Charlie Chaplin

The Full Biography

Charlie Chaplin. Actor. Director. The Lambeth boy who turned a cane and a mustache into a world language, then learned that America could exile its own invention.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is the Little Tramp: bowler, cane, walk, a man the century decided was comedy and then discovered was also a wound. The pictures that locked it are the Mutual shorts, The Kid, The Gold Rush, City Lights. What the still cannot show is Charles Spencer Chaplin of Walworth and Kennington, workhouses, a mother who sang and then could not, a 1952 departure from the United States that became exile, and a long Swiss life with Oona O’Neill and enough children to make a second company.

He was born on April 16, 1889, in London. The music-hall parents did not hold. Hannah, his mother, lost her voice and then her hold on the room. The boys, Charlie and Sydney, learned institutions: workhouse, school, the kind of English poverty that American publicity turned into a cute fog. It was not cute. He was on the stage as a child because the stage paid. Fred Karno’s troupe brought him to America. Mack Sennett’s Keystone, in 1914, put him in pictures. The Tramp appeared within months. By 1918 he was rich enough to build his own studio and careful enough to keep the rights. That care is the career.

Mutual. First National. Then United Artists, which he founded in 1919 with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith so the talent could own the product. The Kid (1921). The Gold Rush (1925). The Circus. City Lights (1931), silent after sound had already won, a bet he collected. Modern Times (1936). The Great Dictator (1940), in which the Tramp’s mustache is used against a dictator’s and the last speech drops the clown. He talked. A portion of America never forgave the talking.

The Keystone year is a blur of one-reelers. The Tramp — bowler, cane, boots too large, a walk that is a limp and a dance — appears in 1914 and is, within months, a language. Essanay and then Mutual gave him control. The twelve Mutual two-reelers of 1916–17, including Easy Street, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer, are the graduate course. First National signed him for more money and more time. A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms, The Kid with Jackie Coogan — a feature that treats a child and a tramp as a household. He built a studio at La Brea and Sunset and kept the negatives. United Artists was the next paper: four people who did not want to be employees. The Gold Rush is the one he said he wanted to be remembered by: a cabin on a cliff, a boiled boot, a dance of rolls. The Circus (1928) won him a special Oscar. City Lights opened in 1931, after talkies had already won, and the flower-girl ending still ends arguments about whether pantomime was finished. Modern Times puts the Tramp in a factory and lets him sing gibberish. The Great Dictator lets him speak. The last speech is a civilian asking a century not to be a monster. A portion of the audience heard a lecture. The FBI heard a file.

The private life was a scandal industry: Mildred Harris at sixteen, Lita Grey at sixteen, Paulette Goddard, a paternity case involving Joan Barry, the gossip columns’ meal. Some of it is ugly and true. Some of it was a political hunt wearing a morals badge. In 1943 he married Oona O’Neill, Eugene O’Neill’s daughter. She was eighteen. He was fifty-four. Eugene never forgave it. The marriage lasted until Chaplin’s death and produced eight children: Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette, Christopher. Both the age gap and the endurance stay in the sentence. In September 1952 he sailed to London for the premiere of Limelight. The Attorney General’s office made it clear his re-entry permit was not a welcome. He settled at the Manoir de Ban, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. The exile lasted twenty years.

Fond memory is not a cleaned room. The young wives are real. The FBI file is thick. The two hunts happened at once. He kept composing his own scores, a fact musicians respect and audiences forget. He was, by many accounts, a tyrant on a set and a host at a table. The Swiss years were comfortable in a way Lambeth had not imagined. He did not pretend they erased Lambeth.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.Charlie Chaplin

The turn is exile. A King in New York (1957) is the bitter picture of a man who had been shown the American door. A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) is the last, with Brando and Loren, and it is not the monument. The monument of those years is the man in Vevey, composing, hosting visitors, writing My Autobiography (1964), and, in 1972, returning to America for an honorary Oscar. The town stood up for twelve minutes. He stood and cried. The exile had lasted twenty years. In 1975 Elizabeth II knighted him. The Lambeth boy became Sir Charles. He had already outlived the Tramp as a daily job.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947) is the picture between the dictator and the exile: a dapper killer of widows, a satire of business as murder, a film American rooms were not in the mood to laugh at. The Barry paternity case and the gossip columns had already done their work. The FBI file thickened. Limelight (1952) is a music-hall elegy — Calvero, a washed clown, a girl, Buster Keaton in a small merciful part — and the ship he took to its London premiere was the ship that became exile. He did not see the American release as a resident. Switzerland became the studio. He scored the old silents so the Tramp would have music the estate could own. My Autobiography (1964) is the Lambeth boy telling the story before someone else cleaned it. The Manoir de Ban was a manor and a desk. Oona kept the table. Eight children kept the name from becoming only a pictogram.

United Artists, which he had founded so the talent could own the product, outlived his American welcome. The negatives stayed his. That care is why the Mutual shorts and City Lights and The Gold Rush are still an estate’s, not a studio scrap heap. He had learned the lesson in Karno’s troupe and at Keystone: the walk without the paper is a tip. He kept the paper. He kept the scores. He kept, in Vevey, a precise Englishness that visitors mistook for the Tramp until he sat down at the piano. In 1972 the honorary Oscar was twelve minutes of a town standing up. In 1975 the knighthood was a palace. In 1977 Christmas Day was the end. In 1978 the stolen coffin was the last grotesque. The secured grave in Corsier-sur-Vevey is the last address. Lambeth remains the first.

Oona ran the house above the lake. The children have had to share a myth. Some have written; some have refused. Geraldine became an actress. Others stayed nearer the garden. He composed at a piano in rooms that looked at Lake Geneva. Visitors wanted the Tramp and got a precise old Englishman instead.

The later years

He scored the silents in those rooms so the Tramp would arrive in new decades with music the estate could own. Visitors who wanted a bowler received a precise old Englishman at a piano. Children crossed the garden. Oona kept the correspondence and the peace. He had been a tyrant on American sets. He was a host at a Swiss table. Both are true. The 1972 trip to New York and Los Angeles was not a comeback picture. It was a permit, briefly returned, to stand in a tuxedo and cry while a town stood up for twelve minutes. The 1975 knighthood was the other country’s version of the same sentence. After that the work was the garden, the scores, and a body that had outlived the Tramp as a daily job.

Home, from 1953 until the end, was the Manoir de Ban at Corsier-sur-Vevey: a manor, a park, a view of the lake, a household that was a second company. Oona ran it. Eight children grew up in a neutrality their father had not been offered. He scored his old pictures. He wrote the autobiography. He received visitors who wanted a bowler and left with a conversation about music. He was comfortable in a way Kennington had not imagined. He did not pretend comfort erased the workhouse. He walked the grounds. He played the piano. He was, still, a tyrant about a bar of music and a host about a bottle of wine.

A King in New York is the exile film: a deposed monarch in America, a child, a satire of HUAC and television that is also a bruise. A Countess from Hong Kong, his last feature, is a misfire he did not live long enough to re-edit into folklore. The real work of the Swiss decades was memory: new scores for the silent features, the book, the careful ownership of negatives that would feed the estate. In April 1972 he flew to New York and then to Los Angeles for the honorary Oscar. The Music Center stood up for twelve minutes. He stood at the rail and cried. The town that had taken his permit gave him a statue’s night and meant it. In 1975, at Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth II knighted him. Sir Charles. The Lambeth boy had outlived the Tramp as a daily job and had not outlived the need to be seen by the two countries that had made and unmade him.

The garden at Corsier was the last set: a manor, a lake, a table of children, a piano that held the Tramp’s new scores. He had owned the negatives since the La Brea studio. He still owned them when he died.

He died on Christmas Day 1977. He was eighty-eight. In March 1978 his coffin was stolen from the Corsier cemetery for ransom and recovered in May from a field near Lake Geneva. Even the grave was not allowed to be ordinary. He is buried, now more securely, in Corsier-sur-Vevey. Oona died in 1991. The last public American love had already happened in 1972. The last English honor in 1975. After that the work was memory and a garden. The children kept the name. The estate kept the image. Switzerland kept the house, which is now a museum the public may walk through as if a life were a set of rooms, which, at the end, it was.

Those twenty-five Swiss years were not a fade. They were a second career: composer, memoirist, father of a large table, exile who came home once to cry in a tuxedo. He had built a character the planet could read and then outlived the country’s permission to live there. He spent the remainder beside a lake, with the woman who had left her father to marry him, scoring the walk that had paid for the manor. The FBI file stayed public. The garden stayed private. Both are the chapter.

What he did after the last useful picture was the same job he had taken in 1914, narrowed to a piano and a desk: control the image, keep the rights, tell the story himself. The twelve-minute Oscar night is the civic ending. The stolen coffin is the grotesque coda. The manor on the lake is the address. Lambeth remains the first room. He never claimed otherwise.

After he was gone

The Tramp is still a pictogram for cinema itself. Every clown who wants pathos without speech is in his debt. The FBI file is public. The estate guards the image. Switzerland keeps the house as a museum. Lambeth has plaques. The century that exiled him still uses his walk to sell the idea of movies.

He came out of a workhouse London, built a character the planet could read, owned the negatives, married too young more than once, was shown the American door, lived by a Swiss lake, and came back once to cry in a tuxedo. If you only remember the cane, you have the pictogram. If you remember Hannah, United Artists, the 1952 ship, and the twelve minutes, you have him.

Portrait: Strauss-Peyton Studio · Public domain (PD-1923, published before 1930) · via Wikimedia Commons

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