Actor, director, producer, screenwriter, composer.
b. April 16, 1889, London. d. 1977. The son of music hall entertainers
who separated when he was one year old, he accompanied his mother
on her frequent travels, absorbing the stage atmosphere from
a tender age. At five he took his first turn on stage under
unhappy circumstances, when his mother's voice cracked in the
middle of a singing performance and he was rushed on stage to
take over. This was the beginning of the end of his mother's
career. Shortly afterward his father died, and Charlie and his
older half-brother Sydney suddenly found themselves hungry little
urchins roaming the streets of London while their mother was
suffering a complete breakdown. The boys, who resorted to dancing
on the streets and passing a hat for pennies, were placed in
an orphanage for destitute children.
Chaplin went on a US tour with one of the troupes
in 1910 and again in 1912, and it was during the latter tour
that Max Sennett, the boss of Keystone, caught a glimpse of
him playing a drunken reveler in the show 'A Night in a London
Music Hall.' In December 1913, Chaplin joined Keystone, but
his first film, "Making
a Living", in which he played a smooth villain,
wearing a high hat, a frock coat, a drooping mustache, and a
monocle, disappointed Sennett. Chaplin's performance was adequate
although it hardly suggested the emergence of the greatest screen
clown of all time. But it was then that the now-famous Chaplin
screen character began to metamorphose.
Already in his second film, "Kid
Auto Races at Venice", he is seen wearing a bowler,
baggy trousers, and a mashed mustache and using a cane as an
indispensable prop. In early films for Keystone he played mainly
in support of such established comedy stars as Ford
Sterling, Chester
Conklin, Fatty
Arbuckle, and Mabel
Normand, Sennett himself, and others. A veteran of 11 one-and
two- reel films after less than three months as a screen actor,
Chaplin was seized with an urge to direct. He assisted Miss
Normand with the direction of his 12th film and wrote and directed
solo his 13th,
"Caught in the Rain". With the creative control
he had now acquired, he began shaping and refining the lovable
character of Charlie the Tramp.
Chaplin made 35 films during his year at Keystone,
many of which he also wrote and directed. It was a formative
year of experimentation and discovery during which he learned
to adapt all he had learned on the music hall stage to the medium
of film. By the end of the year he was a popular screen comedian,
successful enough to demand an receive $1,250 a week when he
signed with Essanay in 1915, up from the $175 he had been earning
at Keystone, plus a $10,000 bonus. The Essanay period saw the
full bloom of Charlie's screen character, the invincible vagabond,
the resilient little fellow with an eye for beauty and a pretense
of elegance who stood up heroically and pathetically against
overwhelming odds and somehow triumphed.
The final touches were applied in
"The Tramp", released in April of 1915 and generally
accepted as Chaplin's first masterpiece. Charlie was now making
fewer films with an increasing attention to quality. At the end
of is first year with Essanay his contract was renewed at $5,000
a week. In the middle of 1916 he moved on to Mutual, where he
was offered an unprecedented salary of $10,000 a week plus a bonus
of $150,000.
The Films of Charlie Chaplin...
The Kid (1921)
Chaplin referees a fight between young Jackie
Coogan and another lad, and few Chaplin scenes are funnier;
even so, this is even better as a look at pre-Depression urban
poverty than it is as a comedy. This is frequently paired with
The Idle Class
(1921) - mistaken-identity amusement at the country
club.
The Gold Rush (1925)
This silent classic was reissued in 1942 with music, sound effects
and Chaplin's narration added. The original version is still
available complete with the still marvelous boot eating scene.
The Circus (1928)
The Tramp romances the bareback rider of a small-time big-top
concern. Though relatively neglected, this won Chaplin a special
Oscar; when it was successfully reissued in 1970. There's yet
another unforgettable Chaplin final shot; Key's tape also includes
the short A Day's Pleasure.
City Lights (1931)
The Tramp falls in love with a blind girl, convincing her he's
a handsome millionaire. Filmed in the talkie era but still a
silent, this is alternately hilarious (the boxing scene) and
poignant (the legendary final shot) - the resulting sublime
net effect makes this many individuals favorite Chaplin film.
Co-star Virginia
Cherrill was Cary
Grant's first wife.
Modern Times (1936)
Except for the Tramp's nonsense song near the end (where audiences
discovered that Chaplin actually had a lovely voice), this is
the swan song of silent cinema. Some of the factory scenes-especially
the TV-screen image that spies on laborers in the washroom-predate
George Orwell's 1984
by a decade and a half, though new-on-tape The
Great Ziegfeld somehow took the Oscar, in spite of the
fact that most people now regard this as the most enduring film
of 1936.
The Great Dictator (1940)
Not as seamless as the other major Chaplin works, but this Hitler
satire (Termed "prematurely anti-Fascist" by some
Chaplin critics) has two of Chaplins best screen moments. One
is Adenoid Hynkel's ballet with a balloon globe; the other is
Hynkel's one-ups-man-ship seating game with Jack
Oakie's Mussolini take-off - Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria.
This is Chaplin's first all-talkie.
