Charles Chaplin was declare by many the king of comedy. His life was a continuous adventure starting in his earliest days, an uncertain paternity, a Dickensian childhood, living in orphanages and workhouses, together with his half brother Sydney , living in extreme poverty, and seeing their mother’s mental health in decline that put her in an institution.
His early debut on vaudeville stage, a restless, continuous search to express himself, looking to improve himself, educate himself, learning on the fly, very close to the money, permanently following his dream, over passing a tremendous number of obstacle his entire life brought to him well deserved fame and world recognition as King of Comedy of all time.
About twenty years ago, I was hanging out at a country fair in Romania, shooting pictures with my new camera. At a moment a little fellow capture my attention; he was imitating Charles Chaplin’s famous character The Tramp on a small stage of a miniature circus. He was an animator trying to drag the crowd to the show. And, indeed, he was doing a very good job, the place became very crowdie in minutes because-in part- the crowd was attracted by the famous, universal vagabond, well known by many generations with out loosing over the time his charm, and in part due to the good job the impersonator was doing, the easy recognizable walk, the gesture, the make-up, the small moustache, the way he was handling the cane.
I had for a moment the illusion of traveling in time, I felt myself in a Hollywood studio in front of the set, during the filming of a scene in a silent comedy. I felt nostalgic and very grateful to this genius of silent comedy for his contribution to the universal culture. The character he developed, his entire work is part of the universal culture now, the life is the same on any meridian, and he caught the essence, transpose it to the screen. People all over the world laughed and cried to his movies. His entire life was a series of tumultuous events, an incredible adventures, born and raised in England he left the country in searching of the promises land, never became a citizen, always an alien resident, he create controversy, earn a fortune, loved many women, having a lot of children, making a amazing number of movies, making a lot of friends and even a lot more enemies, and eternal tramp following his dream. When I was eleven years old, homeless and starving in London, I had big dreams. I was a precocious youngster full of imagination and fancies and pride. My dream was to become a great musician or an actor-Chaplin wrote in Charles Chaplin’s Own Story.
Now surprise that he use his tremendous life experience in all of his movies, and developed his main character-an alter ego- The Little Fellow, The Tramp, the eternal looser, struggling to keep up appearances and preserve a modicum of human dignity. The Tramp’s silhouette-the baggy trousers set and pinched shoulders-made him instantly recognizable, even from the rear, and lent him a childlike appeal1.
The construction of the character, The Tramp, The Vagabond, The Little Fellow, was a process that expanded over many years and grew through a remarkable give-and-take with Chaplin’s audience. Chaplin was very receptive to criticism and a perfectionist. He retakes and remodels themes and subjects from early movies or early stage experiences and uses them in his movies, distils them to the essence.
The roots of the Character are seeded in his early childhood and life in London. Going back in time and searching his early life will give us the chance to understand the development of an icon that made Chaplin so successful.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April in 1889 in Walworth (London). He was the second child of Hannah Harriet Hill-the first-born was Sydney, from a previous love affair. His parents, Hannah and Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr. were music hall entertainers and especially his father was quite famous, popular enough to receive top billing in the provincial music halls, but he was a drunkard who died at age of thirty-seven. It was his mother he idolized and was inspired by during his visits backstage while she performed. Soon the family broke and Charles and his half brother Sydney had to live only with their mother, moving often from a place to an other .The situation get worst when Hannah was admitted to asylum because of her mental health decline. Charles Chaplin and Syd went to workhouse and then to public orphanage, the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. They found a harsh life at the school, punishments for the smallest offenses often included flagging.
The boys grew up in need, always starving, always in finding a place to live.
Chaplin achieved the ambition to act when he joined a dancing troupe, the “Eight Lancashire Lads” and this led onto parts in “Sherlock Holmes” and “Casey’s Court Circus”. Sydney meanwhile had joined the famous Fred Karno Company and quickly became a leading player and writer therein. He managed to get Charles involved, and he became a Karno star, earning $75 per week. For both brothers Karno was almost a college of comedy. They toured all over the England and France. In 1910 Charles Chaplin toured the U.S. with Karno group and returned for another tour in 1912. On this visit he received a telegram from Mack Sennett –the boss of Keystone Film Company-asking him to come and act in “flickers” for one year and $150 per week. Sennett hired Chaplin on a basis of a show he saw him in, in which Chaplin played an old drunken audience member who interrupted other acts and performed acrobatic feats because of his drunken state. When he arrived at Keystone Studios, Sennett was filming a scene and he saw the young man who stood before him, he did not believe that he could be that old drunk. Chaplin put down his bags and performed his drunken routine in the sands of the California desert. That way he convinced Sennett2.
At Keystone he learn at a fast pace the technique of making movies and the film mass production. The filmmaking at the beginning of the twentieth century was in its infancy. Mack Sennett was famous for his slapstick comedies, which ended in chases. With no sound, the visual had to be funny. Comedy required athleticism but to be one of the greats, it required so much more.
Chaplin first movies weren’t a success and Sennett gave him an ultimatum Improve or else3.
One morning in early 1914, brooding over his situation in the dressing room he shared with Fatty Arbuckle, Chaplin was seized by an inspiration. He came out dress as his new character, who made him millionaire, The Tramp, The Little Fellow, wearing a moustache cut from a piece of crepe hair, a bamboo cane, oversized shoes, baggy trousers4. Later, Chaplin brought more details about what inspire him in creating this character: it was almost everything that happens in his life in England. Rummy Binks, a poor sod who once held customers’ horses outside the Chaplin family pub in Lambeth5, inspired the tramp’s walk. The one footed running turns, and no doubt other bits of Tramp business, were past of the Karno company’s stylistic repertoire.
The first appearance of Tramp character was in Mabel’s Strange Predicament, a drunk making a nuisance of him in a hotel lobby6. At his early stage of his existence however, The Tramp was basically an antisocial character, sometimes drunk, often lewd and always disorderly.
Soon, Chaplin found the Keystone’s methods to be undeniably sloppy and Chaplin convinced Sennett that the chaotic methods of Keystone were not suited to him and he was allowed to direct his own films.
During his year at Keystone from December 1913 till November 1914, he made an amazing total of thirty-five films. Among the most important are: Making a living, Kid’s Auto Race, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, A Film Johnnie, Caught in a Cabaret, Caught in the Rain, The Fatal Mallet, The Knockout (announcing the famous fight in City Lights – trying to earn money for the blind girl), The Property Man, The face on the Barroom Floor, The Masquerader (anticipating the Dustin Hoffman’s dual role in Tootsie-fired by his director, Chaplin takes revenge by returning to the studio disguised as the eerily seductive actress Senorita Chapelina7), His New Profession, The Rounders, The New Janitor, His Musical Career (about a pair of piano movers who make a delivery to a wrong address-later in 1932, Laurel and Hardy will performed in the famous remake of the same story).
By the end of 1915 his contract with Keystone expired and despise his success with the company, Keystone hesitation to raise his salary made him to sign a $1250 per week contract and $10,000 bonus with Essanay, a Chicago based company, to make fifteen movies in one year.
While at Essanay, Chaplin find his definitive way in the industry. Her he met Edna Purviance, who became his leading lady for the next thirty-four films. Notable films during this period include: The Champion, The Tramp, The Bank, A Night Out (Edna’s debut film).
In The Tramp, for the first time, Chaplin’s character was literally a hobo, earning his keep by doing casual chores for a family of farmers8. The end of the movies brings for the first time what will be well known the Chaplin’s signature: heartbroken but undefeated the Tramp shrugs his shoulders and shuffles off down the road. This time The Tramp character became gentler, and more romantic.
The next movies he made with Essanay-In the Park, By the Sea, The Work, Burlesque on Carmen, Police- made him not only a popular comedian but he became the object of a national craze, named by the mass media “Chaplinitis”. His movies start to be rented with prices higher then ever.
In 1916 he moved to Mutual Film Company and the contract he signed became a major news event. The contract gave him even greater control and financial rewards. Mutual offered him $670,000 for one-year contract. He would be making the highest salary of any individual in the country; earning more then the President of U.S. and his income for 1916 would equal 94 percent of the payroll of entire U.S. Senate.
At Mutual, he made twelve films: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond, One A.M., The Count, The Pawnshop, Behind the Screen, The Rink, Easy Street, The Cure, the Immigrant, The Adventurer.
In The Floorwalker, the American department store, as envisioned by Chaplin, could be said to illustrate, the maxim Capitalism Is Theft. Everyone is stealing. The Tramp, no longer the troublemaker, is now a relative innocent9.
The Rink was a version of a skating sketch, Syd developed at Karno. They hired professional skaters and in less then a week, Chaplin outperformed the pros. Later, he will develop the scene in Modern Times, where he is skating in a department store entertaining a young poor girl ( Paullete Goddard).
The Vagabond is a film so different in tone and subject matters from its predecessors, a fairy tale. Edna Purviance is playing a role of a young woman kidnapped in infancy from her wealthy parents and brought up by a Gypsy Chieftain and his wife to slave. Chaplin enters the film as a soulful itinerant musician who plays left-handed violin. He rescues her from the Chieftain and dare to believe that his dream of love is coming true. But Edna is falling in love with a painter they met. After she poses as a model and the paint is exposed in an exhibition, her family discovers her.
Easy Street and The Immigrant were the first of Chaplin’s many social criticisms, which brought him a lot of enemies.
In 1917, another production company hired Chaplin. First National Films paid him $1,250,000 per year, a salary that shocked the film industry. More then that, he was allowed to build his own studio, where he made eight film over a five years period.
A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms, The Bond, Sunnyside, A Day’s Pleasure, The Kid, The Idle Class, Pay day, The Pilgrim.
In a Dog’s Life, Chaplin drives the parallel between the existence of a stray dog, Scraps, and two human unfortunates-Charlie the Tramp, and Edna, the bar singer. Charlie’s battle with other applicants for a few jobs at the Employment Office is compared with Scraps’ furious struggle over a bone with a horde of bigger and fiercer dogs10.
The Shoulder Arms is concentrating on the Little Fellow’s adventures on the batter field, where he was a reluctant hero. The movie ends with Chaplin delivering a swift kick to the Kaiser’s behind followed by the title ”Peace on earth, good will to all”. I a coda he wakes up in his folding bed, still in basic training; his adventures were just a dream. Shoulder Arms was a big hit at the box office.
The Kid- Chaplin starts to work at this film during a difficult period in his life. His first wife-Mildred Harris- gave birth to child, who died shortly after birth due to a condition. Chaplin married Mildred to avoid a scandal, because she was just seventeen years old when she got pregnant. The film was influenced by Chaplin’s own depressing experience of fatherhood. The Tramp adopts an abandoned baby and became a tender devoted caretaker.
The Kid was also another brief on the behalf of the unwed mother and by extension a defense of Hannah Chaplin. The story begins with an aspiring singer (Edna Purviance) who has been loved and abandoned by a handsome painter. After giving birth to her illegitimate child, she leaves the hospital, destitute and alone. ”Her only sin was motherhood,” a title proclaims.
Unable to taker care for the baby, she leaves him inside an expensive automobile, in the hope that the wealthy owners will take pity and adopt the child. Instead, through a series of mishaps, the basket containing the baby ends up on the slum doorstep of the Tramp. When we next see the pair it is several years later, and Charlie and the Kid are a team. He is a glazier and the Kid drums up business by braking windows. Their hardscrabble, but happy life is threatened by the police and social workers, which snatch the kid away. The memorable aspect of the movie would be the remarkable performance of Jackie Coogan in the scene where he sobs as the welfare authorities prepare to cart him away-Jackie has been dumped into the open bed of a truck-perhaps a reminder of Chaplin’s arrival at Hanwell Orphanage in a baker’s van.
One of the important moments in motion picture history occurred in 1919 when Charlie Chaplin, along with friends Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith, formed the United Artists Studio. Chaplin, however, was not able to distribute his films through this company until three years later, when his contract with First National was complete.By 1923, Chaplin was completely independent and began a string of classic successes. The Gold Rush, in 1925, saw the Little Tramp in the Klondike, searching for gold and looking for love. 1928's The Circus had Chaplin nominated for two Academy Awards in the first such ceremony: best actor and best comedy direction. He won neither, but received an Honorary Oscar for writing, directing, producing, and acting in that same film.The Circus was Chaplin's last true silent film. In 1927, the "talkie" was introduced with The Jazz Singer. Chaplin believed the sound phenomenon to be a passing fad, and, in his 1931 City Lights, only used the technology to synchronize music and picture with only a few sound effects. In Modern Times (1936), Chaplin allowed speech by some characters, but not his beloved Tramp. While most acting was done in pantomime, the Little Tramp did have one musical number, in which he sang, but the Tramp's voice would never truly talk. Modern Times was the Little Tramp's final appearance on the screen. However, a character in Chaplin's next film would strongly resemble the Little Tramp.By the late thirties, Chaplin, and the world, witnessed the rise of fascism, the Nazi party, and Hitler. Chaplin found an odd fascination with Hitler, and many similarities were found between them. They were each born in the same year, only four days apart, and both had drunken fathers and worshipped their mothers. 1919 had witnessed the birth of not only United Artists, but also the Nazi party. Both were known as obsessive perfectionists and possessed erratic work habits. The most obvious resemblance, of course, was the mustache.In 1940's The Great Dictator, Chaplin played a Hitler-like character named Adenoid Hynkel, leader of the Double Cross party, in the great nation of Tomania. His Mussolini-like rival was Benzino Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria, played by Jack Oakie. Chaplin also played Hynkel's look-alike, a Jewish barber who resembled the Little Tramp. In his first real "talkie," Chaplin not only talks, but speaks on a very serious subject. The fun of the satire completely disappears, when, in the final scene of the film, the barber, who is mistaken for the dictator, addresses the troops after an invasion. When prompted to speak, he says, "I can't," and is answered with, "You must." Chaplin finally chose to speak:"...I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible... We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone. And he good Earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned our souls... Our knowledge has made us cynical. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity... Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to these brutes- men who... regiment your lives... use you as cannon fodder. You are not machines! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. Don't hate... Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance...Let us fight for a world of reason... where progress will lead to the happiness of us all."The film was nominated for a best picture Academy Award, while Chaplin and Oakie were nominated for best actor and best supporting actor. None of the nominations were won.Chaplin's next film, Monsieur Verdoux, in 1947, was a dark comedy about serial murder for profit, inspired by an idea from Orson Welles. The film, later considered to be ahead of its time, did not fare well at the box office. Five years later, Chaplin ended an era with Limelight (1952). The film, the last in which he starred, marked his first on-screen appearance alongside comic rival, Buster Keaton.After shooting on this film was complete, Chaplin began a publicity tour in Europe. It was while still on the ship to Europe that he received a cable from the United States Immigration Department. They refused him reentry to the country until he answered to "charges of a political nature and moral turpitude." Chaplin chose not to answer the ridiculous charges, and did not return to the United States.Charles Chaplin settled in Switzerland with his young wife, Oona, where they raised eight children. In 1972, Chaplin was invited by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to receive a Special Oscar for his contributions and achievements in the industry. Queen Elizabeth chose to knight Chaplin in 1975.Sir Charles Chaplin died in his sleep on Christmas morning in 1977. He was buried in Switzerland.Bibliography
1 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 61
2 Chaplin-A movie by Sir Richard Attenborough3 Chapliniana. A commentary on Charles Chaplin’s eighty-one movies-Harry M. Geduld, Pages 10-114 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 59
5 Charles Chaplin’s Million Dollars Walk-McClure’s Magazine, July 1916
6 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 61
7 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 71
8 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 71
9 Tramp-The life of Charles Chaplin-Joyce Milton, page 108
10 Chaplin. His Life and Art-David Robinson, pages 228-230
11 Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story-edited by Harry M Geduld
