Charlie Chaplin
When he died, in December, 1977, he was Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Knight of the British Empire, but he was born 136 years ago on 16th April 1889 as plain Charlie Chaplin in Walworth, South London.
His parents were unsuccessful music hall entertainers and when they separated, Charlie, aged seven, was sent to the Central London District School for paupers, an institution for destitute children, which he remembered as “a forlorn existence”. His mother was committed to a mental asylum with psychosis brought on by syphilis and malnutrition, and he and his brother, Sydney, were sent to live with their father who was so violent that he attracted the attention of the National Association of Cruelty to Children. Charles Chaplin Sr was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 38.
Determined from early childhood to become an actor, Charlie was 10 when he joined a touring clog-dancing troupe and at 14 he found himself a London agent. Even his first theatrical appearance in a tiny part attracted favourable reviews. He made it to the West End as ‘Billy the Pageboy’ in Sherlock Holmes opposite William Gillett, the first actor to play the great detective.
By the time he was 18, Charlie had become an accomplished comedy performer and he joined his brother Sydney who was appearing with Fred Karno’s Circus. When Karno’s group toured the vaudeville circuit in America, Charlie headed the cast and attracted a lot of attention, being hailed by one critic as, “one of the best pantomime artists ever seen here”.
In 1914, while in America for Fred Karno, he signed with Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios at $150 a week, a fortune in those days, and he never looked back. By his second film he had decided on his trademark comic persona,’ the Tramp’. He wrote later, “I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large … I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”
Despite numerous fights with his boss, Max Sennett, he persuaded him to allow him to direct his own films by promising that he would pay Sennett $1500 if the films proved unsuccessful. They didn’t. When his contract ended and Sennett refused to raise his salary to $1000 a week, he signed with a rival company which offered him $1250 a week, with a signing bonus of $10,000.
The rest is history. By 1916, aged 27, Chaplin was a global phenomenon. The combination of his talent and his business acumen served to make him an international star. His annual salary from his new company, Mutual, was $670,000 (nearly $20million in today’s money), more than almost any other person in the world.
By now, 1919, Chaplin’s popularity meant that he could do anything he wanted and what he wanted was to do more than comedy and to “make his mark on a changed world”. For this new venture, Chaplin’s co-star was a four-year-old boy, Jackie Coogan, and the Tramp became the caretaker of a young boy.
Filming on The Kid began in August 1919 and at 68 minutes, it was Chaplin’s longest picture to date. Dealing with issues of poverty and parent–child separation, The Kid was one of the earliest films to combine comedy and drama. It was an instant success, and, by 1924, had been screened in over 50 countries. This is its most famous scene, a masterpiece of conception and direction. And, remember, the Kid, Jackie Coogan, was only four years old and Charlie Chaplin was only 29.
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