George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin the creator of the most famous image in world cinema—the Tramp. Stoic and silent, with a bowler hat, polite manners, and empty pockets, the character became the dignified face of the little man. Chaplin learned to keep his composure even in life’s worst moments, and he became a universal storyteller who conveyed something deeply important to audiences everywhere.
Charlie Chaplin, 1918.
75-Year Career
Officially, he was an English actor, director, screenwriter, composer, producer, and editor. But the British-born artist won his fame and professional recognition in the United States, where he began working in 1912.
Chaplin began collaborating with the Keystone film company in Los Angeles at 18. By 1914 he was directing and writing the films he starred in, and by 1916 he was producing his own work. In 1918 he began composing music as well. His creative life began with a stage appearance in a British music hall during the Victorian era and stretched across 75 years, ending with his death at 88.
Orphan School
Born on April 16, 1889, to London music hall performers Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr. and Hannah Chaplin, Charlie first stepped onto the stage at five. He earned his first coins by filling in for his sick mother, who had permanently lost her voice, and collecting tips from the wings. From an early age he thrived in his parents’ profession, performing for audiences. He retrained himself to perform left-handed, mastered the violin, sang, parodied, danced, and even earned money teaching choreography.
By the time he reached adulthood, he had learned the value of hard work as a servant, printer, woodcutter, and glassblower. Chaplin had to start working at nine out of necessity: after his parents’ divorce the two boys, who had different fathers, were sent to a workhouse. With their mother hospitalized in a mental clinic, the children lived in a shelter and wandered the streets. They sometimes went without food and relied on free meals from benefactors.
Seven-year-old Chaplin (center, slightly bent) at the Central London District School for the Poor, 1897.
A Terrible Secret
Chaplin’s older half-brother Sydney Hill was born to the same mother and a man named Hawks, while Chaplin’s paternal grandmother came from a Romani family. Chaplin described this family history in his autobiography as a “skeleton in the closet” and a “terrible secret.” His mother died before he turned six, and his father, who struggled with alcoholism, died at 37 during his second marriage.
Chaplin learned to read later than he learned to perform. His first steady theater role came in 1903. During rehearsals for the play “Sherlock Holmes,” based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, the 14-year-old was terrified of being exposed for his illiteracy. To avoid being fired for not knowing his lines, he avoided reading his text in front of other actors and memorized his part at home with his brother’s help.
Teenage Chaplin in the play “Sherlock Holmes.”
Going Full Throttle
Whatever he did, Chaplin threw himself into it completely. Pushing the limits of his strength and talent, he earned his keep in Fred Karno’s troupe (some sketches he later adapted for the screen), acted in films, and wrote scripts. Chaplin wrote 24 of the 35 films for his first American employer, the Keystone studio. He also shot a dozen 15-minute shorts for the Chicago studio Essanay in 1915, creating the most recognizable image of silent cinema—a bumbling vagabond with a cane, a tattered tailcoat, and oversized shoes (for comic effect he reportedly wore a size 47 shoe on his left foot and a size 46 on his right).
Advertisement for Chaplin’s American tour with Fred Karno’s comedy company, 1913.
Chaplin’s astonishing output earned him an unprecedented Hollywood contract: $670,000, a staggering sum at the time. Mutual recouped its investment with monthly hits. In 1917 First National Pictures signed Chaplin for $1 million, making him the highest-paid actor in the world at the time. By 1922 the new millionaire owned a 40-room Beverly Hills house with its own movie theater and organ.
The Great Silent One
Despite his modest height of 5’5″, Chaplin overshadowed Hollywood’s loudest personalities with sheer charisma. A symbol of silent cinema, he refined slapstick comedy and gave his clownish character unexpected emotional depth. In “The Pawnshop,” Chaplin’s character pleads with a clerk about being unable to feed his many children, and audiences wept with sympathy. Starting with pantomime and buffoonery, by the 1920s Chaplin began addressing sharper social themes in his films.
The Tramp eats a shoe in the film “The Gold Rush,” 1925.
Chaplin’s convincing silent performances grew from studying sign language. He honed his pantomime through a friendship with a deaf landscape artist, Grenville Redmond. As thanks, Chaplin gave Redmond a studio and offered him small film roles.
Having found fame in the silent era, Chaplin stuck to his polished acting technique for more than a decade after the arrival of sound in 1927.
No to War!
Chaplin’s first sound film, “The Great Dictator,” arrived in 1940 and marked the last time he used the Tramp on screen. Paramount took a risk producing a satire aimed at Hitler, and Chaplin used the film to express his view on the war in Europe despite American neutrality. The film’s central figures are twins: the tyrant Hinkel and a humble barber named Charlie, who, by fate, is mistaken for the dictator and delivers a powerful speech condemning warmongers and those who profit from war.
“The Great Dictator,” 1940.
Opposition to militarism was a recurring theme for Chaplin—his pacifist comedy “Shoulder Arms!” and other early works mocked military pomposity since World War I. In the 1930s the FBI began watching him: his first dossier opened after the making of “Modern Times,” a film that questioned the humanity of modern industrial society.
The “Communist Finger”
Chaplin was warned about political complications and financial losses if the film were banned in the U.S. or Britain. He also received threats aimed at disrupting screenings; theaters got alarming messages about planned poison gas attacks at premieres. Chaplin took those threats seriously and arranged security for audiences. The film was ultimately cleared to show, but trouble followed. The New York Daily News accused Chaplin of pointing a “communist finger” at viewers from the screen after the release.
While editing his next film, “Monsieur Verdoux” (1947), authorities investigated Chaplin for anti-American activities: he was listed among about two dozen “suspects” and was summoned to appear before a committee in Washington. The summons was canceled after Chaplin said he would attend dressed in the Tramp’s grotesque costume, which would turn the “serious” hearing into a farce. Even after censors required cuts to remove “unacceptable fragments,” organized protests still labeled him a “red sympathizer” and an “ungrateful foreigner who had overstayed his welcome in patient America.”
“Monsieur Verdoux,” 1947.
The “Unreliable” Millionaire
In 1947 the non-citizen artist was placed under surveillance, including phone tapping. The prolonged denial of citizenship to the Hollywood star raised the question of whether officials suspected hidden disloyalty.
Professional and personal scandals cost the actor, writer, and director his place in the U.S. After a trip to England in 1952, Chaplin was denied re-entry to the country where he had lived for 40 years. He had requested a return visa before heading to a festival in London, but immigration officials revoked the document while he was en route. U.S. authorities said he could return only after the political and moral charges against him were cleared.
Despite Chaplin’s longstanding friendship with Winston Churchill, British intelligence monitored the comedian in coordination with the FBI. In February 2012 The Guardian reported the declassification of an MI5 dossier. The alleged links to the communist underground were not confirmed—Chaplin always denied them—and MI5 transferred the case to the National Archives with the conclusion: “He poses no threat to national security.” After those files went public, journalists at The Times called the suspicions an example of “anti-communist paranoia.”
Goodbye, America!
The 1952 film “Limelight,” which Chaplin considered the peak of his work, was his last American project. He changed his country of residence immediately after its premiere. U.S. tax authorities continued to treat Chaplin as a resident for tax purposes through 1955, and he was unable to overturn that designation in court.
“Limelight,” 1952.
Out of marital solidarity, Una O’Neill (1925–1991), who became Chaplin’s last wife in 1943, renounced her American citizenship during the legal battle over an alleged paternity claim. The court later confirmed Chaplin was not the father of that actress’s child. The episode exposed a vulnerable side: Chaplin had a weakness for young actresses.
His first two wives were 16 when they married him; the third, Paulette Goddard (later the wife of writer Erich Maria Remarque), was 19; the fourth was 18. Chaplin, then 54, married Una O’Neill, who was 18—36 years his junior. Una never appeared in his films and gave up both her acting career and her relationship with her famous father, playwright Eugene O’Neill. After their scandalous wedding, the Nobel laureate and multiple Pulitzer Prize winner permanently severed ties with his daughter.
Old Age—A Time for Joy
After five months of travel through Europe, the exiled artist found a new refuge in picturesque Switzerland. A villa in Corsier-sur-Vevey became a place for Chaplin to live a quieter life with his wife, three sons, and five daughters. The couple had eight children together; Chaplin fathered eleven children in total, and one was later shown by genetic testing not to be his. His last child was born when Chaplin was 73.
Chaplin with his wife Una and six of their children, 1961.
In 1972 Chaplin received another Oscar nomination, and in 1975 Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. Until his death on Christmas Eve 1977, the king of comedy kept writing scripts, enjoying family life, and savoring the rewards of his long career.
Soon after his burial, two grave robbers—a Pole and a Bulgarian—disturbed his tomb in search of trophies. They abandoned the coffin in a field near Lake Geneva. The remains were found quickly, the criminals arrested, and Chaplin’s coffin was reinterred under two meters of reinforced concrete. The filmmaker was given new honors during a reburial on May 17, 1978.
