Hollywood gave Charlie Chaplin a standing ovation

Charlie Chaplin

At the height of his popularity - which lasted 25 years - he was the most beloved film personality in the world. Charlie Chaplin was a writer-director, actor, producer, and musician without peer. There is a tendency today to think of Charlie Chaplin as merely that funny-looking fellow with the mustache, peculiar gait, and twirling cane, but he was much more. His unique blend of comedy and pathos displayed an artistry that is best described as sublime. Stan Laurel (of LAUREL AND HARDY fame), who understudied Charlie Chaplin and saw his rise to stardom, said simply, “He’s the greatest artist that was ever on the screen.”

Charlie Chaplin in England

Charlie Chaplin’s childhood in England was early training for his famous characterization of the tramp. He lived a life of punishing poverty. His father died of alcoholism, and his mother was often hospitalized. Charlie Chaplin spent two years in an orphanage and often lived on the street.

He made his first professional appearance at the age of five, filling in for his mother (who tried to make a living as a musician) and singing one of her numbers. For Charlie Chaplin, it was a career born out of desperation. By the age of eight, he was a member of a touring music-hall troupe, the Eight Lancashire Lads. He never lacked for work again. He was 17 and a seasoned professional when he joined the Fred Karno Pantomime Troupe. He stayed with the Karno company for seven years until he became their star attraction. While on tour in America with Karno in 1913, he was signed up by Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studio.

Making a Living

Charlie Chaplin’s first one-reeler, in support of Keystone’s main players, was Making a Living (1913). For his second film, Kid Auto Races in Venice (1913), he borrowed Fatty Arbuckle’s pants, Ford Sterling’s massive shoes (putting them on the opposite feet), a tight-fitting jacket, a tiny derby, and one of Mack Swain’s mustaches (trimmed down, of course), and the tramp was born, or at least his costume was. Charlie Chaplin didn’t always dress as the tramp in his early one-reelers at Keystone, but the character slowly began to evolve. By 1914 he was directing himself in his Sennett comedies and according to Gerald Mast in his book The Comic Mind, “The most significant lesson that Charlie Chaplin learned at Keystone was . . . how to relate to objects and how to make objects relate to him.” But Keystone was not a place given to detail and finesse. Charlie Chaplin needed to move on and grow.

Chaplin at the Essanay

He left Sennett in 1915 and went to the Essanay Studio. Charlie Chaplin had already become popular, but now he had the time to develop his character. Still, the movies were crude. But with The Tramp (1915), one of his funniest two-reelers, film comedy was never the same again. He found the heart of his character and the comic means of expressing himself. From Essanay, Charlie Chaplin moved to Mutual in 1916, and it was with this new company that he made some of his most famous two-reelers, consolidating the artistic breakthroughs he had made at Essanay. Two-reelers such as The Pawnshop (1916), The Immigrant (1916), and Easy Street (1916) were so inventive, intimate, and hilariously clever that Charlie Chaplin’s popularity became a worldwide phenomenon. He was imitated by all sorts of film comedians, but no one was remotely as talented. Though earning $10,000 per week (receiving a $100,000 advance on his salary), he was underpaid in relation to his value to the studio.

His next step took him to First National in 1918 where he was supposed to make eight two-reelers. All of his films for First National were classics, but they weren’t all two-reelers. After A Dog’s Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1919), Sunnyside (1919), and A Day’s Pleasure (1919), Charlie Chaplin decided to make his first feature, The Kid (1921). It took a year and a half to make, it was six reels long, and, despite the protests of the film company, it became the biggest hit in movie history up until that time except for The Birth of a Nation (1915). Thereafter, Charlie Chaplin’s other films with First National were of any length he chose.

Freedom is what Charlie Chaplin wanted.

Charlie Chaplin wanted more freedom as an artist, so he joined with the other great lights of the silent era, MARY PICKFORD, DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, and D. W. GRIFFITH, to form their own film company. They called it United Artists.

For his first film with his new company, Charlie Chaplin wrote and directed (but did not star in) A Woman of Paris (1923). His longtime leading lady, Edna Purviance, was the star. It was a serious film that resulted in disappointing box-office receipts, but seen today it displays a great deal of sophistication. Charlie Chaplin then took two years to make his next, and perhaps most famous, feature, The Gold Rush (1925). This story of the tramp in Alaska was episodic but both moving and very funny. As is the case with most of his work, The Gold Rush stands up without apology to the passing of time. In a famous scene Charlie Chaplin, starving to death in a cabin during a snowstorm, eats his shoe as if it were a delicacy. His “Oceana Roll,” otherwise known as the dance of the buns, is one of the most charming moments in the history of the cinema.

Slow down

Charlie Chaplin’s output slowed down even further after The Gold Rush. It took three years for The Circus (1928) to appear, but it became yet another hit. He was awarded a Special Oscar that year for “versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing, and producing The Circus.”

When everyone else in Hollywood was making talkies, Charlie Chaplin all but ignored the new technology and made another silent film, City Lights (1931). Though Charlie Chaplin wrote a wonderful musical score for the film and included sound effects, there was no dialogue. The industry pronounced that he was doomed to suffer a terrible disaster. No one, they were convinced, would go to a silent movie - unless it was a Charlie Chaplin movie. City Lights was the fourth-biggest grosser of the year.

Silent films?

Charlie Chaplin made yet another silent film in 1936, Modern Times, although in this movie he briefly broke the sound barrier when he sang a song in gibberish. Modern Times was a clear attack on the modern world and its dehumanizing machinery. It also had a mildly left-wing point of view that echoed Charlie Chaplin’s political convictions. But most important, it was both moving and funny. The film was the second biggest money earner of the year, just behind San Francisco. Nearly 15 years after the end of the silent era, Charlie Chaplin finally decided to make an all-talking movie, and when he talked, the world was surprised to find he had such a lovely voice. There were some, however, who felt he talked too much. Be that as it may, his next film, The Great Dictator (1940), was a savage comic attack on fascism. Charlie Chaplin played two roles in the film, a Jewish barber (a character closely resembling the tramp) and Adenoid Hynkel (based on Hitler). The highlight of the film was Charlie Chaplin’s dance with a globe, as Hynkel dreams of world conquest. Charlie Chaplin had put his art on the line, making a striking anti-Nazi film before America entered World War II, and audiences responded, making it the biggest hit of 1941.

Chaplin and America

But while Charlie Chaplin’s artistry continued to flourish in his next two films, his popularity (at least in America) did not. Finally relinquishing the tramp persona, Charlie Chaplin played a lady killer (literally) in Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a black comedy about murder with political overtones. At the time, the film received scathing reviews and did poorly with audiences who were both offended by Charlie Chaplin’s dark humor and upset that the tramp was no more.

Charlie Chaplin’s unequivocal left-wing sentiments brought him under fire in America during the red-baiting years of the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the same time, some Americans were fuming that Charlie Chaplin had never become a U.S. citizen. When the star left for Europe to promote his next film, Limelight (1952), he was told that he might not be allowed back into the country. Unwilling to live where he wasn’t wanted, Charlie Chaplin settled in Switzerland.

Charlie Chaplin in the Limelight

Limelight was a hit in Europe but was a disaster in the United States. The nostalgic movie recreated the London of the turn of the century with Charlie Chaplin playing Calvero the Clown, an aging music-hall performer who, much like Charlie Chaplin, has lost his audience. It was a sweet film about art and redemption that boasted the hit song “Smile,” which Charlie Chaplin penned himself.

His last two films, A King of New York (1957) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1966), were mediocre efforts that never met the high expectations that attended them. The latter film was written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and starred Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, with Charlie Chaplin merely making a cameo appearance as a waiter.

Sir Charlie Chaplin

Though he was knighted by the queen of England in 1975, the most memorable moment of Charlie Chaplin’s later career was his triumphant return to Hollywood in 1972. A frail old man of 82, he came back to his adopted home to receive an honorary Academy Award. After a splendid film tribute, he appeared on the stage, and the audience of Hollywood’s greatest stood up and gave him an extended and tumultuous ovation.