Name   Charles Spencer Chaplin


Birth    16 April 1889
            Walworth, London, England

Died     25 December 1977 (aged 88)
            Vevey, Switzerland

 
 
 
Occupation
 
 Actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, composer, mime


Years active 1895–1976[1]

Spouse(s)

 Mildred Harris (m. 1918–1921) «start: (1918)–end+1: (1922)»"Marriage: Mildred Harris to Charlie Chaplin"

Lita Grey (m. 1924–1927) «start: (1924)–end+1: (1928)»"Marriage: Lita Grey to Charlie Chaplin"

Paulette Goddard (m. 1936–1942) «start: (1936)–end+1: (1943)»"Marriage: Paulette Goddard to Charlie Chaplin" Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin)

Oona O'Neill (m. 1943–1977)



Early life




Bain News Service photo of Chaplin at his desk c. 1910Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr, was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress. They separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother lived with Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth.



As a small child, Chaplin also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street. His mother and maternal grandmother were from the Smith family of Romanichals,[4] a fact of which he was extremely proud,[5] though he described it in his autobiography as "the skeleton in our family cupboard".[6] Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr., was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road where a plaque now commemorates the fact. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother lived at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temples Boys School. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901.[7] As of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, as part of a troupe of young male dancers, The Eight Lancashire Lads,[8] managed by a William Jackson.[9]



A larynx condition ended the singing career of Chaplin's mother. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, "Jack Jones."





Chaplin in the 1900s decadeAfter Chaplin's mother (who went by the stage name Lilly Harley) was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth.



Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden (1892–1957), was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

United States


Chaplin first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the U.S. for a second tour, arriving with the Karno Troupe on 2 October 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel shared a room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the United States. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling.[10] Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake.[11] Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance.[12]





Making a Living (1914), Chaplin's film debutChaplin was given over to Normand, who directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films.[13] Chaplin did not enjoy being directed by a woman, and they often disagreed.[13] Eventually, the two worked out their differences and remained friends long after Chaplin left Keystone. The Tramp debuted during the silent film era in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (released on 7 February 1914). Chaplin, with his Little Tramp character, quickly became the most popular star in Keystone director Mack Sennett's company of players. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions (in only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp).



The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. The 1931 production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times (released 5 February 1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.



Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. While in the end the Tramp manages to shake off his disappointment and resume his carefree ways, “the pathos lies in The Tramp's hope for a more permanent transformation through love, and his failure to achieve this.”

Mack Sennett did not warm to Chaplin right away, and Chaplin believed Sennett intended to fire him following a disagreement with Normand.[13] However, Chaplin's pictures were soon a success, and he became one of the biggest stars at Keystone.[