Charlie Chaplin
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on April
16, 1889 in Walworth, London, and
lived a Dickensian childhood, shared with
his brother, Sydney, that included
extreme poverty, workhouses and seeing his
mother's mental decline put her into
an institution. Both his parents, though
separated when he was very young, were
music hall artists, his father quite
famously so. But it was his mother Charlie
idolized and was inspired by
during his visits backstage while she performed, to
take up such a career for
himself. He achieved his ambition when he joined a
dancing troop, the Eight
Lancashire Lads, and this eventually led onto parts in
Sherlock Holmes
and Casey's Court Circus. Sydney, meanwhile, had joined the
famous Fred Karno
Company and quickly became a leading player and writer
therein. He managed to
get Charlie involved, and he too became a Karno star. For
both boys, Karno
was almost a college of comedy for them, and the period had a
huge impact on
Charlie especially. In 1910 Charlie toured the U.S. with the
Karno group
and returned for another in 1912. It was on this tour that he was
head hunted
by Mack Sennett and his Keystone Film Company, and Charlie was
thus
introduced into the medium of film. His first film, in 1914, was aptly
titled
Making A Living, and it was directed by Henry Lehrman. He starred
in many of his
Keystones along side Mabel Normand, who also directed
three of his films, but it
wasn't until Twenty Minutes of Love that he had a
taste of directing himself,
and this quickly became the only way he worked.
His success was such that he was
able to move from one company to another,
each time into a better deal. In 1915,
after thirty-five films, he moved to
Essanay, and it was here he really found
his feet, not to mention his longest
serving leading lady, Edna Purviance.
Notable films during this period
include The Champion, The Tramp and The Bank.
In 1916 he moved to Lone
Star Mutual, with even greater control and financial
rewards. Here he made
the definitive Chaplin short comedies, The Rink, Easy
Street, The Cure
and The Immigrant. First National were next, and it was here he
constructed
his full length masterpiece, The Kid. Shorter comedies of note at
this time
included Sunnyside and The Idle Class. Along with his great
friend,
Douglas Fairbanks, as well as Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith,
Chaplin formed
United Artists in 1919. He made his first film for them in
1923, the Edna
Purviance vehicle, A Woman of Paris, perhaps the least
known of his films, but
it was followed by the Chaplin classics - The Gold
Rush, The Circus, City Lights
and Modern Times. It wasn't until 1940 that he
made his first talkie, The Great
Dictator, to be followed by the more
refined Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight, a
look back to the music hall world
of his youth. Limelight (1952) was the last
film he made in America.
McCarthyite political maneuverings effectively ejected
him from the country
and he wasn't to return until 1972, when he received a
special Academy Award.
In the meantime, though heartily welcomed back to
Britain, he moved to
Switzerland with his wife, Oona O' Neill, and their
children. He made two
more films, A King In New York (1957, with Dawn Addams)
and A Countess From
Hong Kong (1967, with Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando) and
spent his final
years writing music for his films and enjoying his family life
before he
died, at 4 A.M. on Christmas Day in 1977.
Bibliography
Robinson,
David. Charlie Chaplin: The Art of Comedy (1995) Mitchell, Glenn.
The
Chaplin Encyclopedia (1997) Karney, Robyn and Cross, Robin. The Life
and
Times of Charlie Chaplin (1992) Gifford, Denis. The Comic Art of
Charlie Chaplin
(1989) McCabe, John. Charlie Chaplin (1978) Payne, Robert.
The Great Charlie
(1957)