Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

(1889-1977)

Who Was Charlie Chaplin?

Charlie Chaplin worked with a children's dance troupe before making his mark on the big screen. His character "The Tramp" relied on pantomime and quirky movements to become an iconic figure of the silent-film era. Chaplin went on to become a director, making films such as City Lights and Modern Times , and co-founded the United Artists Corporation.

Famous for his character "The Tramp," the sweet little man with a bowler hat, mustache and cane, Charlie Chaplin was an iconic figure of the silent-film era and was one of film's first superstars, elevating the industry in a way few could have ever imagined.

Born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England, on April 16, 1889, Chaplin's rise to fame is a true rags-to-riches story. His father, a notorious drinker, abandoned Chaplin, his mother and his older half-brother, Sydney, not long after Chaplin's birth. That left Chaplin and his brother in the hands of their mother, a vaudevillian and music hall singer who went by the stage name Lily Harley.

Chaplin's mother, who would later suffer severe mental issues and have to be committed to an asylum, was able to support her family for a few years. But in a performance that would introduce her youngest boy to the spotlight, Hannah inexplicably lost her voice in the middle of a show, prompting the production manager to push the five-year-old Chaplin, whom he'd heard sing, onto the stage to replace her.

Chaplin lit up the audience, wowing them with his natural presence and comedic angle (at one point he imitated his mother's cracking voice). But the episode meant the end for Hannah. Her singing voice never returned, and she eventually ran out of money. For a time, Chaplin and Sydney had to make a new, temporary home for themselves in London's tough workhouses.

Early Career

Armed with his mother's love of the stage, Chaplin was determined to make it in show business himself, and in 1897, using his mother's contacts, he landed with a clog-dancing troupe named the Eight Lancashire Lads. It was a short stint, and not a terribly profitable one, forcing the go-getter Chaplin to make ends meet any way he could.

"I (was) newsvendor, printer, toymaker, doctor's boy, etc., but during these occupational digressions, I never lost sight of my ultimate aim to become an actor," Chaplin later recounted. "So, between jobs I would polish my shoes, brush my clothes, put on a clean collar and make periodic calls at a theatrical agency."

Eventually, other stage work did come his way. Chaplin made his acting debut as a pageboy in a production of Sherlock Holmes . From there, he toured with a vaudeville outfit named Casey's Court Circus and in 1908 teamed up with the Fred Karno pantomime troupe, where Chaplin became one of its stars as the Drunk in the comedic sketch A Night in an English Music Hall .

With the Karno troupe, Chaplin got his first taste of the United States, where he caught the eye of film producer Mack Sennett, who signed Chaplin to a contract for a $150 a week.

Film Career

In 1914, Chaplin made his film debut in a somewhat forgettable one-reeler called Make a Living . To differentiate himself from the clad of other actors in Sennett films, Chaplin decided to play a single identifiable character, and "The Little Tramp" was born, with audiences getting their first taste of him in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914).

Over the next year, Chaplin appeared in 35 movies, a lineup that included Tillie's Punctured Romance , film's first full-length comedy. In 1915, Chaplin left Sennett to join the Essanay Company, which agreed to pay him $1,250 a week. It is with Essanay that Chaplin, who by this time had hired his brother Sydney to be his business manager, rose to stardom.

During his first year with the company, Chaplin made 14 films, including The Tramp (1915). Generally regarded as the actor's first classic, the story establishes Chaplin's character as the unexpected hero when he saves the farmer's daughter from a gang of robbers.

By the age of 26, Chaplin, just three years removed from his vaudeville days, was a superstar. He'd moved over to the Mutual Company, which paid him a whopping $670,000 a year. The money made Chaplin a wealthy man, but it didn't seem to derail his artistic drive. With Mutual, he made some of his best work, including One A.M. (1916), The Rink (1916), The Vagabond (1916) and Easy Street (1917).

Through his work, Chaplin came to be known as a grueling perfectionist. His love for experimentation often meant countless takes, and it was not uncommon for him to order the rebuilding of an entire set. Nor was it uncommon for him to begin filming with one leading actor, realize he'd made a mistake in his casting and start again with someone new.

But the results were hard to refute. During the 1920s Chaplin's career blossomed even more. During the decade he made some landmark films, including The Kid (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), A Woman in Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), a movie Chaplin would later say he wanted to be remembered by, and The Circus (1928). The latter three were released by United Artists, a company Chaplin co-founded in 1919 with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith.

Later Films

Chaplin kept creating interesting and engaging films in the 1930s. In 1931, he released City Lights , a critical and commercial success that incorporated music Chaplin scored himself.

More acclaim came with Modern Times (1936), a biting commentary about the state of the world's economic and political infrastructures. The film, which did incorporate sound, was, in part, the result of an 18-month world tour Chaplin had taken between 1931 and 1932, a trip during which he'd witnessed severe economic angst and a sharp rise in nationalism in Europe and elsewhere.

But Chaplin was not universally embraced. His romantic liaisons led to his rebuke by some women's groups, which in turn led to him being barred from entering some U.S. states. As the Cold War age settled into existence, Chaplin didn't withhold his fire from injustices he saw taking place in the name of fighting Communism in his adopted country of the United States.

Chaplin soon became a target of the right-wing conservatives. Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi pushed for his deportation. In 1952, the Attorney General of the United States obliged when he announced that Chaplin, who was sailing to Britain on vacation, would not permit him to return to the United States unless he could prove "moral worth." The incensed Chaplin said good-bye to the United States and took up residence on a small farm in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.

Final Years and Death

Nearing the end of his life, Chaplin did make one last visit to the United States in 1972, when he was given an honorary Academy Award. The trip came just five years after Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), the filmmaker's first and only color movie. Despite a cast that included Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando , the film did poorly at the box office. In 1975, Chaplin received further recognition when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II .

In the early morning hours of December 25, 1977, Chaplin died at his home in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. His wife, Oona, and seven of his children were at his bedside at the time of his passing. In a twist that might very well have come out of one of his films, Chaplin's body was stolen not long after he was buried from his grave near Lake Geneva in Switzerland by two men who demanded $400,000 for its return. The men were arrested and Chaplin's body was recovered 11 weeks later.

Wives and Children

Chaplin became equally famous for his life off-screen. His affairs with actresses who had roles in his movies were numerous. Some, however, ended better than others.

In 1918, he quickly married 16-year-old Mildred Harris. The marriage lasted just two years, and in 1924 he wed again, to another 16-year-old, actress Lita Grey, whom he'd cast in The Gold Rush . The marriage had been brought on by an unplanned pregnancy, and the resulting union, which produced two sons for Chaplin (Charles Jr. and Sydney) was an unhappy one for both partners. They divorced in 1927.

In 1936, Chaplin married again, this time to a chorus girl who went by the film name of Paulette Goddard. They lasted until 1942. That was followed by a nasty paternity suit with another actress, Joan Barry, in which tests proved Chaplin was not the father of her daughter, but a jury still ordered him to pay child support.

In 1943, Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Unexpectedly the two would go on to have a happy marriage, one that would result in eight children.

QUICK FACTS

  • Name: Charlie Chaplin
  • Birth Year: 1889
  • Birth date: April 16, 1889
  • Birth City: London, England
  • Birth Country: United Kingdom
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Charlie Chaplin was a comedic British actor who became one of the biggest stars of the 20th century's silent-film era.
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Death Year: 1977
  • Death date: December 25, 1977
  • Death City: Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud
  • Death Country: Switzerland

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CITATION INFORMATION

  • Article Title: Charlie Chaplin Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/charlie-chaplin
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: May 5, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
  • I want to see the return of decency and kindness. I'm just a human being who wants to see this country a real democracy.
  • I am for people. I can't help it.
  • The Zulus know Chaplin better than Arkansas knows Garbo.
  • The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.
  • All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
  • I remain just one thing, and one thing only—and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
  • I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.
  • I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it.
  • The summation of my character is that I care about my work. I care about everything I do. If I could do something else better, I would do it, but I can't.
  • I've always related to a sort of a comic spirit, something within me, that said, I must express this. This is funny.
  • Cruelty is a basic element in comedy. What appears to be sane is really insane, and if you can make that poignant enough they love it.
  • I don't think one can do humor without having great pity and a sense of sympathy for one's fellow man.
  • I think life is a very wonderful thing, and must be lived under all circumstances, even in misery.
  • All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.
  • Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
  • Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
  • A day without laughter is a wasted day.

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Charles Chaplin (1889-1977)

IMDbPro Starmeter Top 5,000 349

Charles Chaplin

  • 27 wins & 6 nominations total

Charles Chaplin and Josephine Chaplin

  • Writer (as Charlie Chaplin)

Charles Chaplin and Claire Bloom in Limelight (1952)

  • book "My Autobiography"

The Adding Machine (1969)

  • Writer (uncredited)

Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

  • original screenplay

Charles Chaplin in The Chaplin Revue (1959)

  • original story
  • screenplay by

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

  • an original story written by

The Chaplin Cavalcade (1941)

  • written by (as Charlie Chaplin)

The Circus (1928)

  • An Old Steward
  • King Shahdov
  • Henri Verdoux - Alias Varnay - Alias Bonheur - Alias Floray
  • A Jewish Barber
  • Hynkel - Dictator of Tomania
  • A Factory Worker (as Charlie Chaplin)
  • A Tramp (as Charlie Chaplin)

Marion Davies and William Haines in Show People (1928)

  • Charles Chaplin (uncredited)

Ethel Barrymore in Camille (1926)

  • The Lone Prospector

Edna Purviance in A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923)

  • Station Porter (uncredited)

Hollywood (1923)

  • Charlie Chaplin

Eleanor Boardman in Souls for Sale (1923)

  • Charles Chaplin

Charles Chaplin in The Pilgrim (1923)

  • Lefty Lombard
  • The Pilgrim
  • Director (as Charlie Chaplin)
  • Director (uncredited)

Trailer

Personal details

  • 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
  • April 16 , 1889
  • Walworth, London, England, UK
  • December 25 , 1977
  • Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland (stroke)
  • Spouses Oona Chaplin June 16, 1943 - December 25, 1977 (his death, 8 children)
  • Children Victoria Chaplin
  • Parents Hannah Chaplin
  • Relatives Oona Chaplin (Grandchild)
  • Other works Composed the love theme for Modern Times (1936) , as a totally instrumental, unnamed composition (although it was the music for a sequence of the film in which smiling was the emphasis. Much later the song became widely known as the named song that we came to know in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as "Smile" after lyrics had been added by James John Turner Phillips (as John Turner ) & Geoffrey Parsons in the 1950s, at John Turner's Peter Maurice Music Company in the late 1950s. Chaplin was known to be less than pleased that his little melody was re-written with lyrics.
  • 20 Biographical Movies
  • 68 Print Biographies
  • 25 Portrayals
  • 158 Articles
  • 4 Pictorials
  • 16 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

  • Trivia Most people (now and during his lifetime) believe that Chaplin had brown eyes because they had only seen him in black and white with black eye makeup on. It fact they were very blue. Chaplin remarked in his autobiography that people meeting him for the first time were always struck by his blue eyes. And his future wife Oona Chaplin wrote "Just met Charlie Chaplin. What blue eyes he has!" to a girlhood friend in 1942.
  • Quotes All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
  • Trademarks A tramp with toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice.
  • The Little Tramp
  • Salaries The Tramp ( 1915 ) $1,250 /week
  • When did Charles Chaplin die?
  • How did Charles Chaplin die?
  • How old was Charles Chaplin when he died?

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Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English filmmaker who wrote, acted, and directed his films. His "Little Tramp" character remains an iconic comedy creation. He was arguably the most popular performer of the silent film era.

Fast Facts: Charlie Chaplin

  • Full Name: Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Knight of the British Empire
  • Occupation: Film actor, director, writer
  • Born: April 16, 1889 in England
  • Died: December 25, 1977, in Vaud, Switzerland
  • Parents: Hannah and Charles Chaplin, Sr.
  • Spouses: Mildred Harris (m. 1918; div. 1920), Lita Grey (m. 1924; div. 1927), Paulette Goddard (m. 1936; div. 1942), Oona O'Neill (m. 1943)
  • Children: Norman, Susan, Stephan, Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette, Christopher
  • Selected Films: "The Gold Rush" (1925), "City Lights" (1931), "Modern Times" (1936), "The Great Dictator" (1940)

Early Life and Stage Career

Born into a family of music hall entertainers, Charlie Chaplin first appeared on stage when he was five years old. It was a one-time appearance taking over from his mother, Hannah, but by age nine, he'd caught the entertainment bug.

Chaplin grew up in poverty. He was sent to a workhouse when he was seven. When his mother spent two months in an insane asylum, the nine-year-old Charlie was sent with his brother, Sydney, to live with his alcoholic father. When Charlie was 16, his mother was committed to an institution permanently.

At age 14, Chaplin began performing on stage in plays in London's West End. He quickly became a noted comedy performer. In 1910, the Fred Karno comedy company sent Chaplin on a 21-month tour of the American vaudeville circuit. The company included another notable performer, Stan Laurel.

First Movie Success

During a second vaudeville tour, the New York Motion Picture Company invited Charlie Chaplin to be part of their Keystone Studios troupe. He began working with Keystone under Mack Sennett in January 2014. His first appearance on film was in the 1914 short "Making a Living."

Chaplin soon created his legendary "Little Tramp" character. The character was introduced to audiences in February 1914 in "Kid Auto Races at Venice" and "Mabel's Strange Predicament." The films were so successful with audiences that Mack Sennett invited his new star to direct his own films. The first short directed by Charlie Chaplin was "Caught in the Rain," released in May 1914. He would continue to direct most of his films for the rest of his career.

November 1914's "Tillie's Punctured Romance," starring Marie Dressler, included Charlie Chaplin's first feature film appearance. It was a box office success causing Chaplin to ask for a raise. Mack Sennett thought it was too expensive and his young star moved to the Essanay studio of Chicago.

While working for Essanay, Chaplin recruited Edna Purviance to be his co-star. She would go on to appear in 35 of his movies. By the time the one-year contract with Essanay expired, Charlie Chaplin was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. In December 1915, he signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation worth $670,000 a year (approximately $15.4 million today).

Silent Star

Located in Los Angeles, Mutual introduced Charlie Chaplin to Hollywood. His stardom continued to grow. He moved to First National for the years 1918-1922. Among his memorable films of the era are his World War I movie "Shoulder Arms," which placed the Little Tramp in the trenches. "The Kid," released in 1921, was Chaplin's longest film to date at 68 minutes, and it included child star Jackie Coogan.

In 1922, at the end of his contract with First National, Charlie Chaplin became an independent producer laying groundwork for future filmmakers to take artistic control over their work. "The Gold Rush," released in 1925 and his second independent feature, became one of the most successful movies of his career. It included key scenes such as the Little Tramp, a gold rush prospector, eating a boot and an impromptu dance of dinner rolls speared on forks. Chaplin considered it his best work.

Charlie Chaplin released his next film "The Circus" in 1928. It was another success and earned him a special award at the first Academy Awards celebration. However, personal issues including a divorce controversy, made the filming of "The Circus" difficult, and Chaplin rarely spoke about it, omitting it entirely from his autobiography.

Despite the addition of sound to films, Charlie Chaplin resolutely continued to work on his next movie "City Lights" as a silent picture. Released in 1931, it was a critical and commercial success. Many film historians considered it his finest achievement and his best use of pathos in his work. One concession to sound was the introduction of a musical score, which Chaplin composed himself.

The final mostly silent Chaplin movie was "Modern Times" released in 1936. It included sound effects and a musical score as well as one song sung in gibberish. The underlying political commentary on the dangers of automation in the workplace prompted criticism from some viewers. While praised for its physical comedy, the movie was a commercial disappointment.

Controversial Films and Reduced Popularity

The 1940s became one of the most controversial decades of Charlie Chaplin's career. It began with his broad satire of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe before World War II . "The Great Dictator" is Chaplin's most overtly political film. He believed that it was necessary to laugh at Hitler. Some audiences disagreed, and the film was a controversial release. The movie included the first spoken dialogue in a Chaplin piece. Successful with critics, "The Great Dictator" earned five Academy Award nominations including for Best Picture and Best Actor.

Legal difficulties filled most of the first half of the 1940s. An affair with aspiring actress Joan Barry resulted in an FBI investigation and a trial based on an alleged violation of the Mann Act, a law prohibiting the transportation of women across state boundaries for sexual purposes. A court acquitted Chaplin two weeks after the trial began. A paternity suit followed less than a year later that determined Chaplin was the father of Barry's child, Carol Ann. Blood tests that concluded it wasn't true were not admissible in the trial.

The personal controversy intensified with the announcement in 1945, amidst the paternity trials, that Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the daughter of acclaimed playwright Eugene O'Neill. Chaplin was then 54, but both appeared to have found their soul mates. The couple remained married until Chaplin's death, and they had eight children together.

Charlie Chaplin finally returned to movie screens in 1947 with "Monsieur Verdoux," a black comedy about an unemployed clerk who marries and murders widows to support his family. Suffering from audience responses to his personal troubles, Chaplin faced the most negative critical and commercial reactions of his career. In the wake of the release of the film, he was openly called a Communist for his political views, and many Americans raised questions about his reluctance to apply for American citizenship. Today, some observers consider "Monsieur Verdoux" one of Charlie Chaplin's best movies.

Exile From the United States

Chaplin's next film, "Limelight," was an autobiographical work and was more serious than most of his movies. It set politics aside but addressed his loss of popularity in the twilight of his career. It includes the only onscreen appearance with legendary silent film comedian Buster Keaton.

Charlie Chaplin decided to hold the 1952 premiere of "Limelight" in London, the setting for the movie. While he was gone, U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked his permit to re-enter the U.S. Although the Attorney General told the press that he had a "pretty good case" against Chaplin, files released in the 1980s showed there was no real evidence to support keeping him out.

Despite European success, "Limelight" met a hostile reception in the U.S. including organized boycotts. Chaplin did not return to the U.S. for 20 years.

Final Films and Return to the United States

Charlie Chaplin established a permanent residence in Switzerland in 1953. His next film, 1957's "A King in New York," addressed much of his experience with accusations of being a Communist. It was a sometimes bitter political satire, and Chaplin refused to release it in the U.S. The final Charlie Chaplin movie, "A Countess from Hong Kong," appeared in 1967, and it was a romantic comedy. It co-starred two of the world's biggest movie stars, Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, and Chaplin himself only appeared briefly. Unfortunately, it was a commercial failure and received negative reviews.

In 1972, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited Charlie Chaplin to return to the U.S. to receive a special Oscar for his lifetime of achievements. Initially reluctant, he decided to return and earned a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest ever at the Academy Awards ceremony.

While he continued to work, Chaplin's health declined. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1975. He died on Christmas Day, December 25, 1977, after having a stroke in his sleep.

Charlie Chaplin remains one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. He changed the course of comedy in film by introducing elements of pathos and sadness that deepened the emotional impact of his work. Four of his movies, "The Gold Rush," "City Lights," "Modern Times," and "The Great Dictator" are often included on lists of the best films of all time.

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Charlie Chaplin Biography

Born: April 16, 1889 London, England Died: December 25, 1977 Vevey, Switzerland English actor, director, and writer

The film actor, director, and writer Charlie Chaplin was one of the most original creators in the history of movies. His performances as "the tramp"—a sympathetic comic character with ill-fitting clothes and a mustache—won admiration from audiences across the world.

Rough childhood

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in a poor district of London, England, on April 16, 1889. His mother, Hannah Hill Chaplin, a talented singer, actress, and piano player, spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr. was a fairly successful singer until he began drinking. After his parents separated, Charlie and his half-brother, Sidney, spent most of their childhood in orphanages, where they often went hungry and were beaten if they misbehaved. Barely able to read and write, Chaplin left school to tour with a group of comic entertainers. Later he starred in a comedy act. By the age of nineteen he had become one of the most popular music-hall performers in England.

Arrives in the United States

In 1910 Chaplin went to the United States to tour in A Night in an English Music Hall. He was chosen by filmmaker Mack Sennett (1884–1960) to appear in the silent Keystone comedy series. In these early movies ( Making a Living, Tillie's Punctured Romance ), Chaplin changed his style. He stopped overacting and became more delicate and precise in his movements. He created the role of "the tramp."

Appearing in over thirty short films, Chaplin realized that the speed and craziness of Sennett's productions was holding back his personal talents. He left to work at the Essanay Studios. Some of his films during this period were His New Job, The Tramp, and The Champion, notable for their comic and sympathetic moments. His 1917 films for the Mutual Company, including One A.M. , The Pilgrim, The Cure, Easy Street, and The Immigrant, displayed sharper humor. In 1918 Chaplin built his own studio and signed a million-dollar contract with National Films, producing silent-screen classics such as A Dog's Life, comparing the life of a dog with that of a tramp; Shoulder Arms, which poked fun at World War I (1914–18); and The Kid, a touching story of slum life.

Established star

In 1923 Chaplin, D. W. Griffith (1875–1948), Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1937), and Mary Pickford (1893–1979) formed United Artists (UA) to produce high-quality feature-length movies. A Woman of Paris (1923), a drama, was followed by two of Chaplin's funniest films, The Gold Rush (1925) and The Circus (1928). Chaplin directed City Lights (1931), a beautiful tale about the tramp's friendship with a drunken millionaire and a blind flower girl. Many critics consider it his finest work. Although movies had made the change over to sound, City Lights was silent except for one scene in which the tramp hic-cups with a tin whistle in his throat while trying to listen politely to a concert.

Modern Times (1936), a farce (broad comedy with an unbelievable plot) about the cruelty and greed of modern industry, contains some of the funniest gags and comic sequences in film history, the most famous being the tramp's battle with an eating machine gone crazy. Chaplin's character of Hynkel in The Great Dictator (1940) is a powerful satire (the use of humor to criticize a person or institution) of German military leader Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). It was the last film using the tramp, and ends with Chaplin pleading for love and freedom.

It was with these more involved productions of the 1930s and 1940s that Chaplin achieved true greatness as a film director. Monsieur Verdoux, directed by Chaplin in 1947 (and condemned by the American Legion of Decency), is one of the strongest moral statements ever put on the screen. Long before European filmmakers taught audiences to appreciate the role of the writer and director, Chaplin revealed his many talents by handling both roles in his productions.

Political views stir trouble

Charlie Chaplin. Reproduced by permission of AP/Wide World Photos.

During the next five years Chaplin devoted himself to Limelight (1952), a gentle and sometimes sad work based in part on his own life. It was much different from Monsieur Verdoux. "I was … still not convinced," Chaplin wrote, "that I had completely lost the affection of the American people, that they could be so politically conscious or so humorless as to boycott [refuse to pay attention to] anyone that could amuse them." Further hurting Chaplin's image was a much-publicized lawsuit brought against him by a woman who claimed he was the father of her child. Although Chaplin proved he was not the child's father, reaction to the charges turned many people against him.

While on vacation in Europe in 1952, Chaplin was notified by the U.S. attorney general that his reentry into the United States would be challenged. He was charged with committing immoral acts and being politically suspicious. Chaplin, who had never become a United States citizen, sold all of his American possessions and settled in Geneva, Switzerland, with his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill, daughter of the American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953), and their children. In 1957 Chaplin visited England to direct The King in New York, which was never shown in the United States. My Autobiography (the story of his own life) was published in 1964. Most critics considered Chaplin's 1967 film, A Countess from Hong Kong, a disaster.

Return to the United States

By the 1970s times had changed, and Chaplin was again recognized for his rich contribution to film. He returned to the United States in 1972, where he was honored by major tributes in New York City and Hollywood, California, including receiving a special Academy Award. In 1975 he became Sir Charles Chaplin after Queen Elizabeth II (1926–) of England knighted him. Two years later, on December 25, 1977, Chaplin died in his sleep in Switzerland.

All of Chaplin's works display the physical grace, ability to express feeling, and intellectual vision possessed by the finest actors. A film about Chaplin's life, titled Chaplin, was released in 1992.

For More Information

Chaplin, Charlie. Charlie Chaplin's Own Story. Edited by Harry M. Geduld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Chaplin, Charlie. My Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964. Reprint, New York: Plume, 1992.

Hale, Georgia. Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1995.

Lynn, Kenneth S. Charlie Chaplin and His Times. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Milton, Joyce. Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Schroeder, Alan. Charlie Chaplin: The Beauty of Silence. New York: Franklin Watts, 1997.

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Biography Online

Biography

Charlie Chaplin Biography

actor

 “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot”

– Charlie Chaplin

Short bio Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin was born in London, 16 April 1889, to parents who worked in the entertainment industry. At an early age, his alcoholic father passed away, and later his mother had a breakdown and was taken to an asylum. This left Charlie and his brother to fend for themselves. Following in their parent’s footsteps, they were drawn to the musical hall, and Charlie gained a prominent reputation as a performer.

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin had tremendous intensity. He would finance, write and direct all his films himself. He was a great perfectionist and would make his actors perform scenes up to 100 times to get it just right. Yet he also liked to improvise much of his performances and would not stick rigidly to a script.

Charlie Chaplin

The film was made one year before the US entered the war against Germany, and was controversial at a time when anti-Semitism was rife in America. Despite his parody of Hitler in this film, Chaplin refused to publicly endorse the war effort in 1942 – causing the authorities to become suspicious of his political leanings.

“Wars, conflict, it’s all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.”

Monsieur Verdoux (1947);

Charlie Chaplin

“Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America’s yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.”

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin later said he was not a Communist but refused to condemn Communists because he disliked the nature of the McCarthy era.

“Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.” – My Autobiography (1964)

Chaplin had great comic talent; this was a talent that shone through in his silent films but also in later years.

“I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.”

Charlie Chaplin, as quoted in The Observer (17 June 1960)

Chaplin was put forward for a knighthood in 1956, but, it was blocked by the Conservative cabinet who feared a backlash from the American government.

Chaplin was eventually knighted in 1975. He also was awarded an Oscar in 1972 for his music score in the 1952 film Limelight . He was also awarded an honorary award in 1972 for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.”

He came out of exile to receive the award and the longest standing ovation in the history of the Oscars.

Charlie Chaplin had a turbulent personal life. He had 11 children with three different women and had several other girlfriends and marriages.

He died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of Charlie Chaplin”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 30th Nov. 2009. Last updated 16 February 2018.

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'America, I am coming to conquer you' … Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925).

Charlie Chaplin by Peter Ackroyd review – divine comedy, difficult man

"I n this year, 1915," begins a chapter halfway through Peter Ackroyd's concise, compelling new biography, "Chaplin became the most famous man in the world." This fact is so extraordinary – so improbable, in the light of his origins – that it is allowed to stand alone, a paragraph in itself. Chaplin was 26 years old in 1915. He had been born into south London poverty, the offspring of an unknown father and a mother whose brief career as a singer and dancer came to an end when Charlie was a boy; from then on, until her death in an asylum in Los Angeles, her sanity came and went. Before long, the man she had been married to at the time of Charlie's birth, and whose name he bore and made immortal, dumped her, as did several subsequent paramours; when she was incapable of looking after Charlie and his brother, they stayed with relatives or lodged in the workhouse. His education was skimpy and fitful; it ended at the age of nine, when, having taught himself clog-dancing, he first took to the stage as one of the Eight Lancashire Lads , and nearly became part of a double act called Bristol and Chaplin, the Millionaire Tramps. A millionaire tramp, of course, is exactly what he would end up as. But not without having put in some serious slog on the way.

After gruelling hard work on the road and a spell as a boy actor, he signed up with the king of comedy, a tough taskmaster called Fred Karno , under whose unrelenting tutelage in the art of physical comedy his genius as a performer first fully emerged. By the age of 20 he was a star, billed as Chaplin the Inebriate – an act studied at close quarters from his stepfather. The character of the drunk, Chaplin said, possessed him; playing it, he experienced a kind of out-of-body sensation: "It was almost a psychic sort of thing." When Karno took the troupe to Paris, Debussy invited Chaplin to his box. " Monsieur Chaplin ," he said, " vous êtes instinctivement un musicien et un danseur ." And funny, he might have added; deeply, uproariously, side-huggingly funny. On stage, at any rate: Chaplin seems to have been no fun at all in life – morose, private, obsessed. He played his violin and his cello; he read Schopenhauer; he had sex with bad girls; and he planned ever more fantastical comedy conceptions. All along, his heart was set on world domination. "America!" he shouted as the ship berthed in Quebec for Karno's first tour there in 1910, "I am coming to conquer you. Every man woman and child shall have my name on their lips: Charles Spencer Chaplin!" Their first offering, The Wow-Wows , was a no-no, but a quick revival of their old standby A Night at an English Music Hall knocked 'em sideways, and it was Chaplin above all who shone. On their next tour, in 1913, the company manager received a life-changing telegram: "IS THERE A MAN NAMED CHAFFIN IN YOUR COMPANY OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT?" Mack Sennett of the Keystone Cops needed to replace his refractory No 1 male comedian; Chaplin never hesitated for a moment, and left the stage for good as soon as he could.

His first film was Making a Living ; his second, Kid Auto Races at Venice , gave the world the character of the Little Tramp, who was an instant hit with the public from the beginning. But Chaplin was not easy to work with; his unrelenting perfectionism annoyed his directors and his fellow performers. He was already indispensable to Sennett, however, who acceded to Chaplin's demand to be allowed to direct his own films. It was then that his demon really manifested itself. He spent two, three, sometimes 10 times as much time on each film as his colleagues, and the result was double, triple, 10 times as popular with the public. His second two-reeler as a director, Caught in a Cabaret , was hailed by New York Dramatic Mirror as "the funniest picture that has ever been produced"; thereafter he produced film after film, each seeming to outstrip the other in invention and comic frenzy. Starting from the most tenuous idea, he worked at white heat, improvising, discarding unpromising ideas, refining successful ones. Chaplin was not interested in the possibilities of the camera – it was character, action and narrative that fascinated him. He was giving the cinema its foundations, its first classics, filled with poetry, pain, passion but all within the parameters of consummately achieved comedy. As Ackroyd remarks, "he, like Shakespeare, had the inestimable advantage of being an instinctive artist in the preliminary years of a new art".

Creative inspiration at this level is terrifying, a kind of divine fire; it can rarely be sustained. Chaplin constantly dreaded the loss of his powers of invention, but for nearly 30 years of non-stop work, they did not fail him; it is arguable that but for the coming of sound, they might never have failed him. The introduction of the word into the equation diluted and diminished his genius. Genius is not too strong a word to use, in all three capacities – as director, as scenarist and, supremely, as performer. In this area, his virtuosity is on the level of a Paganini, an Art Tatum , but it is so much more multifarious, combining the clowning of a Grock or a Grimaldi with the feather-light terpsichorean skills of an Astaire and the acting abilities of a Garbo or an Olivier . The final sequence of City Lights , in which, as Ackroyd says, the Tramp, left alone, simultaneously expresses exaltation and terror was, said James Agee, America's best film critic, "enough to shrivel the heart to see, and … the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies". Increasingly Chaplin tackled what was real for working people, his core audience: the Depression, alienation in big cities, the heartlessness of modern factory life. In exquisitely choreographed form, the Tramp embodied the basic needs of humankind – love, food, self-respect – as well as its modi vivendi : jealousy, rage, cupidity, lust.

As a man, Chaplin was barely human at all. He surrendered to his obsessions. This tiny, ithyphallic man – Ackroyd discreetly alludes to his legendary genital endowment and his unflagging but joyless sexual marathons – was, like many of the dominant figures of any given time, driven by the need to impose himself on the world, to enforce on it his definition of reality. In art, he succeeded in these ambitions; in life, he failed. People had a way of fighting back, particularly the women with whom he was involved, the majority of whom were childish, doll-like figures whose innocence he sought to possess but who had the disloyalty, in his view, to become pregnant, thus compelling him to marry them. After that, whatever feelings he had for them turned to hate. This pattern led him twice to the divorce courts, in which extremely explicit accusations regarding his sexual demands were made very public. "A grey-haired old buzzard," the counsel for the prosecution said in a paternity case brought against him by one of his mistresses, "a little runt of a Svengali … a debaucher". Unsurprisingly, the script he was working on at the time, Monsieur Verdoux , is informed with savage misogyny; in it, Verdoux, played by Chaplin, serially marries women and then kills them, bringing back their money to his real wife, who is pretty – and blind, which is no doubt how he would have preferred his women.

In the end, on a trip to Europe, he was barred from re-entering the US, on the basis both of his supposed immorality and his communistic affiliations. During the war and after, Chaplin had made statements of solidarity with Soviet Russia that became toxic during the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the late 40s and early 50s. Although there was no hard evidence against him, he was publicly reviled. He had by now, in his early 60s, run out of creative energy. His first film with sound, The Great Dictator , a whimsical but nonetheless oddly powerful anti-Hitler fable (made in the face of considerable hostility from Hollywood), shows a remarkably assured response to the challenge of what was in effect for him a new medium; the second, Monsieur Verdoux , is mordantly elegant, but the third, Limelight , his last film to be made in America, and full of deep nostalgia for the old days of music hall, is verbose and flaccid. The last two films, both made in Britain, are simply feeble. He retired into a relatively becalmed old age, coddled by his last wife – Eugene O'Neill 's daughter, Oona – though there could still be outbursts and tantrums; his strict control over his children he never relinquished.

It is hard not to see Chaplin as essentially childlike, though not in any sentimental sense of the phrase. Like Dickens, his childhood was arrested at a young age, after which he had to fight the world if he was not to go under. His life was governed by the little boy's need to put himself beyond the reach of circumstances. He hated his dependency on anyone else – and film, of all arts, is the one most dependent on cooperation. "I did it all!" cried Chaplin, but of course he couldn't. Ackroyd sees him as utterly self-absorbed – for him, others were merely tools of his need. Like Wagner, whom he resembles in startling ways, he was a kind of demiurge, creating a world in the furnace of his art. For The Immigrant he shot 40,000 feet of film, which he reduced to 1,800. This is his real genius: his sense of the mutability of the material. He worked with film as a sculptor works with clay. And such was his success that he could take as long as he wanted, retake as much as needed, sack actors, rebuild sets, until he finally arrived at the result he needed. The whole of Chaplin's work is a triumph of the will. No wonder he studied Schopenhauer so avidly: the very title of the German philosopher's masterwork, The World as Will and Representation , must have spoken to him deeply. The miracle and the mystery of Chaplin is that the work that results from this epic exercise of will is so playful.

There have been more analytically incisive books on Chaplin – Parker Tyler's superb Chaplin: Last of the Clowns , for instance – and more comprehensive ones, David Robinson's monumental biography among them, but Ackroyd's is the most haunting. His method, filtering the life through the prism of his novelist's imagination, plunges you, in unsettling fashion, right into the subject's own experience. His assessment of the films is perceptive, though he is unduly dismissive of Chaplin's My Autobiography , the first third of which, reissued by the publisher as My Early Days , is one of the masterpieces of theatre literature. Ackroyd is obsessed by what his publisher calls "our great London imagination" and rather tenuously attempts to recruit Chaplin to the cause. He tells us that when Chaplin went back to London "he was going back to the source of his life and inspiration", but it is not clear whether he is speaking of his subject or himself.

Ackroyd also has a tendency to think that when actors aren't acting, they are nothing. He should perhaps have remembered what Dickens said about his friend Fechter : "The more real the man, the better the actor." Chaplin was real enough, all right: his reality may have been somewhat alarming, but there was nothing false about it. But Ackroyd really knows this already: his analysis of the Tramp – the "little fellow", Chaplin's greatest creation – is brilliant and unsparing. "He can be cunning, cruel and hostile; he has a taste for brutality; he bites his opponents and can engage in unchecked malice; he can conjure up a sickly grin or the imbecilic smile of a drunk … he sticks out his nose and he sticks out his tongue; he exhibits an almost elfin wickedness; he is leering and lascivious, propositioning almost every woman whom he encounters." In other words, he is all of us. "He colludes with his audience all the time." Ackroyd sees all of this with clarity; he summons up all of the pity and the terror of Chaplin's life; above all, perhaps, he sees how close to insanity Chaplin was. Often, his cameraman reported, the comedian would quietly sing to himself: "Oh ever since that fatal night / Me wife's gone mad; / Awfully queer, / Touched just here." And on the last line, with great deliberation, he would slowly raise his hand and tap his temple. Chilling, wonderful stuff.

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Exploring the Timeless Satire of Charlie Chaplin’s "The Great Dictator" in a World of Modern Tyrants

I n the annals of cinematic history, few films have dared to tackle the subject of dictators and the havoc they wreak with the audacity and incisive wit of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.” Released in 1940, this audacious satire took direct aim at Adolf Hitler, an act of artistic defiance that came at a time when the United States was still at peace with Nazi Germany.

Chaplin, the silent film icon who had captivated audiences as the Little Tramp, stepped into the era of sound films with a feature that was both a stark condemnation of fascism and a masterful display of comedy. He played dual roles as the Jewish barber, a figure harkening back to his beloved Tramp, and Adenoid Hynkel, the film’s blustering Hitler-like despot.

The film emerged amid considerable trepidation from Hollywood studios, which, up until that point, had largely avoided overt criticism of Hitler due to financial entanglements with the German film market and fear of isolationist backlash in the U.S. Even United Artists, which Chaplin co-founded, was concerned about the film’s potential to offend and the impact it might have on international relations. Yet, fueled by a blend of personal conviction and creative independence, Chaplin pressed on, self-financing much of the production.

Chaplin’s satire did not pull punches. It featured Hynkel delivering nonsensical tirades in a mock-German gibberish, humorously capturing the furor of Hitler’s oratory style. The film’s humor was not just surface-level slapstick; it was layered with a poignant examination of what made such figures both compelling and terrifying.

The film’s climax came not from a comedic routine but from a sincere monologue that Chaplin, breaking character, delivered directly to the audience. Speaking not as Hynkel but as the barber, he made a plea for universal brotherhood, compassion, and democracy, a monologue that resonated with its call for U.S. intervention in Europe at a time when the horrors of war were escalating.

Despite the challenges and resistance faced during its production, “The Great Dictator” became one of Chaplin’s most commercially successful films. It was a critical triumph that earned nominations for five Academy Awards, including Outstanding Production and Best Actor for Chaplin himself. It also stood out as an emblem of Hollywood’s potential to tackle pressing social and political issues without succumbing to external pressures, a testament to the power of art to defy tyranny.

Relevant articles:

– TIL In 1940, Charlie Chaplin produced and financed the film ‘The Great Dictator’, which mocked Hitler. Hollywood studios were hesitant to produce the film due to their financial relations with Germany. ‘The Great Dictator’ is considered one of Chaplin’s greatest works.

– The Great Dictator , Wikipedia

– What Charlie Chaplin Got Right About Satirizing Hitler , Vanity Fair, Oct 18, 2019

In the annals of cinematic history, few films have dare […]

Chaplin - A Musical Biography

“Chaplin’s musical genius is that of organized revolt against conventions, combined with perfect feeling for the real thing.” - Ray Rasch

Charles Chaplin recalled that in his childhood his mother would take him to the theatre, where he would stand in the wings listening to her and the other acts of the music hall shows. At home, in the happier times, she would entertain him and his step-brother by singing, dancing, reciting and imitating other artists. His own very first appearance on the stage at the age of five was precipitated when her voice broke in front of a particularly tough crowd. Charlie, already a natural performer, it seems, was pushed on in her stead and sang two songs, pausing only to pick up coins thrown by the surprised and amused audience.

A young Hannah Chaplin in stage costume

In 1898, aged 9, he began his own music hall career with a troupe of juvenile clog dancers, the Eight Lancashire Lads. He was to remain in the theatre, alternating work and periods of unemployment, until he joined Fred Karno’s company. As a rising star with Karno he went to America in 1910 to tour the vaudeville circuits. Stan Laurel, a fellow Karno performer, recalled that during their 1912 US tour Charlie “carried his violin wherever he could. Had the strings reversed so he could play left handed, and he would practise for hours. He bought a ‘cello once and used to carry it around with him. At these times he would always dress like a musician, a long fawn coloured overcoat with green velvet cuffs and collar and a slouch hat. And he’d let his hair grow long at the back. We never knew what he was going to do next.” Chaplin later wrote that “each week I took lessons from the theatre conductor or from someone he recommended. I had great ambitions to be a concert artist, or, failing that, to use [my violin] in a vaudeville act, but as time went on I realised that I could never achieve excellence, so I gave it up.”

Chaplin arriving in Sacramento, California on 5 June 1911 during his first US tour with the Fred Karno company

At the end of 1913 Chaplin left Karno to remain in America and work in moving pictures. While working at the Mutual Film Company he had the opportunity to meet musicians such as Paderewski and Leopold Godowsky who visited the now famous movie star. In 1916 he set up his own music publishing company. “We printed two thousand copies of two very bad songs and musical compositions of mine – then we waited for customers. The enterprise was collegiate and quite mad. I think we sold three copies, two to pedestrians who happened to pass our office on their way downstairs.” In fact the Charles Chaplin Music Company closed shop after publishing three Chaplin songs: Oh! That Cello, There’s Always One You Can’t Forget, and The Peace Patrol.

Cover of

Film was obviously Chaplin’s most important concern, and in 1918 he moved into his own studios and could exert total production control.

In the silent period it was usual to commission professional arrangers to devise suitable musical accompaniments for major films. These were generally compiled from published music, and performed live by whatever instrumental combinations each individual cinema could afford. Chaplin always had an interest in the music for his feature films. He approved and co-compiled scores for A Woman of Paris (1923) with Fredrick Stahlberg, and with Karli Elinor for The Gold Rush (1925). However not until City Lights did he complete a full-length score – a début heard by millions around the world when the film was released.

With Alf Reeves, manager of the Chaplin Studios, circa 1918

According to conductor-composer (and Chaplin music expert) Timothy Brock, Chaplin was a born tunesmith with real composing talent. “Even if he could neither read nor write music, complex, sophisticated compositions were complete in his head. His only problem was to get his collaborators to understand and transpose onto paper what he could hum or sketch out for them on the piano.” Chaplin remembered the only happy thing in his view about the arrival of the talkies as being “that I could control the music, so I composed my own. I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grave and charm, to express sentiment ….”

As Brock explains: “For his scores, Chaplin was aided by what he termed as a ‘musical associate.’ This was a person who, to varying degrees of participation, helped with the notation and orchestration of his compositions. Chaplin played both the violin and piano by ear, but, like many of the great popular composers of any era, was unable to transcribe the notes on paper. Yet however constrained in his ability to notate his work, nearly every score has the indelible Chaplin mark. No matter who the associate, the musical structure and approach remains distinctively his own. Furthermore, the soundtrack recordings contain extremely specific stylistic choices unique to Chaplin. For example, as a violinist himself, he required the string player to mimic his style of playing and his unambiguous traits are ever-present in the extended violin solos in each of his scores. The majority of the extended violin solos (and every Chaplin film score has them) are written in a beautifully odd, yet specific, manner. His string writing in general contains a unique set of principles revealing that he was a composer bent on sound, and not technical affability.”

After City Lights, Chaplin composed the scores for all of his films. As Brock remarks, “His writing was so moment-specific, so tightly synchronized, that one can nearly follow a Chaplin film by only hearing its score without the benefit of the image.”

With Meredith Willson, 1940

The Gold Rush, originally released in 1925 as a silent film, was re-released in 1942 with a narration by Chaplin and a musical score that he composed. The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux followed. Later he took obvious pleasure in creating the pastiches of Edwardian music hall songs and acts for Limelight (1952), and later writing parodies of 50s pop songs for A King in New York (1957). His interest in pastiche and parody is not limited to the music, as the lyrics too are full of humour and word-play.

The Chaplin family left Hollywood in 1952. In his home in Switzerland Chaplin continued to develop his love and knowledge of music and to entertain musicians, among them Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Rudolf Serkin, and Clara Haskil. His daughter Josephine has nostalgic memories of how, regularly after supper, he would insist that the lights were turned off, and that the family listen by candle-light to record after record of classical music.

With Clara Haskil at Chaplin's home in Switzerland

The Chaplin family archives hold many audio tapes of Chaplin working on the piano, improvising and humming as he composed. He once said that even if he did not remember how a tune went, he could remember the pattern it made on the black and white notes of the keyboard. Between 1958 and the early 1970s he composed and recorded music for all his other silent 1918-1928 films: Shoulder Arms, The Pilgrim and A Dog’s Life (re-released together as The Chaplin Revue), The Circus, The Kid, The Idle Class, Pay Day, A Day’s Pleasure, Sunnyside and A Woman of Paris. Many of his tunes were hits, in particular those from A Countess from Hong Kong sung by Petula Clark in the late 1960s. Smile from Modern Times has been recorded by hundreds of artists, from Nat King Cole to Michael Jackson.

“To work is to live - and I love to live,” Chaplin, aged 87, told journalists on June 30, 1976. He died a year and a half later on Christmas day 1977. The music he composed until nearly the end of his life is a testament to his love for work, and for life.

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COMMENTS

  1. Charlie Chaplin

    Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 - 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures.

  2. Charlie Chaplin

    Charlie Chaplin was a comedic British actor who became one of the biggest stars of the 20th century's silent-film era. Updated: May 5, 2021 Photo: General Film Company/Getty Images (1889-1977)...

  3. Charlie Chaplin

    Born: April 16, 1889, London, England Died: December 25, 1977, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland (aged 88) Founder: United Artists Corporation Awards And Honors: Academy Award (1973) Academy Award (1972) Academy Award (1928) Academy Award (1973): Music (Original Dramatic Score) Honorary Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1972)

  4. Charles Chaplin

    Overview Born April 16, 1889 · Walworth, London, England, UK Died December 25, 1977 · Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland (stroke) Birth name Charles Spencer Chaplin Nicknames Charlie Charlot The Little Tramp Height 5′ 4″ (1.63 m) Mini Bio

  5. Charlie Chaplin : Overview of His Life

    Overview of His Life Childhood Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London, England, on April 16th, 1889. His father was a versatile vocalist and actor; and his mother, known under the stage name of Lily Harley, was an attractive actress and singer, who gained a reputation for her work in the light opera field.

  6. Charlie Chaplin

    Sir Charles Spencer " Charlie " Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 - 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer. He was famous in silent movies (where there was no talking or sound). He acted, directed, scripted, and produced many of them. Charlie Chaplin was a performer for almost 70 years.

  7. Charlie Chaplin Biographical Timeline

    April 21, 2020 April 16, 1889 - Charlie Chaplin is born in South London, England to Hannah and Charles Chaplin Sr. Both are music hall entertainers. 1899 - At the age of 10, a young Chaplin...

  8. Charlie Chaplin Biography

    Premiere: 7/14/1986 Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest and widely loved silent movie stars. From "Easy Street" (1917) to "Modern Times" (1936), he made many of the funniest and most popular...

  9. Charles Chaplin

    Charles Chaplin. Writer: The Great Dictator. Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a ...

  10. Charlie Chaplin : articles

    Overview of His Life Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London, England, on April 16th, 1889. His father was a versatile vocalist and actor; and his mother, known under the stage name of Lily Harley, was an attractive actress and singer, who gained a reputation for her work in the light opera field.

  11. Charlie Chaplin, Legendary Movie Comedian

    Charlie Chaplin finally returned to movie screens in 1947 with "Monsieur Verdoux," a black comedy about an unemployed clerk who marries and murders widows to support his family. Suffering from audience responses to his personal troubles, Chaplin faced the most negative critical and commercial reactions of his career.

  12. Charlie Chaplin: Biography, Actor, & Legacy

    Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was a English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to prominence during the silent film era. Renowned for his iconic character "The Tramp," Chaplin became a global sensation through his innovative and timeless contributions to cinema. His masterpieces include "The Kid," "City Lights," and "Modern Times."

  13. Charlie Chaplin Biography

    Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in a poor district of London, England, on April 16, 1889. His mother, Hannah Hill Chaplin, a talented singer, actress, and piano player, spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr. was a fairly successful singer until he began drinking.

  14. Charlie Chaplin Biography -Biography Online

    Charlie Chaplin (1889 - 1977) Sir Charles Spencer 'Charlie' Chaplin was a versatile actor, director and music producer whose prolific entertainment career spanned over 75 years. Influential film roles included the films, The Kid (1921) and The Great Dictator (1940) "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot"

  15. Charlie Chaplin by Peter Ackroyd review

    Simon Callow. "I n this year, 1915," begins a chapter halfway through Peter Ackroyd's concise, compelling new biography, "Chaplin became the most famous man in the world." This fact is so ...

  16. My Autobiography (Chaplin book)

    [2] References ^ Chaplin, Charlie (2012). My Autobiography. ISBN 978-1612191928. ^ "The top 25 most compelling Hollywood autobiographies-ranked!". The Guardian. 2 April 2020. This article about a biographical or autobiographical book on an actor is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

  17. Charlie Chaplin : Books

    Chaplin's War Trilogy - Wes D. Gehring. The book examines Charlie Chaplin's evolving perspective on dark comedy in his three war films, Shoulder Arms (1918), The Great Dictator (1940), and Monsieur Verdoux (1947). In the first he uses the genre in a groundbreaking manner but yet for a pro-war cause.

  18. Charlie Chaplin

    Watch a short biography video about Charlie Chaplin's life, including his impoverished childhood, his success in silent films such as "City Lights," "Modern ...

  19. Chaplin (film)

    Chaplin is a 1992 biographical comedy-drama film about the life of English comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.It was produced and directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, Dan Aykroyd, Penelope Ann Miller and Kevin Kline.It also features Charlie Chaplin's own daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, in the role of his mother, Hannah Chaplin.

  20. Charlie Chaplin : Official Website

    Biography, Filmography, News, Live Performances dates, Video Clips and Trailers, Music and Song Lyrics (Smile), Products, a Community.

  21. Exploring the Timeless Satire of Charlie Chaplin's "The Great ...

    Story by Noah Smith. I n the annals of cinematic history, few films have dared to tackle the subject of dictators and the havoc they wreak with the audacity and incisive wit of Charlie Chaplin's ...

  22. Charlie Chaplin filmography

    (Sir) Charlie Chaplin (KBE) (1889-1977) was an English internationally renowned Academy Award -winning actor, comedian, filmmaker and composer who was best known for his career in Hollywood motion pictures from his debut in 1914 until 1952; he however subsequently appeared in two films in his native England.

  23. Charlie Chaplin

    Oscar alla migliore colonna sonora 1973. Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, noto come Charlie ( Londra, 16 aprile 1889 - Corsier-sur-Vevey, 25 dicembre 1977 ), è stato un attore, comico, regista, sceneggiatore, compositore e produttore cinematografico britannico, autore di oltre novanta film e tra i più importanti e influenti cineasti del XX secolo .

  24. Charlie Chaplin : Chaplin

    In 1898, aged 9, he began his own music hall career with a troupe of juvenile clog dancers, the Eight Lancashire Lads. He was to remain in the theatre, alternating work and periods of unemployment, until he joined Fred Karno's company. As a rising star with Karno he went to America in 1910 to tour the vaudeville circuits.

  25. Charlie Chaplin

    Charles Spencer Chaplin 1, 2 naît le 16 avril 1889 ; il est le deuxième enfant d' Hannah Chaplin née Hill (1865-1928) et de Charles Chaplin, Sr. (1863-1901). Selon David Robinson, le biographe officiel de Charlie Chaplin, sa branche paternelle serait d'origine huguenote : « La famille Chaplin a vécu pendant des générations dans le Suffolk.

  26. Charlie Chaplin bibliography

    A list of books and essays about Charlie Chaplin : Chaplin, Charlie (1 January 2005). Charlie Chaplin: Interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-702-2. Kamin, Dan (5 September 2008). The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion. Scarecrow Press.