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| Birth Name(s) : Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Mildred Harris (1918-20) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Charlie Chaplin Biography
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field.
Charlie Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London. His parents were both entertainers in the Music Hall tradition and beat him before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother, the actress Lily Harvey (Hannah Harriet Hill), lived with Charlie and his older brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth. As a child Charlie also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street, and 46 Methley Street. One of his paternal great-grandmothers was Roma, a fact his father was very proud of, but which Chaplin also described as "the skeleton in our family cupboard". Chaplin's father was also an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress Louise at 287 Kennington Road (which address is now ornamented with a plaque commemorating Chaplin's residence). The brothers resided there when their mother became mentally ill and was admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. His father's mistress sent the young Chaplin to Kennington Road school. Chaplin's father died when Charlie was twelve in 1901. At the time of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth with the The Eight Lancashire Lads that was led by John William Jackson (the 17 year old son of one of the founders).
All Chaplin's United Artists pictures were of feature length, beginning with A Woman of Paris (1923). This was followed by the classic The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928).
In 1972, he won an Oscar for the Best Music in an Original Dramatic Score for the 1952 film Limelight, which co-starred Claire Bloom. The film also features a cameo with Buster Keaton, which was the only time the two great comedians ever appeared together. Due to Chaplin's political difficulties, the film did not play a one-week theatrical engagement in Los Angeles when it was first produced. This criterion for nomination was unfulfilled until 1972.
When the first Oscars were awarded on May 16, 1929, the voting audit procedures that now exist had not yet been put into place, and the categories were still very fluid. Chaplin had originally been nominated for both Best Actor and Best Comedy Directing for his movie The Circus, but his name was withdrawn and the Academy decided to give him a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus" instead. The other film to receive a special award that year was The Jazz Singer.
A specialty dancer in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies, Louise Brooks met Chaplin when he came to New York for the opening there of The Gold Rush. For two months, they cavorted together at the Ritz, and with film financier A.C. Blumenthal and Follies dancer Peggy Fears in Blumenthal's penthouse suite at the Ambassador Hotel. Brooks was with Chaplin when he spent four hours watching a musician torture a violin in a lower East Side restaurant, an act he would recreate in Limelight.
He was named in the New Year's Honours List in 1975 and, on March 4, was knighted at age eighty-five as a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1931, and again in 1956, when it was vetoed by the then Conservative government for fears of damage to relations with the United States at the height of the Cold War and planned invasion of Suez of that year.
Chaplin's lifelong attraction to younger women remains another enduring source of interest to some. His biographers have attributed this to a teenage infatuation with Hetty Kelly, whom he met in Britain while performing in the music hall, and which possibly defined his feminine ideal. Chaplin clearly relished the role of discovering and closely guiding young female stars; with the exception of Mildred Harris, all of his marriages and most of his major relationships began in this manner.
Beyond a healthy professional rivalry, Chaplin and Keaton thought highly of one another. Keaton stated in his autobiography that Chaplin was the greatest comedian that ever lived, and the greatest comedy director. Chaplin also greatly admired Keaton: he welcomed him to United Artists in 1925, advised him against his disastrous move to MGM in 1928, and for his last American film, Limelight, wrote a part specifically for Keaton as his first on-screen comedy partner since 1915. |
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