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| Born As |
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Charles Spencer Chaplin |
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| Nick Name |
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Charlie, Charlot, The Little Tramp |
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| Sex |
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Male |
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| Height |
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5' 5" |
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| Nationality |
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UK - United Kingdom |
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| Date of Birth |
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April 16, 1889 |
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| Place of Birth |
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Lambeth, London, UK |
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| Date of Death |
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December 25, 1977 |
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| Place of Death |
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Vevey, Switzerland |
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Biography |
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(1889-1977), actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and composer. Born in London to music-hall performers, Chaplin had a wretched childhood. His father abandoned the family, and his mother was increasingly unable to work. Chaplin first went on stage at age five. After a period of destitution he made his mark as a juvenile, touring with a Fred Karno comedy company in England and the United States. During an American tour in 1912-1913, Chaplin, one of the troupe's leading comedians, signed with filmmaker Mack Sennett's Keystone Company.
At first Chaplin played supporting roles in Sennett's comedy shorts. In 1914 he made over thirty short films and after the first dozen began to write and direct his own material. He created the character of "the tramp," which became one of the most popular figures in movie history. The "little fellow," as Chaplin called him, is a remarkably winning combination of cockiness, sentimentality, and slapstick.
Over the next years Chaplin refined the character, achieving fame and fortune. Keystone had paid him $175 a week; when he signed with Mutual in 1916, it was for $10,000 per week plus a bonus. The twelve Mutual two-reelers he made during the next two years are among his best work: films like The Adventurer and The Immigrant are dazzlingly creative and hilarious. In 1918 he signed a million-dollar contract with First National. Among the resulting films was his first feature, The Kid (1921), an extraordinary critical and box-office success.
In 1919 Chaplin joined with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith to found United Artists. Chaplin's first film for United Artists, A Woman of Paris (1923), which he wrote and directed, was an unsuccessful attempt at sophisticated drama. Many consider the second film he made for the company, The Gold Rush (1925), his masterpiece. The tramp's adventures in the film strikingly portray the universal fallibility of men and women through tragicomic situations that touch on bathos and are never far from hilarity, as in the eating of a boot by a starving Chaplin as if it were gourmet food. A 1952 poll of world film critics judged it the second best film ever made.
At first, Chaplin resisted talking pictures. In City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) his only concessions to sound were musical scores he composed and conducted, and in the latter film, a gibberish song sung by him. Modern Times marks the last appearance of "the tramp."
Chaplin's popularity in America declined during the 1940s and early 1950s. His films were less winning. He first spoke dialogue in The Great Dictator (1940), an uneven attack on fascism; Monsieur Verdoux (1947) satirized mass murder; and Limelight (1952), his last American film, was an old-fashioned tear-jerker. Sensationalistic divorces from teenage brides had eroded the public's affection for him in the 1920s. But his popularity plummeted during and after World War II as a result of trumped-up paternity suits and the left-leaning political positions he championed.
In 1952 U.S. authorities voided Chaplin's reentry permit while he was en route to Europe. He settled in Switzerland and did not return until 1972, when he received a special Academy Award. Other honors of his last years included a knighthood in 1975. In a bizarre episode after his death, his body was stolen from its grave in 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland, but recovered the next year.
Chaplin's work was uneven. Many of his later films were flawed, but his "little fellow" became a lasting part of American, indeed, world culture.
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