April 16 is Charlie Chaplin’s birthday, so there’s a certain argument that this shouldn’t be written down at all, but pantomimed, in monochrome, accompanied by piano or organ music and with a few narrative cards inserted. That’s the way Chaplin himself would have done it during the prime of his career in silent films. But as the biggest star in the world in his day, he was also Filthy Rich, and when he started making his own movies, he was able to spend years on one, getting it just right. Since neither “years” nor “just right” applies to these notes, we’ll have to go with what we’ve got. According to his biographer, it’s “the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told.”
Chaplin was born in 1889 in London. At least everybody thinks he was — there is no official record of his birth. His parents were both in show business, as music hall entertainers — his father was a singer, and his mother an actress. When he was just two years old, his parents separated and he and his half-brother Sid lived with their mother. They were quite poor, and when Chaplin was seven he was sent to a workhouse, and lived at the “Central London District School for Paupers.”
Things didn’t get better; Chaplin’s mother was committed to a mental asylum in 1898 and the brothers were sent to live with their father, who they hardly knew. Their father was a severe alcoholic at the time, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children visited them at least once. Then in 1900, when Chaplin was 11, his father died of liver disease caused by his alcoholism. Their mother was released from the asylum and they rejoined her, but three years later she relapsed. By then Sid, who was the older brother, had joined the Navy, and Chaplin was homeless at 14 until Sid returned. Their mother was finally committed permanently, and remained in an asylum for the rest of her life.
Meanwhile, Chaplin was a part-time performer himself. He began at the age of five, appearing on the music hall stage where his mother performed. He didn’t return until he was nine, when he joined the Eight Lancashire Lads troupe — they were clog dancers. The act was apparently popular, but Chaplin had already decided that he didn’t want to be a dancer — he was more interested in comedy.
He quit school when he was 13, and at 14 signed up with a London theatrical agency. His first role was in the play Jim, a Romance of Cockayne. He played a newsboy, and got pretty good reviews from the critics. The play, though, didn’t, and closed after two weeks. But that performance got him a role in a production of Sherlock Holmes, where he was again very well reviewed. And this time the play didn’t close; he stayed with it for two and a half years, beginning when he was 16.
He teamed up with his brother Sid and they performed burlesque comedy sketches in Casey’s Circus, where Chaplin was the star of the show. Then Sid joined a well-known comedy troupe and became a top performer there. Chaplin didn’t have any luck doing a solo act, so Sid got him a test with his company. The leader of the troupe, Fred Karno, thought Chaplin was “a pale, puny, sullen-looking youngster much too shy to do any good in the theatre.” But they gave him a shot, and he made a great impression. They signed him up on the spot. By about 1909 he was the star of that show, too, and was getting quite a bit of attention in the press.
Chaplin was so popular that he became the star of the part of the troupe that toured the vaudeville circuit in North America. The tour was successful, and Chaplin enjoyed good reviews on two continents. After that tour, they began another in 1914, and that was that; Chaplin was invited to join the New York Motion Picture Company at the generous salary of $150 per week. In his second film he came up with his iconic character, The Tramp. He explained the process in his autobiography:
“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.”
By the end of 1914, Chaplin was writing, directing, and acting in his own films and earning $1250 per week. He fast became an international star. You could by Chaplin dolls, read Chaplin comics, and although they hadn’t been invented yet, Chaplin T-Shirts would probably have been a big hit. Imitators were easy to find, too. In those days, none of this stuff was licensed, but Chaplin was already Filthy Rich and making a minimum of nearly $700,000 per year, which may have made him the highest-paid person in the world.
There are loads of stories about his later films, the many controversies that plagued him, and his fourth marriage, to Oona O’Neill, when she was 18 (he was 54). He lived to be 88, and died at his estate in Switzerland. But there was one more story in the offing. The year after he died, his coffin was dug up and held for ransom! Just like in a movie, the bad guys were caught, everything turned out to have a happy ending, and his coffin was re-interred, this time in a reinforced concrete vault.
