Charlie Chaplin


Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977) was the
most famous actor in early Hollywood  Chaplin in his costume as "The Tramp"
cinema, and later also a notable director. His principal character was "The
Tramp": a lower class character with considerable personal dignity 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 directed, acted, wrote his
stories, and was even known to write his movie scores.

Biography

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 bith, leaving him in the care of his mother. With
the later unable to find work and consequently finding herself unable to
provide for her children due to poverty, in 1896 Charlie and his older
half-brother Sydney had to be left living 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 when he stood in for his mother, from whom he learned 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 when he
started playing the part of newspaper boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes, a part
he played into 1906. This was follwed by 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 Karno, he visited the US in 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 demands of film
acting, he soon adopted 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.

   * 1914: Keystone, worked for $150 a week
   * 1914-1915: Essanay Studios, $1250 a week, plus $10,000 signing bonus
   * 1916-1917: Mutual, $10,000 a week, plus $150,000 signing bonus
   * 1917: First National, a million dollar deal—the first actor ever
     with such a high price tag.

In 1919 he founded the United Artists studio with Mary Pickford, Douglas
Fairbanks and David Wark Griffith.

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 modeled 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 depict the dismal situation of workers and the poor, with Modern
Times (1936) being a prime example.

Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States, he refused to
accept U.S. citizenship; he was born in England and proudly retained his
British nationality. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of
"un-American activities" as a suspected communist, and his lifelong enemy J.
Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive files on him,
tried to remove his residency rights.

In 1952, Chaplin left the United States for a trip to England; Hoover learned
about it and negotiated with the INS that his reentry permit would not be
honored. Chaplin decided then to stay in Europe and made his home in
Switzerland. He returned briefly for an award ceremony in 1972.

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
from 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
together, which died as an infant. In 1924 he fell in love with the 16 year
old Lita Grey during the preparations for his movie Gold Rush. They married
when she became pregnant, and had two sons together. They divorced bitterly
in 1927, with Chaplin making a record-breaking divorce settlement of
$825,000 the following year—allegedly turning his hair white. The
publication of the divorce court records with many intimate details led to a
campaign against Chaplin. In 1936, Chaplin secretly married the actor
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 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 died 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 extract money from his relatives. The plot failed, the robbers
were captured and the body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva.

A film was made in 1992 about his life entitled Chaplin, directed by Academy
Award winner Sir Richard Attenborough, and starring Robert Downey Jr., Dan
Akyroyd, Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie's daughter), Anthony Hopkins, Milla
Jovovich, Moira Kelly, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul
Rhys, Marisa Tomei, Nancy Travis, and James Woods.

Filmography

   * 1914 Between Showers (short)
   * 1914 A Busy Day (short)
   * 1914 Caught in a Cabaret
   * 1914 Caught in the Rain (short)
   * 1914 Cruel, Cruel Love (short)
   * 1914 Dough and Dynamite]] (short)
   * 1914 The Face on the Barroom Floor
   * 1914 The Fatal Mallet (short)
   * 1914 A Film Johnnie (short)
   * 1914 Gentlemen of Nerve (short)
   * 1914 Getting Acquainted (short)
   * 1914 Her Friend the Bandit (short)
   * 1914 His Favorite Pastime (short)
   * 1914 His Musical Career (short)
   * 1914 His New Profession (short)
   * 1914 His Prehistoric Past
   * 1914 His Trysting Place
   * 1914 Kid Auto Races at Venice
   * 1914 The Knockout
   * 1914 Laughing Gas
   * 1914 Mabel at the Wheel (short)
   * 1914 Mabel's Busy Day
   * 1914 Mabel's Married Life
   * 1914 Mabel's Strange Predicament (short)
   * 1914 Making a Living (short)
   * 1914 The Masquerader (short)
   * 1914 The New Janitor (short)
   * 1914 The Property Man
   * 1914 Recreation (short)
   * 1914 The Rounders (short)
   * 1914 The Star Boarder (short)
   * 1914 Tango Tangles (short)
   * 1914 Those Love Pangs (short)
   * 1914 Tillie's Punctured Romance
   * 1914 Twenty Minutes of Love (short)
   * 1915 The Bank
   * 1915 By the Sea (short)
   * 1915 The Champion
   * 1915 His New Job
   * 1915 His Regeneration (short)
   * 1915 In the Park (short)
   * 1915 A Jitney Elopement
   * 1915 A Night Out
   * 1915 A Night in the Show (short)
   * 1915 Shanghaied (short)
   * 1915 The Tramp
   * 1915 A Woman (short)
   * 1915 Work
   * 1916 Behind the Screen
   * 1916 Charlie Chaplin's Burlesque on Carmen
   * 1916 The Count
   * 1916 The Fireman
   * 1916 The Floorwalker
   * 1916 One A.M. (short)
   * 1916 The Pawnshop (short)
   * 1916 Police!
   * 1916 The Rink (short)
   * 1916 The Vagabond
   * 1917 The Adventurer
   * 1917 The Cure
   * 1917 Easy Street
   * 1917 The Immigrant
   * 1918 The Bond (short)
   * 1918 A Dog's Life
   * 1918 Shoulder Arms
   * 1919 A Day's Pleasure (short)
   * 1919 Sunnyside
   * 1921 The Idle Class
   * 1921 The Kid
   * 1921 The Nut
   * 1922 Nice and Friendly (short)
   * 1922 Pay Day
   * 1923 The Pilgrim
   * 1923 Souls For Sale
   * 1923 A Woman of Paris
   * 1925 The Gold Rush
   * 1926 A Woman of the Sea
   * 1928 The Circus
   * 1928 Show People
   * 1931 City Lights
   * 1936 Modern Times
   * 1940 The Great Dictator
   * 1947 Monsieur Verdoux
   * 1952 Limelight
   * 1957 A King in New York
   * 1967 A Countess From Hong Kong