Charlie Chaplin - The Tragic Life of the Little Tramp, Biography of Charlie Chaplin

                       
                               
                   Biography of Charlie Chaplin

 Over a century after he first appeared inmovies, Charlie Chaplin’s name still conjures images of a funny little guy in a bowler hatcausing mirth-inducing chaos. By some measures, his Little Tramp is themost famous character to have ever existed, a clown so beloved that not even Hitler stealinghis mustache could ruin him for us. But what about the man behind the character? Born into grinding poverty in Victorian London,Charlie Chaplin rose from the gutter to become the highest paid actor in Hollywood. He met with icons. Courted revolutionaries. And then lived long enough to see his reputationdragged through the mud and his adopted country disown him. They say that behind the smile of every clownlurks tears. If that’s true, then it makes sense thatthe story of cinema’s greatest clown would be the most tragic of all.
                                                                   
The Kid (1889 – 1908)When Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London on April 16, 1889, it must have seemed likehe’d hit the artistic jackpot. His mother, Hannah, was a singer, while hisfather, Charles Chaplin Sr., was an up-and-coming comic. Barely a year after young Charlie had beenborn, Charles Sr. was touring the USA and pulling in megabucks. Unfortunately, he was doing it without Charlieor Hannah. That spring, 1890, Charles Sr. had walkedout on his wife and baby son and taken his money with him. Hannah, Charlie, and Charlie’s older half-brotherSydney were plunged into biting poverty. This being Victorian England, biting povertyreally did bite. Hard. Still, Hannah did what she could for her boys,providing for them with her singing work, teaching them her routines. Much later, Charlie would say his own skillas a dancer, singer and mimic came from observing Hannah as she did the housework. By the age of five, young Charlie was ableto mimic his mother’s most popular songs. This turned out to be super useful when, oneevening in 1894, Hannah’s voice gave out halfway through a performance.

 Charlie was watching from the wings. When Hannah stopped singing, the manager simplyshoved the child onstage and told him to do something! So Charlie did. In front of a cheering crowd, he finishedhis mother’s ditty for her, bringing the house down. In any other biography, this would be theheartwarming moment Charlie attained stardom. Sadly, there’s very little that’s heartwarmingabout the life of Charlie Chaplin. Hannah’s lost voice wasn’t laryngitis,but the first outward sign of the mental illness that was consuming her. On June 29, 1895, she was committed to aninsane asylum. Too young to fend for themselves, Charlieand Sydney went to the workhouse. The tales of their next few years are heartbreaking. At some point they went to live with Charlie’sfather, Charles Sr., but the abuse they suffered at his alcoholic hands was so great the authoritieswere forced to step in. Not that Charles Sr. didn’t sometimes tryto act the father. In 1897, he got Charlie a gig with a clogdancing troupe known as the Eight Lancashire Lads.

 But the troupe soon dissolved, and Charliewent straight back to the workhouse. On May 9, 1901, Charles Chaplin Sr. finallydied of alcohol related illnesses. Not long after, Hannah – herself only justback in the boys’ lives – had a final relapse and was recommitted to the asylum. This time, young Charlie was completely alone. Sydney had taken the only way out of povertyhe could and joined the Navy. With his mother, brother, and father gone,Charlie struggled to survive. Over the next five years, Charlie worked anyjob he could get his hands on. Newspaper vendor, toymaker, printer, doctor’sboy… whatever paid, he’d do it. When he couldn’t get work, he simply resortedto sleeping rough. Although he picked up acting parts on theside, including a one year run in a 1903 stage production of Sherlock Holmes, they were neverenough to support his dream of becoming an actor. That finally changed in 1908. That year Charlie Chaplin, by then a lad of19, landed a gig with the Fred Karno Repertoire Company.

 Although the work was minor – he played“the Drunk” in a sketch – it brought him into contact with the right people. Stan Laurel, for instance, was another castmember. Perhaps more important still, in 1910, theFred Karno company gave Charlie the chance to do something he’d never dreamed of. He was going to tour America. The Tramp (1910 – 1918)In fall, 1912, American movie producer Mack Senett was looking to add new talent to hisburgeoning stock of actors. The head of Keystone Films, Senett was oneof the pioneers cashing in on the new gold rush in California. Silent films were a fresh, exciting mediumin 1912, where money could be quickly made. Provided, of course, you could find the comictalent. That year, one of the best reviewed comicsin America was an English lad called Charlie Chaplin, on a second tour with Fred Karno’scompany. So Senett set about luring him to Keystone. He offered him $150 a week. The chance of continuous work. Chaplin dithered for an entire year beforefinally accepting Senett’s terms in November, 1913. Not two weeks later, he was Keystone Studios’newest actor. Making a Living, the first Charlie Chaplinfilm in cinematic history debuted on February 2, 1914. It was… not a success.

 Chaplin and the director, Henry Lehrman, fellout so badly that Lehrman cut most of Chaplin’s gags from the final edit. Even had he kept them, it’s unlikely Makinga Living would be fondly remembered. Chaplin’s character was nasty. Unfunny. Perhaps Keystone had made a bad investmentin its new comedian? If the thought ever flashed through Mack Senett’smind, it was soon gone. After Making a Living wrapped, Senett wasat the Keystone lot, watching the filming of a short called Mabel’s Strange Predicament. Chaplin was hanging around, hoping to be noticed,when Senett said “we need some gags here.” The producer pointed at Chaplin. “Put on comedy makeup. Anything will do.” Chaplin went to the prop department, unsurewhat Senett wanted. There, he found a pair of baggy trousers,a bowler hat, and a cane. As Chaplin later said:“I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothesand the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walkedon to the stage he was fully born.” That “he” was the Little Tramp. And he was about to make Chaplin’s fortune. In the Tramp costume, Chaplin made the crewon Mabel’s Strange Predicament laugh so hard the entire Keystone company stopped towatch. By the end of the day, Chaplin swore he’dnever perform without his new costume again. And so it was that on February 7, 1914, theTramp’s second Keystone picture, Kid Auto Races at Venice, beat Mabel’s Strange Predicamentinto theaters. It was an instant hit. You can clearly see the effect the Tramp hadon Chaplin’s career. Over 1914, Chaplin made 32 more films forKeystone. When his contract ran out in December, a biddingwar erupted that made Senett’s initial offer of $150 a week look pitiful. Essanay Studios offered Chaplin $1,250 a weekplus a $10,000 signing bonus.

 Not being an idiot, Chaplin said yes. The next few years saw Chaplin’s star gosupernova. At Essanay, he rebooted the Little Tramp in1915’s The Tramp, making the character more sweet natured. The new approach was so successful that MutualFilms poached Chaplin from Essanay with an offer of $10,000 a week. Aged 26, Chaplin was now the highest paidactor in Hollywood. Over the next two years, Chaplin shot 12 shortsfor Mutual. He later called those years the happiest ofhis life. Not that happiness stopped him from movingon. At the end of 1917, Chaplin terminated hisMutual contact. He built his own studio, signing a deal withFirst National to release his pictures without interference. Not yet 30, Chaplin was now the most famousmovie star in America. His next move? To conquer the world. The Gold Rush (1918 – 1928)The next decade was a golden time for Chaplin the filmmaker. His first feature, The Kid, came out in 1920.

The Gold Rush, possibly his best work, followedin 1924. In 1928 he made The Circus, a film Orson Welles– the director of Citizen Kane, the greatest movie of all time – once called “the greatestmovie of all time.” It was also a golden time for Chaplin theproducer. In 1919, he ditched First National and cofoundedUnited Artists with Mary Pickford and DW Griffith, giving them total control over their pictures. So… that’s it for the rest of this video,huh? Us throwing movie names at you and detailingjust how exceptionally rich and famous Chaplin became. Not quite. If the decade following 1918 was a goldentime for Chaplin’s public faces, it was far less so for his private one. It was in this period that the darkly flawedChaplin emerged.

It began in fall 1918, when Mildred Harristold Chaplin she was pregnant. The two had started seeing each other earlierin the year in secret. In secret because, while Chaplin was nearly30, Harris was barely half his age. Under California law, having sex with someoneaged only 16 was statutory rape. So, when Harris told Chaplin she was pregnant,it sent the star into panic mode. That October, 1918, Chaplin married Harrisin a secret ceremony. Not long after, Harris’s pregnancy vanished. Suspecting his new wife had tricked him, Chaplinresolved to make her life hell. Over the next two years, Chaplin badly mistreatedHarris. Although he was never physical, he was mentallyabusive, ignoring her, belittling her, calling her an idiot. In 1920, when Harris was 18, Chaplin finallygot her pregnant for real then divorced her. It wouldn’t be his only icky behavior thatdecade. The same year he divorced Harris, Chaplinmet Lita Gray, then a mere 12 years old.

 Chaplin kept her close for the next few years,until Gray finally turned either 15 or 16, depending on which source you read, then seducedher. Today, we would call this behavior “grooming”. Even in the freewheeling ‘20s, it was shocking. On November 23, 1924, Lita told Chaplin shewas pregnant. Once again hasty to avoid a statutory rapecharge, Chaplin married her in New Mexico. Once again, the Little Tramp made their marriagea misery. Nor was it just Chaplin’s home life thatwas suddenly devoid of laughter. The same month he married Lita, Chaplin wason a yacht when producer Thomas Ince died in mysterious circumstances.

 It’s long been rumored that Chaplin wassleeping with newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst’s mistress, and that Hearst accidentallyshot Ince while trying to kill Chaplin. But if the rumors were bad enough, the divorcesuit Lita filed in 1927 was even worse. After two miserable years with Chaplin, Litawas a broken woman. In her court filing she accused Chaplin oftrying to force an abortion onto her, of mental cruelty, and of forcing her to participatein sex acts so disgusting there’s no way we can realistically describe them here withoutgetting our entire channel banned. Although Chaplin settled the suit out of courtfor $600,000, the scandal consumed him. Chaplin was used to being a household name. Now he was a lightning rod for those who hatedthe loose morals of the age. Still, the 1920s ended on a high. The Circus was a major success, and Chaplinquickly began work on the film that would become City Lights.

 By now, though, storm clouds were gathering. Two events were about to happen that wouldshake up Chaplin’s world. One in Wall Street, the other in the verytown that had made his fortune. Modern Times (1929-1942)On October 6, 1927, a little film called The Jazz Singer premiered. The tale of a white Jewish man who blacksup to becomes a jazz legend, the film would probably be forgotten today, were it not forone major technical innovation. The Jazz Singer was the first feature filmin American history to feature a synchronized soundtrack. The age of talkies had finally arrived. Famously, silent stars like Chaplin were dismissiveof the new technology. While preparing City Lights, Chaplin claimedthe new fad wouldn’t last six months. There were no such delusions over the nextworld shakeup.

 Two years after The Jazz Singer premiered,the New York stock market gave a final sigh and collapsed into a pile of broken Americandreams. The wreckage of that fateful day would becomethe Great Depression, and it affected everyone. But while the advent of talkies was ruinousfor most silent stars, the Great Depression gave Chaplin’s work a sudden urgency. For Jazz Age audiences, a Tramp with a heartof gold was as exotic as superheroes are to us today. For filmgoers in the 30s, though, he was theexact tonic they needed. Despite being a silent anachronism when itappeared in 1931, City Lights was a standout success. Not that Chaplin enjoyed the accolade. Seemingly depressed by the way the world andhis art form were going, he left the States in 1931 and embarked on a world tour. During this time, the actor met everyone fromAlbert Einstein to Mahatma Gandhi. But it was what Chaplin witnessed in Europethat concerns us today. The rise of automation and nationalism wasfraying the continent at the edges. When Chaplin returned to Hollywood in July1932, he was obsessed with doing something about these twin evils. On one level, that meant starting work onModern Times, his 1936 satire of capitalism. On another, it meant leaning towards politicsfor the first time in his life.

It meant becoming openly sympathetic to Communism. This radical shift did not go unnoticed. In 1939, Chaplin began shooting his firstreal talkie: The Great Dictator. A satire of nationalism in general and AdolfHitler in particular, it was made at a time when the US was officially neutral in thewar engulfing Europe. So when the film premiered in 1940 with itspolitical ending speech, audiences didn’t see the Little Tramp exhorting the end ofa horrific war. They saw a suspected Communist trying to ramleftwing ideology down their throats. Just one year before, in 1938, the House Un-AmericanActivities Committee (HUAC for short) had come into existence following a report thatHollywood was teeming with Reds. Now, Chaplin was confirming their worst suspicions. And, boy, did he ever confirm them. After the attack on Pearl Harbor dragged theUS into WWII, Chaplin became a professional agitator for the Red Army. At an ill-advised speech in New York, he calledStalin’s purges “a wonderful thing,” and followed up by saying, “the only peoplewho object to Communism… are the Nazi agents in this country.” In the context of a war in which the US wasallied with the USSR, these comments may have seemed justifiable. But for those who already suspected Chaplinof anti-Americanism, this was fuel for the fire. By late 1942, prominent media personalitieswere questioning Chaplin’s commitment to America. All it would take would be one giant anti-Communistpanic and his reputation could be utterly destroyed. But this was the early 1940s.

There was no way America could just be a fewshort years away from being consumed in a Red scare. Could there? Monsieur Verdoux (1943 – 1952)April 11, 1947, is the day Charlie Chaplin lit the fuse on the bomb that destroyed hiscareer. That day, he released his movie Monsieur Verdoux. A black comedy featuring Chaplin as a serialkiller who marries and murders old ladies for their money, Monsieur Verdoux almost bankruptedUnited Artists. It led to Chaplin being blacklisted and nearlyindicted by HUAC. Today, the film is regarded as a late Chaplinclassic. But in 1947? It was the equivalent of watching Mr. Rogerskick a puppy to death while wearing a swastika. To understand just how Monsieur Verdoux cameto annihilate everything Chaplin held dear, we need to go back in time to 1941. As you’ll probably remember, this was whenChaplin was just starting to mouth off about how great Stalinism was. It was also when he met a young actress namedJoan Barry. Barry was slightly older than Chaplin’sprevious conquests, being the grand old age of 21 when the 42 year old Chaplin met her. They started an affair, but it wasn’t longbefore things got out of hand. In 1943, Barry sued Chaplin for impregnatingand abandoning her. Unfortunately for Chaplin, prosecutors decidedto hit him with everything they had. Chaplin was charged under the 1910 Mann Act,better known as the White Slave Traffic Act.

Designed to stop people taking prostitutesover state lines, it wound up being so broadly worded that anyone who brought someone toanother state even for consensual sex could be charged. That was exactly what Chaplin had done. The trial was a media circus. The phrase “Charlie Chaplin on trial forwhite slavery” was simply too irresistible. While Chaplin was acquitted, the smoke nowbillowing around him convinced many there was a dark fire burning behind his publicpersona. The thing is, they weren’t wrong. We’ve already heard how atrociously Chaplintreated the women in his life. And he really was sympathetic to Communism. It also didn’t help that during his trialhe’d started an affair with another 18-year old, Oona O’Neill. But the Barry trial turned everyone on him. Notorious columnist Hedda Hopper joined forceswith FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to destroy the Little Tramp. In the Senate, William Langer of North Dakotastarted advocating for Chaplin’s deportation. As 1947 dawned, Chaplin was in dire need ofa comeback. United Artists was nearly out of money. His reputation was in ruins.

 What was needed was another City Lights, afilm to remind the public why they loved him. Instead, the public got Monsieur Verdoux,a film that ends with Chaplin comparing the capitalist system to mass murder and implicatingevery single American in war crimes for the atom bombing of Hiroshima. It was the last straw. In Washington, HUAC informed Chaplin he wouldlikely be subpoenaed. While he never was, the McCarthyites stilldestroyed him. That November, 1947, the Hollywood Ten werejailed for refusing to name and shame other Communists. In the wake of the scandal, 300 more starswere blacklisted, including Chaplin. Still, Chaplin was Chaplin, which meant hehad money and influence at his disposal that other blacklisted stars didn’t. Even while on the blacklist, he found themoney to crank out Limelight, a part-schmaltzy, part-touching picture about an ageing clownwhose glory days are over. Scheduled for a September, 1952 release, Chaplindecided to travel to Europe to drum up publicity. On September 18, Chaplin and his now-wifeOona boarded a ship headed for England.

They wouldn’t see America again for twodecades. The next day, the Attorney General cancelledChaplin’s reentry visa. Despite being in the US for forty years, thestar had never thought to trade his British passport for an American one. And now America had blocked him from returning. When Limelight was released in the US, itwas picketed by morality crusaders and anti-Communists. No longer welcome in his adopted home, hatedby the America that had once embraced him, Chaplin was suddenly as homeless as the LittleTramp. His days as the greatest star in Hollywoodwere over. The Freak (1953 – 1978)The rest of Charlie Chaplin’s life can be easily divided into two chapters: the onewhere everyone hated him, and the one where they finally accepted him too late. After settling in Switzerland with Oona inJanuary 1953, Chaplin slowly started working his way into the European film system. In 1957, he released A King in New York, abouta king who flees into asylum in the USA and suffers much of the same persecution thatChaplin did. Although the script went out of its way toportray Americans as fundamentally decent, America wasn’t listening. The movie was banned in most states for being“unamerican”. This disappointment more or less set the stagefor the next decade. At one point, Chaplin considered revivingthe Little Tramp as the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust, only to instead make 1967’sA Countess from Hong Kong, a film in which the only gag seems to be Marlon Brando repeatedlybeing caught with a nubile young woman in his bedroom. It probably didn’t help that Chaplin’shealth was failing. After a series of strokes across the ‘60s,he’d been left partially disabled. It was in this sorry state that he startedwork on his final project. The Freak was to be Chaplin’s coda.

 The story of a South American girl who growsangel wings and becomes hunted and persecuted, it was intended to cap his life’s work. Sadly, it never got made. As the ‘60s became the ‘70s, Chaplin sufferedyet more strokes. By 1974 he was wheelchair bound and in needof care. Although he shot some test footage for TheFreak, everyone working with him knew the director wouldn’t survive long enough toget his picture made. On Christmas Day, 1977, Charlie Chaplin suffereda final, cataclysmic stroke in his sleep and died, aged 88. Despite a brief return to the States fiveyears earlier to collect an honorary Academy Award, he was still living in exile. Still sure America would never truly wanthim back. Normally this would be the point where weconcluded with a quick overview of Chaplin’s life, to try and make some sense of his historicalstanding. Not this time. Because fate had one last, ghoulish twistin store for the Little Tramp. In March, 1978, two refugees from CommunistEastern Europe dug up Chaplin’s corpse and took it hostage. For the next 11 weeks, Chaplin’s body remainedmissing. Finally, in late May, 1978, Swiss police observedone of the graverobbers trying to call Oona with a ransom demand.

 He was arrested, and Chaplin’s missing bodylocated. He was quickly reinterred, this time undera concrete slab. Awful as this story is, we can’t help thinkingthat Chaplin himself may have seen the potential in it. The two graverobbers turned out to be dispossessedimmigrants living on the breadline, who wanted to make some quick cash to support their families. While the Little Tramp never did anythingas desperate as they did, in most other respects his life wasn’t too dissimilar. Maybe we’ve just been researching this videotoo long, but you can almost imagine a darker version of Chaplin making this film. Almost picture the Tramp’s oblivious faceas he’s accidentally roped into graverobbing, lured by the promise of money for food. In a way, maybe that’s fitting. Chaplin’s films were some of the very firstthat truly sympathized with the poor, with their struggles, their hopes and dreams. Using the magic of cinema, he conjured storiesfrom their hardscrabble lives… and turned them into masterpieces not just of comedy,but empathy too. He may have sometimes been cruel, sometimesfoolish, sometimes simply a raging egomaniac. But Charlie Chaplin was also the greatestclown who ever lived. Tragic as his life was, he succeeded in bringingjoy to millions.