charlie chaplin film biography

Charlie Chaplin

(1889-1977)

Who Was Charlie Chaplin?

Charlie Chaplin worked with a children's dance troupe before making his mark on the big screen. His character "The Tramp" relied on pantomime and quirky movements to become an iconic figure of the silent-film era. Chaplin went on to become a director, making films such as City Lights and Modern Times , and co-founded the United Artists Corporation.

Famous for his character "The Tramp," the sweet little man with a bowler hat, mustache and cane, Charlie Chaplin was an iconic figure of the silent-film era and was one of film's first superstars, elevating the industry in a way few could have ever imagined.

Born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England, on April 16, 1889, Chaplin's rise to fame is a true rags-to-riches story. His father, a notorious drinker, abandoned Chaplin, his mother and his older half-brother, Sydney, not long after Chaplin's birth. That left Chaplin and his brother in the hands of their mother, a vaudevillian and music hall singer who went by the stage name Lily Harley.

Chaplin's mother, who would later suffer severe mental issues and have to be committed to an asylum, was able to support her family for a few years. But in a performance that would introduce her youngest boy to the spotlight, Hannah inexplicably lost her voice in the middle of a show, prompting the production manager to push the five-year-old Chaplin, whom he'd heard sing, onto the stage to replace her.

Chaplin lit up the audience, wowing them with his natural presence and comedic angle (at one point he imitated his mother's cracking voice). But the episode meant the end for Hannah. Her singing voice never returned, and she eventually ran out of money. For a time, Chaplin and Sydney had to make a new, temporary home for themselves in London's tough workhouses.

Early Career

Armed with his mother's love of the stage, Chaplin was determined to make it in show business himself, and in 1897, using his mother's contacts, he landed with a clog-dancing troupe named the Eight Lancashire Lads. It was a short stint, and not a terribly profitable one, forcing the go-getter Chaplin to make ends meet any way he could.

"I (was) newsvendor, printer, toymaker, doctor's boy, etc., but during these occupational digressions, I never lost sight of my ultimate aim to become an actor," Chaplin later recounted. "So, between jobs I would polish my shoes, brush my clothes, put on a clean collar and make periodic calls at a theatrical agency."

Eventually, other stage work did come his way. Chaplin made his acting debut as a pageboy in a production of Sherlock Holmes . From there, he toured with a vaudeville outfit named Casey's Court Circus and in 1908 teamed up with the Fred Karno pantomime troupe, where Chaplin became one of its stars as the Drunk in the comedic sketch A Night in an English Music Hall .

With the Karno troupe, Chaplin got his first taste of the United States, where he caught the eye of film producer Mack Sennett, who signed Chaplin to a contract for a $150 a week.

Film Career

In 1914, Chaplin made his film debut in a somewhat forgettable one-reeler called Make a Living . To differentiate himself from the clad of other actors in Sennett films, Chaplin decided to play a single identifiable character, and "The Little Tramp" was born, with audiences getting their first taste of him in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914).

Over the next year, Chaplin appeared in 35 movies, a lineup that included Tillie's Punctured Romance , film's first full-length comedy. In 1915, Chaplin left Sennett to join the Essanay Company, which agreed to pay him $1,250 a week. It is with Essanay that Chaplin, who by this time had hired his brother Sydney to be his business manager, rose to stardom.

During his first year with the company, Chaplin made 14 films, including The Tramp (1915). Generally regarded as the actor's first classic, the story establishes Chaplin's character as the unexpected hero when he saves the farmer's daughter from a gang of robbers.

By the age of 26, Chaplin, just three years removed from his vaudeville days, was a superstar. He'd moved over to the Mutual Company, which paid him a whopping $670,000 a year. The money made Chaplin a wealthy man, but it didn't seem to derail his artistic drive. With Mutual, he made some of his best work, including One A.M. (1916), The Rink (1916), The Vagabond (1916) and Easy Street (1917).

Through his work, Chaplin came to be known as a grueling perfectionist. His love for experimentation often meant countless takes, and it was not uncommon for him to order the rebuilding of an entire set. Nor was it uncommon for him to begin filming with one leading actor, realize he'd made a mistake in his casting and start again with someone new.

But the results were hard to refute. During the 1920s Chaplin's career blossomed even more. During the decade he made some landmark films, including The Kid (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), A Woman in Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), a movie Chaplin would later say he wanted to be remembered by, and The Circus (1928). The latter three were released by United Artists, a company Chaplin co-founded in 1919 with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith.

Later Films

Chaplin kept creating interesting and engaging films in the 1930s. In 1931, he released City Lights , a critical and commercial success that incorporated music Chaplin scored himself.

More acclaim came with Modern Times (1936), a biting commentary about the state of the world's economic and political infrastructures. The film, which did incorporate sound, was, in part, the result of an 18-month world tour Chaplin had taken between 1931 and 1932, a trip during which he'd witnessed severe economic angst and a sharp rise in nationalism in Europe and elsewhere.

But Chaplin was not universally embraced. His romantic liaisons led to his rebuke by some women's groups, which in turn led to him being barred from entering some U.S. states. As the Cold War age settled into existence, Chaplin didn't withhold his fire from injustices he saw taking place in the name of fighting Communism in his adopted country of the United States.

Chaplin soon became a target of the right-wing conservatives. Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi pushed for his deportation. In 1952, the Attorney General of the United States obliged when he announced that Chaplin, who was sailing to Britain on vacation, would not permit him to return to the United States unless he could prove "moral worth." The incensed Chaplin said good-bye to the United States and took up residence on a small farm in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.

Final Years and Death

Nearing the end of his life, Chaplin did make one last visit to the United States in 1972, when he was given an honorary Academy Award. The trip came just five years after Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), the filmmaker's first and only color movie. Despite a cast that included Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando , the film did poorly at the box office. In 1975, Chaplin received further recognition when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II .

In the early morning hours of December 25, 1977, Chaplin died at his home in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. His wife, Oona, and seven of his children were at his bedside at the time of his passing. In a twist that might very well have come out of one of his films, Chaplin's body was stolen not long after he was buried from his grave near Lake Geneva in Switzerland by two men who demanded $400,000 for its return. The men were arrested and Chaplin's body was recovered 11 weeks later.

Wives and Children

Chaplin became equally famous for his life off-screen. His affairs with actresses who had roles in his movies were numerous. Some, however, ended better than others.

In 1918, he quickly married 16-year-old Mildred Harris. The marriage lasted just two years, and in 1924 he wed again, to another 16-year-old, actress Lita Grey, whom he'd cast in The Gold Rush . The marriage had been brought on by an unplanned pregnancy, and the resulting union, which produced two sons for Chaplin (Charles Jr. and Sydney) was an unhappy one for both partners. They divorced in 1927.

In 1936, Chaplin married again, this time to a chorus girl who went by the film name of Paulette Goddard. They lasted until 1942. That was followed by a nasty paternity suit with another actress, Joan Barry, in which tests proved Chaplin was not the father of her daughter, but a jury still ordered him to pay child support.

In 1943, Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Unexpectedly the two would go on to have a happy marriage, one that would result in eight children.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Charlie Chaplin
• Birth Year: 1889
• Birth date: April 16, 1889
• Birth City: London, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Charlie Chaplin was a comedic British actor who became one of the biggest stars of the 20th century's silent-film era.
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Death Year: 1977
• Death date: December 25, 1977
• Death City: Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud
• Death Country: Switzerland

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Charlie Chaplin Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/charlie-chaplin
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 5, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• I want to see the return of decency and kindness. I'm just a human being who wants to see this country a real democracy.
• I am for people. I can't help it.
• The Zulus know Chaplin better than Arkansas knows Garbo.
• The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.
• All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
• I remain just one thing, and one thing only—and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
• I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.
• I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it.
• The summation of my character is that I care about my work. I care about everything I do. If I could do something else better, I would do it, but I can't.
• I've always related to a sort of a comic spirit, something within me, that said, I must express this. This is funny.
• Cruelty is a basic element in comedy. What appears to be sane is really insane, and if you can make that poignant enough they love it.
• I don't think one can do humor without having great pity and a sense of sympathy for one's fellow man.
• I think life is a very wonderful thing, and must be lived under all circumstances, even in misery.
• All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.
• Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
• Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
• A day without laughter is a wasted day.

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Charlie Chaplin filmography

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Sir) Charlie Chaplin (KBE) (1889–1977) was an English internationally renowned Academy Award -winning actor, comedian, filmmaker and composer who was best known for his career in Hollywood motion pictures from his debut in 1914 until 1952; he however subsequently appeared in two films in his native England. During his early years in the era of silent film , he rose to prominence as a worldwide cinematic idol renowned for his tramp persona. In the 1910s and 1920s, he was considered the most famous person on the planet. [1]

Chaplin was born in London and began acting on stage at the age of nine. [2] In 1913, while on tour in the United States with Fred Karno 's comedy group, he accepted a contract to work for Keystone Film Company . During his time at Keystone, he began writing and directing some of the films in which he starred. Chaplin signed with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in 1915, and the year after with the Mutual Film Corporation .

Chaplin by 1918, began producing his own films, initially releasing them through First National Pictures and then through United Artists , a corporation he co-founded with Mary Pickford , Douglas Fairbanks , and D. W. Griffith . [3] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Chaplin was accused of being a Communist sympathiser, which he denied. [4] He remained a British subject and, while travelling to England in 1952 to attend the premiere of his film Limelight , his American re-entry permit was rescinded. [5] Chaplin eventually settled in Switzerland , where he remained for the rest of his life. He made his last two films in England.

During his lifetime, Chaplin received three awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . At the first Academy Awards ceremony, held on 16 May 1929, he was originally nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for The Circus (1928). The Academy dropped his two nominations, and he won an honorary award for writing, directing, producing, and acting. [6] [7] In 1972, he returned to the United States after nearly two decades to receive another honorary award, this time for his overall achievements in cinema. The following year, Chaplin's score for Limelight received the Academy Award for Best Music . Although 20 years old by this time, Limelight had not been released in the Los Angeles area until 1972, and had not been eligible for Academy Award consideration before then. [7] Chaplin also received Academy Award nominations in 1940 for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for The Great Dictator . In 1942, Chaplin released a new version of The Gold Rush , taking the original silent 1925 film and composing and recording a musical score. The Gold Rush was nominated for Best Music (Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture). Notwithstanding the belated nomination for Limelight , his final contemporary nomination was in 1947 for his screenplay of Monsieur Verdoux . [7]

For his work in motion pictures, Chaplin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the American Film Institute has listed him among the best actors of the Classical Hollywood cinema era [8]

Seven of the film's in which Chaplin starred have been added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry : Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). Also selected was Show People (1928), which Chaplin featured in a cameo [9]

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‘People who knew him … didn’t really know him’: who was the real Charlie Chaplin?

In a definitive new documentary, a deeper look at the much-loved movie star provides more insight into ‘one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories ever told’

W hen a normal person ascends to the firmament of fame, their sense of identity is split in two. The self-perception they’ve developed over their life up to that point – the “true” self, allowed to emerge in intimate moments – must contend with an outward-facing image over which they can exert unsettlingly minimal control. The more canny-minded celebrities seize the reins of their own PR by cultivating a persona they can get out in front of, caricaturing themselves before someone else gets the chance.

Charlie Chaplin, perhaps the first A-lister to contend with this existential quandary of exposure, went one step further by inventing a character he could plaster over himself. The Real Charlie Chaplin , a new documentary in cinemas this week, posits his Little Tramp alter ego as a shield and veil. If audiences were looking at the bowler hat, toothbrush moustache, and rubbery cane, they’d never see the man wearing them.

“I remember, even as a child, having an image of Charlie Chaplin in my head,” co-director James Spinney tells the Guardian. “Like most people, the costume was known to me. We saw these films with lots of preconceptions; he’s emblematic of an early, cartoonish style of cinema comedy, slapstick, films played at the wrong speed. As an adult revisiting these, I was struck by how modern they felt, how subversive, how there’s no sense of the antiquated whatsoever. Everyone has an idea about Charlie Chaplin. But people who knew him best felt that he was hard to create a connection with, that they didn’t really know him, that he was always performing.”

The top-to-bottom bio-doc examines Chaplin as a once-in-a-generation funnyman, while recognizing that as only one of the many roles he played in his eventful life: the Dickensian child laborer, the innovative vaudevillian, the big-hearted humanist, the vindictive lover, the Tinseltown captain of industry, the witch-hunted commie, the reclusive Swiss expat. In what Spinney describes as “one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories ever told”, the only connecting thread through the many ups and downs is the tension between Chaplin’s private and public lives. He prized his hordes of fans and loathed interviews, subsisting on the admiration while contending with the anxiety of being known and yet not-known.

For Spinney and co-director Peter Middleton, the prospect of gaining fresh insight into the aspects of himself Chaplin took pains to conceal was too intriguing to pass up. “One thing we knew very early on was that there was no single, solid, stable version of Charlie Chaplin,” Spinney says. “We’re not trying to link them all up, because there are too many of them, and they don’t always add up. He was chameleonic in the way he reflected back to people what they wanted.”

Their producer, Ben Limberg, had negotiated with Chaplin’s estate and the British Film Institute for a master list of materials they’d be permitted to access, the most obscure of which caught the directors’ eyes. In particular, they fixated on an “enigmatic” tape containing raw audio from a three-day profile sit-down for Life Magazine, conducted by Richard Meryman in 1966 at Chaplin’s twilight-years home on Lake Geneva. “We realized that we’d arrived at an opportune moment in history, where an archival source such as that can be restored,” Middleton says. “We started breaking that down and though it feels like there are 700 books written about Chaplin, we thought that could be our way in to something new.”

Secured after one full year of negotiations, the soundbites provide a condensed memoir with a candid running commentary as Chaplin recalled his early days of tribulation and hardship. His parents’ severe debts resulted in him being sent to Lambeth Workhouse at the tender age of seven, a plight he escaped through his natural inclination for the stage. From dance troupes and small plays to a breakout gig under vaudeville mainstay Fred Karno, an undeniable showmanship carried him out of abject poverty and across the Atlantic for a shot in the nascent movie business. It was there that he debuted the Little Tramp, whose penniless misfortunes mirrored his own background at the Central London District school for paupers.

“This character of the Tramp, who’s so wrapped up in Chaplin’s own psyche, who seems to channel his childhood and his neuroses and his humiliations of youth – it keeps replaying the traumas he experienced in London,” Spinney explains. “That character also turned him into the highest-paid actor on the planet and one of the most famous people in history. It’s almost like a fairytale, in some senses … Chaplin’s determination to keep journeying inwards – the sense of introspection, how he built fibers of his life into his art – is what made our structure possible. He never rested on his laurels.”

Spinney and Middleton use this biographical lens to process the greatest hits of Chaplin’s filmography as an extension of his interior turmoils. “The extraordinary canvas of his life maps quite neatly on to his films,” Middleton says. The early silent hit The Kid allowed Chaplin to project his wounded inner child on to a street urchin and give him the nurturing home a young Chaplin always dreamt of. The Yukon adventure The Gold Rush indulged his boyhood imagination and the old-fashioned romance City Lights was his pushback to the talkies he hoped were a passing fad. He responded to the widespread desperation of the Great Depression with the industrialized bustle of Modern Times, and addressed the mass ruination of the Holocaust with the Hitler satire, The Great Dictator.

“After he was rejected by the American establishment and public in the wake of Monsieur Verdoux, he came back and made Limelight, the story of a music hall star who was renowned as a tramp comedian, with his public now having fallen out of love with him,” Middleton continues. “There’s a shape to his life that syncs up neatly with the chronology of his films, and we were fortunate for that. But at the same time, we didn’t want to be wedded to that in any way.”

The latter half of the documentary shifts focus from Chaplin’s work to his tumultuous personal life, in which a few crises threatened to tarnish his outward-facing profile. There was the smear campaign mounted against him by the House un-American activities committee, which painted Chaplin as a communist sympathizer for being generally pro-peace. Uglier still were the acrimonious, scandalous divorces – his separation from second wife Lita Grey marked by her proto-Me Too accusations and the scandal-mongering media’s portrayal of her as a gold-digging liar. Chaplin fans must contend with the dissonance between an artist who preached goodwill and magnanimity on screen and his contemptible goings-on behind closed doors.

“There were some uncomfortable elements of Chaplin’s biography that we felt had to be foregrounded in the film,” Middleton says. “We tried to find as much as possible in the way of first-hand accounts and testimony, looking for people who could speak directly to this. That’s what led us to the incredible interview with Lita Grey, conducted in 1965 around the release of her autobiography. This was all well-documented at the time, when it was the most expensive and sensational divorce in Hollywood history. The way Lita’s story was brushed aside by parts of the press has a strong resonance with whose stories are believed in the modern day. She says that she was disbelieved by the public because of their idolization of Charlie. They couldn’t reconcile the details they were discovering through the divorce settlement with the image of the tramp on-screen. Over the past few years, as a society, we’ve been facing that same dilemma. It was possibly one of the first times in history that people had to confront this dissonance.”

“His star-image quickly crumbled under the pressure of these very plausible allegations about a pattern of abusive behavior,” Middleton adds. “We were interested in how those two sections spoke to one another. We trusted that audiences are sophisticated enough to consider these two ideas together.”

That troubling contradiction was one of many that come to define Chaplin in the film’s analysis, which concludes only that the closer one looks, the more unknowable he appears to be. What’s certain is that the distance between the man and his onlookers through history is by his own design, his evasive withdrawal ultimately being his clearest, truest quality. Lying behind the instinct to hide, pervading so much of what the comic genius did, is anxiety – over being seen, exposed or rejected.

“He seemed to put up so many barriers to the people closest to him in his life,” Spinney remarks. “There’s a sense that, as his daughter Jane says near the end of this film, he achieved his life’s dream. In the workhouse, he dreamed of wealth and fame, and he made it happen. But later in life, he’d admit that he always felt very insecure about his wealth, like he could be thrust back into poverty at any time and lose it all.”

The Real Charlie Chaplin is out in US cinemas on 19 November and will be available on Showtime from 11 December with a UK date to be announced

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Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English filmmaker who wrote, acted, and directed his films. His "Little Tramp" character remains an iconic comedy creation. He was arguably the most popular performer of the silent film era.

Fast Facts: Charlie Chaplin

• Full Name: Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Knight of the British Empire
• Occupation: Film actor, director, writer
• Born: April 16, 1889 in England
• Died: December 25, 1977, in Vaud, Switzerland
• Parents: Hannah and Charles Chaplin, Sr.
• Spouses: Mildred Harris (m. 1918; div. 1920), Lita Grey (m. 1924; div. 1927), Paulette Goddard (m. 1936; div. 1942), Oona O'Neill (m. 1943)
• Children: Norman, Susan, Stephan, Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette, Christopher
• Selected Films: "The Gold Rush" (1925), "City Lights" (1931), "Modern Times" (1936), "The Great Dictator" (1940)

Early Life and Stage Career

Born into a family of music hall entertainers, Charlie Chaplin first appeared on stage when he was five years old. It was a one-time appearance taking over from his mother, Hannah, but by age nine, he'd caught the entertainment bug.

Chaplin grew up in poverty. He was sent to a workhouse when he was seven. When his mother spent two months in an insane asylum, the nine-year-old Charlie was sent with his brother, Sydney, to live with his alcoholic father. When Charlie was 16, his mother was committed to an institution permanently.

At age 14, Chaplin began performing on stage in plays in London's West End. He quickly became a noted comedy performer. In 1910, the Fred Karno comedy company sent Chaplin on a 21-month tour of the American vaudeville circuit. The company included another notable performer, Stan Laurel.

First Movie Success

During a second vaudeville tour, the New York Motion Picture Company invited Charlie Chaplin to be part of their Keystone Studios troupe. He began working with Keystone under Mack Sennett in January 2014. His first appearance on film was in the 1914 short "Making a Living."

Chaplin soon created his legendary "Little Tramp" character. The character was introduced to audiences in February 1914 in "Kid Auto Races at Venice" and "Mabel's Strange Predicament." The films were so successful with audiences that Mack Sennett invited his new star to direct his own films. The first short directed by Charlie Chaplin was "Caught in the Rain," released in May 1914. He would continue to direct most of his films for the rest of his career.

November 1914's "Tillie's Punctured Romance," starring Marie Dressler, included Charlie Chaplin's first feature film appearance. It was a box office success causing Chaplin to ask for a raise. Mack Sennett thought it was too expensive and his young star moved to the Essanay studio of Chicago.

While working for Essanay, Chaplin recruited Edna Purviance to be his co-star. She would go on to appear in 35 of his movies. By the time the one-year contract with Essanay expired, Charlie Chaplin was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. In December 1915, he signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation worth $670,000 a year (approximately $15.4 million today).

Silent Star

Located in Los Angeles, Mutual introduced Charlie Chaplin to Hollywood. His stardom continued to grow. He moved to First National for the years 1918-1922. Among his memorable films of the era are his World War I movie "Shoulder Arms," which placed the Little Tramp in the trenches. "The Kid," released in 1921, was Chaplin's longest film to date at 68 minutes, and it included child star Jackie Coogan.

In 1922, at the end of his contract with First National, Charlie Chaplin became an independent producer laying groundwork for future filmmakers to take artistic control over their work. "The Gold Rush," released in 1925 and his second independent feature, became one of the most successful movies of his career. It included key scenes such as the Little Tramp, a gold rush prospector, eating a boot and an impromptu dance of dinner rolls speared on forks. Chaplin considered it his best work.

Charlie Chaplin released his next film "The Circus" in 1928. It was another success and earned him a special award at the first Academy Awards celebration. However, personal issues including a divorce controversy, made the filming of "The Circus" difficult, and Chaplin rarely spoke about it, omitting it entirely from his autobiography.

Despite the addition of sound to films, Charlie Chaplin resolutely continued to work on his next movie "City Lights" as a silent picture. Released in 1931, it was a critical and commercial success. Many film historians considered it his finest achievement and his best use of pathos in his work. One concession to sound was the introduction of a musical score, which Chaplin composed himself.

The final mostly silent Chaplin movie was "Modern Times" released in 1936. It included sound effects and a musical score as well as one song sung in gibberish. The underlying political commentary on the dangers of automation in the workplace prompted criticism from some viewers. While praised for its physical comedy, the movie was a commercial disappointment.

Controversial Films and Reduced Popularity

The 1940s became one of the most controversial decades of Charlie Chaplin's career. It began with his broad satire of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe before World War II . "The Great Dictator" is Chaplin's most overtly political film. He believed that it was necessary to laugh at Hitler. Some audiences disagreed, and the film was a controversial release. The movie included the first spoken dialogue in a Chaplin piece. Successful with critics, "The Great Dictator" earned five Academy Award nominations including for Best Picture and Best Actor.

Legal difficulties filled most of the first half of the 1940s. An affair with aspiring actress Joan Barry resulted in an FBI investigation and a trial based on an alleged violation of the Mann Act, a law prohibiting the transportation of women across state boundaries for sexual purposes. A court acquitted Chaplin two weeks after the trial began. A paternity suit followed less than a year later that determined Chaplin was the father of Barry's child, Carol Ann. Blood tests that concluded it wasn't true were not admissible in the trial.

The personal controversy intensified with the announcement in 1945, amidst the paternity trials, that Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the daughter of acclaimed playwright Eugene O'Neill. Chaplin was then 54, but both appeared to have found their soul mates. The couple remained married until Chaplin's death, and they had eight children together.

Charlie Chaplin finally returned to movie screens in 1947 with "Monsieur Verdoux," a black comedy about an unemployed clerk who marries and murders widows to support his family. Suffering from audience responses to his personal troubles, Chaplin faced the most negative critical and commercial reactions of his career. In the wake of the release of the film, he was openly called a Communist for his political views, and many Americans raised questions about his reluctance to apply for American citizenship. Today, some observers consider "Monsieur Verdoux" one of Charlie Chaplin's best movies.

Exile From the United States

Chaplin's next film, "Limelight," was an autobiographical work and was more serious than most of his movies. It set politics aside but addressed his loss of popularity in the twilight of his career. It includes the only onscreen appearance with legendary silent film comedian Buster Keaton.

Charlie Chaplin decided to hold the 1952 premiere of "Limelight" in London, the setting for the movie. While he was gone, U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked his permit to re-enter the U.S. Although the Attorney General told the press that he had a "pretty good case" against Chaplin, files released in the 1980s showed there was no real evidence to support keeping him out.

Despite European success, "Limelight" met a hostile reception in the U.S. including organized boycotts. Chaplin did not return to the U.S. for 20 years.

Final Films and Return to the United States

Charlie Chaplin established a permanent residence in Switzerland in 1953. His next film, 1957's "A King in New York," addressed much of his experience with accusations of being a Communist. It was a sometimes bitter political satire, and Chaplin refused to release it in the U.S. The final Charlie Chaplin movie, "A Countess from Hong Kong," appeared in 1967, and it was a romantic comedy. It co-starred two of the world's biggest movie stars, Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, and Chaplin himself only appeared briefly. Unfortunately, it was a commercial failure and received negative reviews.

In 1972, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited Charlie Chaplin to return to the U.S. to receive a special Oscar for his lifetime of achievements. Initially reluctant, he decided to return and earned a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest ever at the Academy Awards ceremony.

While he continued to work, Chaplin's health declined. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1975. He died on Christmas Day, December 25, 1977, after having a stroke in his sleep.

Charlie Chaplin remains one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. He changed the course of comedy in film by introducing elements of pathos and sadness that deepened the emotional impact of his work. Four of his movies, "The Gold Rush," "City Lights," "Modern Times," and "The Great Dictator" are often included on lists of the best films of all time.

• Ackroyd, Peter. Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life . Nan A. Talese, 2014.
• Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography . Penguin, 2003.
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Filmography

The British Film Institute has compiled an excellent filmography with plenty of information on Chaplin’s films, including detailed descriptions of the very early shorts.

With Keystone Studios

• Making a Living
• Kid Auto Races at Venice
• Mabel’s Strange Predicament
• A Thief Catcher
• Between Showers
• A Film Johnnie
• Tango Tangles
• His Favorite Pastime
• Cruel, Cruel Love
• The Star Boarder
• Mabel at the Wheel
• Twenty Minutes of Love
• Caught in a Cabaret
• Caught in the Rain
• The Fatal Mallet
• Her Friend the Bandit
• The Knockout
• Mabel’s Busy Day
• Mabel’s Married Life
• Laughing Gas
• The Property Man
• The Face on the Bar Room Floor
• The Masquerader
• His New Profession
• The Rounders
• The New Janitor
• Those Love Pangs
• Dough and Dynamite
• Gentlemen of Nerve
• His Musical Career
• His Trysting Place
• Tillie’s Punctured Romance
• Getting Acquainted
• His Prehistoric Past

With Essanay Film Manufacturing Company

• His New Job
• A Night Out
• The Champion
• In the Park
• A Jitney Elopement
• A Night in the Show
• Charlie Chaplin’s Burlesque on Carmen

Other Essanay titles

• Triple Trouble (film put together by Essanay from unfinished Chaplin films two years after he had left the company)
• His Regeneration [not generally considered a ‘Chaplin’ title although he did make a brief appearance]

With Mutual Film Corporation

• The Floorwalker
• The Fireman
• The Vagabond
• The Pawnshop
• Behind the Screen
• Easy Street
• The Immigrant
• The Adventurer

With First National

• A Dog’s Life
• Shoulder Arms
• A Day’s Pleasure
• The Idle Class
• The Pilgrim

With United Artists

• 1923 A Woman of Paris
• 1925 and 1942 The Gold Rush
• 1928 The Circus
• 1931 City Lights
• 1936 Modern Times
• 1940 The Great Dictator
• 1947 Monsieur Verdoux
• 1952 Limelight

Other Productions

• 1957 A King in New York
• 1959 The Chaplin Revue (which includes A Dog’s Life , Shoulder Arms , The Pilgrim , and 1918 footage shot for How to Make Movies )
• 1967 A Countess from Hong Kong

You might also want to read...

Restoration of City Lights Score

An interview with Timothy Brock who restored the score to "City Lights"

The Music of The Gold Rush

Silent films were never truly silent: the live musical accompaniment provided in the theatres was a vital element of the cinema-going experience...

Art a la Carte

"The Gold Rush" press clipping from the Chaplin archives

There Are Three Perfect Charlie Chaplin Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Did you know there are only two perfect horror movies ? Or that  there are only two perfect sci-fi films?  At least, that's what Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe. The great arbiter of our collective cinematic taste has bestowed the hallowed 100% Tomatometer rating on just a handful of films across cinema history, and the result of this incessant ranking of art has apparently left us with two perfect "Toy Story" movies and just a single perfect "Godzilla" film . What a world.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Rotten Tomatoes scores remain consistently alluring to us all, even showing up on our streaming interfaces and instantly deciding for us whether a movie is worth a watch. Now, it's time to put cinematic legend and Hollywood hero Charlie Chaplin under the microscope and see how this giant of the industry can stand up to the mighty Tomatometer.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin is, of course, responsible for creating and starring in numerous classics, and despite some truly upsetting controversies , remains one of the most fascinating and influential figures in the history of cinema. Best remembered for his famous on-screen persona, "The Tramp," Chaplin was a true multi-hyphenate, directing, shooting, and starring in films during the silent era, right through the evolution of the medium during the early to mid-20th Century. His achievements behind the scenes were just as important, too, with Chaplin founding United Artists in 1919 and becoming so influential that in 1971 the Academy saw fit to award him with an honorary Oscar for the "incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century."

Of course, the Tomatometer will be the ultimate judge of this titan of filmmaking, and the great adjudicator has now spoken...

The three perfect Charlie Chaplin movies

According to Rotten Tomatoes , there are three perfect Charlie Chaplin films. The first is 1921's "The Kid," Chaplin's first time directing a full-length film in which he also portrayed his tramp character. In this feature, the tramp adopts an orphan but is left bereft when his ward is reclaimed by the orphanage. According to RT, the critical consensus is that Chaplin was given "able support" from his co-star Jackie Coogan in what is a "slapstick masterpiece" that balanced humor with "moments of disarming poignancy."

Not content with just directing and starring in "The Kid," Chaplin also wrote, produced, scored, and edited the film — a feat he would repeat with "The Idle Class" which debuted the same year. In this silent comedy, Chaplin plays both the tramp and the gentleman or "absent husband," leading to some classic Chaplin hijinks. It's worth noting that there are only seven reviews and one top critic review for "The Idle Class," whereas "The Kid" has 50 reviews. Still, the Tomatometer doesn't lie, and "The Idle Class" joins its fellow 1921 classic as one of Chaplin's only "perfect" films.

The final "perfect" entry in Charlie Chaplin's filmography is 1925's "The Gold Rush," which saw the actor in his tramp persona while portraying the character of the Lone Prospector, who travels to join the Klondike gold rush before becoming trapped in a cabin with a fugitive and a prospector during a blizzard. Chaplin also wrote, directed, produced, scored, and edited the film. There are 54 reviews for "The Gold Rush" on Rotten Tomatoes, and the site's summation of the critical consensus deems it a "delightful blend of slapstick humor, poignant emotion, and social commentary," and claims that "The Gold Rush" is a brilliant demonstration of Chaplin's acting, writing, and directing skills.

What about the other Charlie Chaplin films?

If you're not entirely clear on how Rotten Tomatoes actually works, the site aggregates approved critics' reviews and uses those reviews to produce an overall score on the Tomatometer. According to RT, when at least 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, the media in question is given a red tomato. Below 60% earns a lowly green splat. A 100% score means that all the approved critic reviews are positive.

So, regardless of what you think of RT, earning a 100% score is somewhat of an accomplishment, as it basically just means that every approved critic liked the film. When movies or TV shows only have a handful of reviews, the accomplishment becomes less impressive. But when, like "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush," a film has dozens of reviews, gaining a 100% score is a real feat.

There's no doubt that "The Gold Rush," "The Kid," and "The Idle Class" stand as some of the best films of the 1920s . But "City Lights" proves that Chaplin was just as good at producing stellar films during the 1930s , and some of his best-known works apparently aren't good enough for the Tomatometer, such as the feature that shot Chaplin and his tramp character to fame: 1915's "The Tramp." Then there's 1936's satire of the industrial era "Modern Times," which features the famous scene of the star literally being swallowed up by the cogs of a machine. Or what about 1940's "The Great Dictator" with its powerful anti-dictatorship message and iconic, prescient imagery of Chaplin as despot Adenoid Hynkel? Apparently, these just don't cut it for RT, which should be a reminder to take this whole thing as lightly as a classic slapstick routine from the man himself.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

Narrated by Sydney Pollack, film critic Richard Schickel's dazzling two-hour plus documentary to one of the towering figures in film: Charles Chaplin. Hardcore Chaplin fans may not find much... Read all Narrated by Sydney Pollack, film critic Richard Schickel's dazzling two-hour plus documentary to one of the towering figures in film: Charles Chaplin. Hardcore Chaplin fans may not find much new material here, but more unfamiliar admirers will gain some valuable information about... Read all Narrated by Sydney Pollack, film critic Richard Schickel's dazzling two-hour plus documentary to one of the towering figures in film: Charles Chaplin. Hardcore Chaplin fans may not find much new material here, but more unfamiliar admirers will gain some valuable information about one of the most famous personalities of the 20th century. Schickel has constructed the do... Read all

• Richard Schickel
• Charles Chaplin
• Sydney Pollack
• 4 User reviews
• 8 Critic reviews
• 80 Metascore

• (archive footage)

• Narrated By

• Self - Chaplin Friend …

• Self - Film Historian

• Self - Chaplin Biographer

• Self - Film Critic and Historian

• Self - Actor …

• Self - Director …

• Self - Actor

• Self - Son of Charles Chaplin

• Self - Daughter of Charles Chaplin

• Self - Director of 'Chaplin'

• Self - Director

• Self - Mime Artist
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Connections Features Making a Living (1914)

User reviews 4

• Oct 18, 2003
• September 11, 2003 (United States)
• United States
• Lorac Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 12 minutes
• Black and White
• Dolby Digital

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