All about Charlie Chaplin
By Students’ Academy
Copyright@2011Students’ Academy
Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1: Introduction
If we call him the father of comedy in movies, it won’t be an exaggeration of eulogy. He was a kind of personality who remained deeply embedded in the psyche of the children for more than a century. Even today, when children watch the silent movies of the past, they can’t help laughing when the master comedian appears on screen. Charles Spencer Chaplin is the name of the comedian whose mention brings smiles onto the faces of the people who have seen him on screen. He is commonly called Charlie Chaplin. He was born on 16 April, 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, England. He was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era who became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.
During the silent film era, Charlie Chaplin was assumed to be one the most creative and influential personalities. His predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder had highly influenced Charlie Chaplin. Later, he dedicated one of his films to Max Linder. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s.
Charlie Chaplin was ranked as the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time by the American Film Institute in the year 1999. In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, wrote: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler, he stayed on the job. ... It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most".George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".
Chapter 2: Childhood and Early Life
Bain News Service photo of Chaplin at his desk c. 1910
The tradition of art and entertainment was very much the part of the family life. Charlie Chaplin’s father was a vocalist and an actor, and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, was a singer and an actress. Charlie Chaplin’s parents separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother lived with Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth.
Charlie Chaplin spent his childhood in the company of his mother, Hannah Chaplin. As a small child, he lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street.
Hannah Chaplin and Charlie Chaplin’s maternal grandmother were from the Smith family of Romanichals, a fact of which he was extremely proud, though he described it in his autobiography as "the skeleton in our family cupboard".Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr., was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road where a plaque now commemorates the fact. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother lived at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temples Boys School. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. As of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, as part of a troupe of young male dancers, The Eight Lancashire Lads, managed by a William Jackson.
Due to a larynx condition, Chaplin’s mother had to end the singing career. His mother had to face very hard times in her singing and performing career towards its twilight. The biggest crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, "Jack Jones".
Chaplin in the 1900s decade
Lilly Harley was the stage name of Charlie Chaplin’s mother. She was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum. The mother having been sent to the Asylum, little Charlie was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell. 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.
Charlie Chaplin’s mother, Hannah Chaplin, passed away in 1928 in Glendale, California, seven years after having been brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden (1892–1957), was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.
Chapter 3: First Tour to United States
Charlie Chaplin’s first tour to the United States of America took place between 1910 and 1912; he was the member of the Fred Karno troupe.
Having come back home, Chaplin spent five months in England; he returned to the U.S. for a second tour, arriving with the Karno Troupe on 2 October 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel were the occupants of the same room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the United States. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance.
Chaplin on the right in his film debut Making a Living (1914)
Normand was the director who directed and wrote a handful of Chaplin’s earliest films. Charlie Chaplin did not enjoy being directed by a woman, and they often disagreed. Finally, there was reconciliation between them and they remained friends long after Chaplin left Keystone. The Tramp debuted during the silent film era in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (released on 7 February 1914). Chaplin, with his Little Tramp character, quickly became the most popular star in Keystone director Mack Sennett's company of players. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions (in only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp). Interestingly, he did portray a Keystone Kop in the recently discovered "A Thief Catcher" filmed Jan. 5-26, 1914.
The Tramp was considered to be an international character; this character was closely identified with the silent era. In the late 1920s, when talking movies began to be produced, Charlie Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the Tramp. The 1931 production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times (released 5 February 1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.
The two films, The Tramp and The Bank, firmly created the characteristics of Charlie Chaplin’s screen persona in the year 1915. While in the end the Tramp manages to shake off his disappointment and resume his carefree ways, “the pathos lies in The Tramp's hope for a more permanent transformation through love, and his failure to achieve this.” (Article 21, pg 112)