Biography
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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 Chaplin 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
America with the Karno troupe on October 2, 1912. In the
Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who would
become known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel wound up
sharing a room in a boarding house. Chaplin's act was
eventually seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired
him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company.
While Charlie 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.
Charlie Chaplin's 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" (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 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.
Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in "The Kid" (1921)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.
His final films were A King in New York (1957) and A
Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Sophia Loren
and Marlon Brando.
Charlie Chaplin's 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 honor 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.
Charlie 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 amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by
fellow comedians and comedy insiders.