Charlie Chaplin - The Legend

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an Academy Award-winning English comedic actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered one of the finest mimes and clowns ever captured on film. He greatly influenced other performers. Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film ...





Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; they separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother, the actress Lily Harvey (Hannah Harriet Hill), lived with Charlie and his older brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress. His father died of alcoholism when Charlie was twelve in 1901.

The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the U.S. by her sons.



Chaplin's first film appearance was in Making a Living a one-reel comedy released on February 2, 1914. At Keystone Studios, Chaplin became an instant success. He once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest in San Francisco and, quite humorously, could not make it to the final round.

Chaplin's earliest films were made for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, where he developed his tramp character and very quickly learned the art and craft of film making. The tramp was first presented to the public when Chaplin was age 24 in his second film Kid Auto Races at Venice (released Feb. 7, 1914). It was for this film that Chaplin first conceived of the tramp. The character would immediately gain huge popularity among theater audiences.

Chaplin's early Keystones use the standard Mack Sennett formula of extreme physical comedy and exaggerated gestures. Chaplin's pantomime was subtler, more suitable to romantic and domestic farces than to the usual Keystone chases and mob scenes. The visual gags were pure Keystone, however; the tramp character would aggressively assault his enemies with kicks and bricks. Moviegoers loved this cheerfully earthy new comedian, even though critics warned that his antics bordered on vulgarity. Chaplin was soon entrusted with directing and editing his own films. He made 34 shorts for Sennett during his first year in pictures, as well as the landmark comedy feature Tillie's Punctured Romance.

The Tramp character was featured in the first movie trailer to be exhibited in a U.S. movie theater. In 1915, Chaplin signed a much more favorable contract with Essanay Studios, and further developed his cinematic skills, adding new levels of depth and pathos to the Keystone-style slapstick. Most of the Essanay films were more ambitious, running twice as long as the average Keystone comedy. Chaplin also developed his own stock company, including ingenue Edna Purviance and comic villains Leo White and Bud Jamison.

In 1916, the Mutual Film Corporation paid Chaplin US$670,000 to produce a dozen two-reel comedies. He was given near complete artistic control, and produced twelve films over an eighteen-month period that rank among the most influential comedy films in cinema. Practically every Mutual comedy is a classic: Easy Street, One AM, The Pawnshop, and The Adventurer are perhaps the best known. Chaplin regarded the Mutual period as the happiest of his career.

Chaplin's first dialogue picture, The Great Dictator (1940), was an act of defiance against German dictator Adolf Hitler and Nazism, filmed and released in the United States one year before the U.S. abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. Chaplin played the role of a Hitler-like dictator ""Adenoid Hynkel"", Dictator of Tomainia, clearly modeled on Hitler. The film also showcased comedian Jack Oakie as ""Benzino Napaloni"", dictator of Bacteria. The Napaloni character was clearly a jab at Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Fascism.

In 1972, Chaplin won 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 an appearance with Buster Keaton, which was the only time the two great comedians ever appeared together. Chaplin was also nominated for Best Comedy Director for The Circus in 1929, for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Music for The Great Dictator in 1940, and again for Best Original Screenplay for Monsieur Verdoux in 1948.

Chaplin's robust health began to slowly fail in the late 1960s, after the completion of his final film A Countess from Hong Kong, and more rapidly after he received his Academy Award in 1972. By 1977 he could no longer communicate and was confined to a wheelchair. He died in his sleep on Christmas Day, 1977, in Vevey, Switzerland, at the age of 88.

Most of the Chaplin films in circulation date from his Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual periods. After Chaplin assumed control of his productions in 1918, entrepreneurs serviced the demand for Chaplin by bringing back his older comedies. The films were re-cut, re-titled, and re-issued again and again, first for theatres, then for the home-movie market, and in recent years, for home video.



Real Name: Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.
Birthday: 04/16/1889
Birthplace: Walworth, London, England
Occupation: Actor
Sign: Aries
Death date: 12/25/1977
Death reason: He died in his sleep