Charlie Chaplin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Charlie Chaplin
|
|
|---|---|
Chaplin in the early 1920s
|
|
| Born |
Charles Spencer Chaplin
April 16, 1889 London, England
|
| Died | December 25, 1977 (aged 88) Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland
|
| Burial place | Cimetière de Corsier-sur-Vevey, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland |
| Occupation |
|
| Years active | 1899–1975 |
|
Works
|
Full list |
| Spouse(s) |
|
| Children | 11, including Charles, Sydney, Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene and Christopher |
| Parent(s) | Charles Chaplin Sr. Hannah Hill |
| Relatives | Chaplin family |
| Signature | |
 |
|
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. His most famous character is the Tramp. Chaplin is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from his childhood in the Victorian Era until a year before his death in 1977.
Contents
Early years
Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was born on April 16, 1889, to music hall entertainers Hannah Chaplin (née Hill) and Charles Chaplin Sr. His paternal grandmother came from the Smith family, who belonged to Romani people.
Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before he was nine years old. Charlie and his half-brother Sidney spent most of their childhood in orphanages, where they often went hungry and were beaten if they misbehaved. His mother wanted him to finish school, but he quit when he was thirteen. When he was fourteen, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. She never fully recovered and died in 1928.
Career
Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian.
His first important work came when he joined The Eight Lancashire Lads. In 1900, his brother Sydney helped him get the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella. In 1903, he was in a play called “Jim: A Romance of Cockayne.” Chaplin was also in Casey's "Court Circus" variety show. The next year, he played a clown in Fred Karno's "Fun Factory" comedy company.
At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He caught the eye of the film industry and beginning in 1914, he worked for Keystone Studios. He soon developed his lovable, foolish, and mischievous Tramp character, which made audiences love him.
By 1915, it seemed that everyone knew who Charlie Chaplin was. Shops were stocked with Chaplin merchandise, he was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about him. As his fame grew worldwide, he became the film industry's first international star.
Chaplin knew he was popular and requested a $150,000 ($4,339,145 in 2024) signing bonus from his next studio. He received several offers. The best one was from the Mutual Film Corporation at $10,000 ($289,276 in 2024) per week.
In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films. He was a perfectionist, and his financial independence allowed him to spend years developing and producing a picture. His first feature-length film was The Kid (1921).
His first sound film was The Great Dictator (1940), which mocked Adolf Hitler. The FBI opened an investigation on him because people thought he supported communism. Chaplin moved to Switzerland. He no longer included the Tramp character in his later films.
Personal life
Charlie Chaplin was married four times in his lifetime. All of his wives were actresses: Mildred Harris, Lita Grey, Paulette Goddard, and Oona O'Neill. He had a total of eleven children with three of his wives. Chaplin's children went on to have their own careers in the entertainment industry, with some of them appearing in films alongside their father.
Later years
Beginning in the late 1960s, Chaplin had a series of minor strokes. Although Chaplin still had plans for future film projects, by the mid-1970s, he was very frail. He experienced several further strokes, which made it difficult for him to communicate, and he had to use a wheelchair. He continued working as much as he was able.
In the 1975 New Year Honours, Chaplin was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, though he was too weak to kneel and received the honor in his wheelchair.
Death and Legacy
In the early morning of Christmas Day 1977, Chaplin died at home after having a stroke in his sleep. He was 88 years old. The funeral, on December 27, was a small and private Anglican ceremony, according to his wishes.
Chaplin's legacy is managed on behalf of his children by the Chaplin office, located in Paris. Their central archive is held at the archives of Montreux, Switzerland.
The British Film Institute has also established the Charles Chaplin Research Foundation, and the first international Charles Chaplin Conference was held in London in July 2005. Elements for many of Chaplin's films are held by the Academy Film Archive as part of the Roy Export Chaplin Collection.
Commemorations
- In London, a statue of Chaplin as the Tramp, sculpted by John Doubleday and unveiled in 1981, is located in Leicester Square.
- The city also includes a road named after him in central London, "Charlie Chaplin Walk," which is the location of the BFI IMAX.
- There are nine blue plaques memorializing Chaplin in London, Hampshire, and Yorkshire.
- In Canning Town, East London, the Gandhi Chaplin Memorial Garden, opened by Chaplin's granddaughter Oona Chaplin in 2015, commemorates the meeting between Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi at a local house in 1931.
- The Swiss town of Vevey named a park in his honor in 1980 and erected a statue there in 1982.
- In 2011, two large murals depicting Chaplin on two 14-story buildings were also unveiled in Vevey.
- Chaplin has also been honored by the Irish town of Waterville, where he spent several summers with his family in the 1960s.
- A minor planet, 3623 Chaplin (discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina in 1981) is named after Charlie.
- Throughout the 1980s, the Tramp image was used by IBM to advertise their personal computers.
- Chaplin's 100th birthday anniversary in 1989 was marked with several events around the world, and on April 15, 2011, a day before his 122nd birthday, Google celebrated him with a special Google Doodle video.
- Chaplin's final home, Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, has been converted into a museum named "Chaplin's World."
Awards and recognition
Chaplin received many awards and honors, especially later in life. In the 1975 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). He was also awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degrees by the University of Oxford and the University of Durham in 1962. In 1965, he and Ingmar Bergman were joint winners of the Erasmus Prize and, in 1971, he was appointed a Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government.
From the film industry, Chaplin received a special Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1972, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lincoln Center Film Society the same year. The Lifetime Achievement has since been called The Chaplin Award. Chaplin was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1972.
Chaplin received three Academy Awards. He was nominated in the Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture (as producer) categories for The Great Dictator, and received another Best Original Screenplay nomination for Monsieur Verdoux. In 1976, Chaplin was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).
Charlie Chaplin quotes
- "Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it needs is courage, imagination ... and a little dough."
- "Imagination means nothing without doing."
- "You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down."
- "Let us strive for the impossible. The great achievements throughout history have been the conquest of what seemed the impossible."
Interesting facts about Charlie Chaplin
- Chaplin had two maternal half-brothers - Sydney John Hill and George Wheeler Dryden, fathered by the music hall entertainer Leo Dryden.
- He first started acting at age five. He acted in a music hall in 1894, standing in for his mother.
- Chaplin said his mother was the greatest influence on his acting career. When Charlie was a child, he was kept in bed for many weeks from a bad illness. At night, his mother would sit at the window and act out what was going on outside.
- Chaplin developed a passion for music as a child and taught himself to play the piano, violin, and cello.
- At age 26, Chaplin became one of the highest paid people in the world, with a contract of $670,000 ($19,381,513 in 2024) a year.
- On July 6, 1925, Chaplin became the first movie star to be featured on a Time magazine cover.
- Chaplin began using a synchronised orchestral soundtrack – composed by himself – for City Lights (1931). He thereafter composed the scores for all of his films, and from the late 1950s to his death, he scored all of his silent features and some of his short films.
- At the 1st Academy Awards, Chaplin was given a special trophy "For versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus."
- In 1972, at the Academy Awards gala, he was given a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest in the academy's history.
- Myths say that Chaplin once entered in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest and did not win.
- Chaplin is described by the British Film Institute as "a towering figure in world culture", and was included in Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Important People of the 20th Century".
- In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin as the 10th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
- Chaplin's most iconic character is the Tramp. In 2006, a bowler hat and a bamboo cane that were part of the Tramp's costume were bought for $140,000 in a Los Angeles auction.
- Chaplin helped inspire the cartoon characters Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse.
Movies
|
|
Images for kids
-
Chaplin and Edna Purviance, his regular leading lady, in Work (1915)
-
The Kid (1921), with Jackie Coogan, combined comedy with drama and was Chaplin's first film to exceed an hour.
-
The Tramp resorts to eating his boot in The Gold Rush (1925).
-
Lita Grey, whose bitter divorce from Chaplin caused a scandal
-
City Lights (1931) is regarded as one of Chaplin's finest works.
-
Modern Times (1936), described by Jérôme Larcher as a "grim contemplation on the automatization of the individual"
-
Chaplin satirised Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940).
-
Limelight (1952) was a serious and autobiographical film for Chaplin. His character, Calvero, is an ex–music hall star (described in this image as a "Tramp Comedian") forced to deal with his loss of popularity.
-
Chaplin with his wife Oona and six of their children in 1961
-
Chaplin's grave in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland
-
A 1922 image of Charlie Chaplin Studios, where all of Chaplin's films between 1918 and 1952 were produced
-
Chaplin playing the cello in 1915
-
Chaplin as the Tramp, cinema's "most universal icon," in 1915
-
A Chaplin impersonator and his audience in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1919
-
Chaplin memorial plaque in St Paul's, Covent Garden, London
_-_Fondo_Car-Kutxa_Fototeka.jpg)
See also
In Spanish: Charles Chaplin para niños
