Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

 

                                                       Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

Charlie Chaplin

     Charlie Chaplin is one of the most famous personalities in world cinema. His contribution to the development of cinema will be remembered forever. Specially, his creation and portrayal of the vagabond or the tramp, who evokes at once our pity as well as amusement. Chaplin was a British born, American actor and director, who won international fame for his silence films, with ‘the tramp’ as the central character. Within two years of his appearance in motion pictures, in 1914, he had become one of the best known personalities of the nation. He was associated with all the main aspects of film making, like acting, directing, production, etc., and the typical image of Charlie Chaplin won him global popularity as a comic actor.

    Charlie Chaplin was born won April 16, 1889, in the south London slum. Charlie was the son of Charles and Hannah Chaplin, music hall performers and he first appeared on stage, at the age of eight, in a clogdancing act, ‘Eight Lancashire Lads’. Since his father died soon and his mother was often in and out of mental institutions, he did not have a settled life. His early life was a dreary succession of boarding schools and periods when he lived in the streets. Chaplin performed numerous music hall skits, until 1913, when he was signed for the movies by the Keystone Company while performing in New York. Thus his film career began in December 1913 at $150 a week and he never returned to stage.

    Chaplin hit upon his famous costume – derby hat, tight frock coat, boggy trousers, out-sized shoes, moustache, and cane – while making his second picture, Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), though the full pathos and significance of the tramp character had not yet been realised. His bowler hat, cane, moustache and turned-out feet made the audience laugh. Chaplin by his gestures and postures reduced the deficiency of sound to a great extent in silent films. His comedies were, however sensationally successful from the start, even though they were made at the rate of two week. Soon he was allowed to direct all his movies. Two years later, Chaplin together with two other foremost stars of the day, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and the director D.W. Griffith formed United Artists, so that each could produce and distribute his own films independently. After his first national contract ended with The Pilgrim (1923), Chaplin produced only for his own company until making A Countess from Hong Kong for Universal in 1966. 

     By the 1920s, his box-office appeal was so great that, no studio could afford his talents and he appeared only in films produced by him and also produced films only for his own company. Chaplin’s meteoric rise was due in part to the emergence of the star system, the selling of films on the basis of featured performers, rather than titles or plots. Indeed, the public’s eager reception of the Chaplin screen personality, along with those of Pickford, Fairbanks and others, did much to establish the system. In The Tramp (1915) Chaplin first inserted the note of pathos that was to make this little tramp not only amusing but also endearing. As star, director and writer of his own pictures, he was in a unique position to explore the implications of the character, described by one critic as, “the destitute person shown the perspective of the wealthy.”

    Chaplin’s personal life was stormy and unsettled. He married four times – thrice to his leading ladies, Milfred Harris (1918), Lita Grey (1924) and Paulett Goddard (1936) and in 1943, to Oona O’Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill. His first two divorces produced sensational headlines. In 1942, he called for a second front against Germany and his political stance was attacked. Presses by the United States Government for back taxes, and linked by politicians and newspaper columnists with allegedly subversive causes, Chaplin left the country in 1952. On his return, he was accused of being a communist and he left to spend the rest of his days in Switzerland. Here he died in 1977. In 1972, however he had returned to the United States, to receive a special award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science popularly known as the Oscars. His autobiography was published in 1964.

   Though Charlie Chaplin was mainly known as a great comedian but in his life time he was the most dominant figure in the world of cinema. By his innocent, child-like pranks, he endeared himself to millions of audience around the world. For his splendid contribution to the art, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975.