. His parents separated soon after his birth, leaving
him in the care of his increasingly unstable mother. In 1896, she was
unable to find work; 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 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. As a child, he was confined to a bed for weeks due to a
serious illness, and, at night, his mother would sit at the window and
act out what was going on outside. 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 by his first regular job, as the newspaper boy Billy in
Sherlock Holmes, a part he played into 1906. This was followed by
Casey's Court Circus variety show, and, the following year, he became a
clown in Fred Karno's Fun Factory slapstick comedy company. According to
immigration records, he arrived in the USA with the Karno troupe on
October 2, 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who
would later become known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel wound up
sharing a room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but
Chaplin remained in the USA. His act was seen by film producer Mack
Sennett, who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company.
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 by 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, at being his business manager.
1914: Keystone, worked for
$150 a week
1914-1915: Essanay Studios,
of Chicago, Illinois, $1250 a week, plus $10,000 signing bonus
1916-1917: Mutual, $10,000
a week, plus $150,000 signing bonus
1917: First National, $1
million deal — the first actor ever to earn that sum.
In 1919 he founded the
United Artists studio with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W.
Griffith.
Although "talkies" 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 one year before it
abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. Chaplin
played a fascist dictator clearly modeled on 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.
In 1952, Chaplin left the US for a trip to England;
Hoover learned of it and negotiated with the INS to revoke his re-entry
permit. Chaplin then decided to stay in Europe, and made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly returned to the United States in April
1972 to receive an Honorary Oscar.
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, had failed 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, 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, which co-starred Claire Bloom. The film also features a cameo
with Buster Keaton, which was the first and last time the two great
comedians ever appeared together. 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.
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His final films were A King
in New York (1957) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Sophia
Loren and Marlon Brando.
His professional successes
were repeatedly overshadowed by his notorious private life. On October
23, 1918, the 28 year old Chaplin married the 16-year-old Mildred
Harris. They had one child who died in infancy; they divorced in 1920.
At 35, he fell in love with 16-year-old Lita Grey during preparations
for The Gold Rush. They married on November 26, 1924 after she became
pregnant. They had two sons. Their bitter divorce in 1926 had Chaplin
paying Grey a then-record-breaking $825,000 settlement. The stress of
the divorce, compounded by a tax dispute, allegedly turned his hair
white. The publication of court records, which included many intimate
details, led to a campaign against him. He was 47 when he secretly
married the 25 year old Paulette Goddard in June 1936. After some happy
years, it ended in divorce in 1942. During this period, Chaplin briefly
dated actress Joan Barry, but ended it when she started harassing him.
In May 1943, she filed a paternity suit against him. Blood tests proved
Chaplin was not the father, but as blood tests were inadmissible
evidence in court, he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child
turned 21. Shortly thereafter, he met Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene
O'Neill, and married her on June 16, 1943. He was 54; she was 17. 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 as a Knight of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. The
honour was first proposed in 1956, but vetoed by the British Foreign
Office on the grounds that he sympathized with the left and that it
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.
Chaplin died on Christmas
Day, 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland at age 88, and was interred in
Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery in Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud. On March 1, 1978,
his body was stolen in an attempt to extort money from his family. The
plot failed. The robbers were captured, and the body was recovered 11
weeks later near Lake Geneva. There is a statue of Chaplin in front of
the alimentarium in Vevey to commemorate the last part of his life.
Amongst his many honors,
Chaplin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1985 he was
honored with his image on a postage stamp of the United Kingdom and in
1994 he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by
caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
In 1992 a film was made
about his life entitled Chaplin, directed by Oscar-winner Sir Richard
Attenborough, and starring Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine
Chaplin (Charlie's daughter, portraying Charlie's mother, her own
grandmother), Sir Anthony Hopkins, Milla Jovovich, Moira Kelly, Kevin
Kline, Diane Lane, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul Rhys, Marisa Tomei, Nancy
Travis, and James Woods.
In a 2005 poll to find The
Comedian's Comedian, he was voted among the top 20 greatest comedy acts
ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
* * * *
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