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" Final Resting Place of Charlie Chaplin"

 

Charlie Chaplin
16th April 1889 - 25th December 1977
Famous actor and Film Maker. Famous for his character who wore a bowler hat and carried a walking stick. One of the founders of United Artists, opened his own studios "The Charlie Chaplin Studios" in Hollywood.
Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin . KBE, (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor, becoming the most famous actor in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era, and also a notable director.

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities in the silent film era: he acted in, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually even scored his own films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 70 years, from the British Victorian stage and music hall in England as a child performer, almost until his death at the age of 88. He led one of the most remarkable and colorful lives of the 20th century, from a Dickens-like London childhood to the pinnacle of world fame in the film industry and as a cultural icon.
His principal character was "The Tramp": a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman who wears a tight coat, oversized trousers and shoes, a bowler hat, a bamboo cane, and his signature toothbrush moustache. Chaplin's high-profile public and private life encompassed highs and lows of both adulation and controversy.
Chaplin's parents were both entertainers in the Music Hall tradition. His father, an alcoholic, died when Charlie was twelve, leaving him and his his older half-brother, Sydney Chaplin, in the sole care of his mother, Hannah. Hannah Chaplin suffered from severe mental illness, and was eventually admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon (near Croydon). Chaplin had to be left in the workhouse at Lambeth, London, moving after several weeks to Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both proved to have considerable natural stage talent.
Unknown to Chaplin and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother, Wheeler Dryden, who was raised abroad by his father. He was later reconciled with the family, and worked for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after being brought to the U.S. by her sons.

Charlie first took to the stage when, at age five, he performed in music hall in 1894, standing in for his mother. As a child, he was confined to a bed for weeks due to a serious illness, and, at night, his mother would sit at the window and act out what was going on outside. His first professional work came when he joined The Eight Lancashire Lads at troupe of dancers who played the music halls of Great Britain. In 1900, aged 11, his half-brother Sydney helped get him the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella at the London Hippodrome. In 1903 he appeared in Jim: A Romance of Cockayne, followed by his first regular job, as the newspaper boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes, a part he played into 1906. This was followed by Casey's 'Court Circus' variety show, and, the following year, he became a clown in Fred Karno's 'Fun Factory' slapstick comedy company, where Chaplin became the star of the troupe.

According to immigration records, he arrived in the United States with the Karno troupe on October 2, 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who would later become known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel wound up sharing a room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the United States. In late 1913, Chaplin's act was seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company. Chaplin's early film career (1914-1917) began at Keystone Studios, where he developed his Tramp character and very quickly learned the art and craft of filmmaking. By the end of his year at Keystone, he was directing and editing his own short films. These were an immediate, runaway success with the public, and even today Chaplin's screen presence in these films is obvious. In 1915 he began a year's contract with Essanay film studios, and further developed his film skills, adding new levels of depth and pathos to the Keystone-style slapstick. In 1916, he signed a lucrative deal with the Mutual Film Corporation to produce a dozen two-reel comedies. He was given near complete artistic control, and produced twelve films over an eighteen month period that rank among the most influencial comedy films in cinema. Chaplin later said the Mutual period was the happiest of his career.

At the conclusion of the Mutual contract in 1918, Chaplin built his own Hollywood studio and production company, and assumed an unparalleled degree of artistic and financial control over his productions. Using this independence, over the next 35 years he created a remarkable, timeless body of work that remains entertaining and influential. These include the comedy shorts: A Dog's Life (1918), and Pay Day (1922); longer films, such as: Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923); and his great silent feature-length films, among them: The Kid (1921), A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928).

After the arrival of sound films, he made what is considered to be his greatest film, City Lights (1931), as well as Modern Times (1936) before he committed to sound. These were essentially silent films scored with his own music and sound effects. City Lights contained arguably his most perfect balance of comedy and sentimentality. Of the final scene, critic James Agee wrote in Life magazine in 1949 that it was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid".
His dialogue films made in Hollywood were The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and Limelight (1952).
While Modern Times (1936) is a non-talkie, it does contain talk—usually coming from inanimate objects such as a radio or a TV monitor. This was done to help 1930s audiences, who were out of the habit of watching silent films, adjust to not hearing dialogue. Chaplin being observed by his boss while sneaking a smoke in the bathroom came before George Orwell's "Big Brother" by more than a decade, and might have inspired it. Modern Times was the first film where Chaplin's voice is heard (in the nonsense song at the end). However, for most viewers it is still considered a silent film -- and the end of an era.

In 1919 he co-founded the United Artists film distribution company with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, all of whom were seeking to escape the growing power consolidation of film distributors and financiers in the developing Hollywood studio system. This move, along with complete control of his film production through his studio, assured Chaplin's independence as a filmmaker. He served on the board of UA until the early 1950s.

Although "talkies" became the dominant mode of moviemaking soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making such a film all through the 1930s. It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and another as a singer for the title music of the 1928's The Circus. The best-known of several songs he composed are "Smile", composed for the film "Modern Times" and given lyrics to help promote a 1950s revival of the film, famously covered by Nat King Cole. "This Is My Song" from Chaplin's last film, "A Countess From Hong Kong," was a number one hit in several different languages in the 1960s, and Chaplin's theme from Limelight was a hit in the 50s under the title "Eternally."

His first dialogue picture, The Great Dictator (1940) was an act of defiance against Adolf Hitler and Nazism, filmed and released in the United States one year before it abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. The film was seen as an act of courage in the political environment of the time, both for its ridicule of Nazism and for the portrayal of overt Jewish characters and the depiction of their persecution. Chaplin played both the role of a Nazi dictator clearly modeled on Hitler (with a certain physical likeness), and also that of a Jewish barber cruelly persecuted by the Nazis. Hitler, who was a great fan of movies, is known to have seen the film twice (records were kept of movies ordered for his personal theatre). Interestingly, Chaplin and Hitler were born only four days apart (Hitler was born on April 20, 1889).

Chaplin's political sympathies always lay with the left. His politics seem tame by modern standards, but in the 1940s his views (in conjunction with his influence, fame, and status in the United States as a resident foreigner) were seen by many as dangerously communistic. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law. But his films made in the 1930s were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. The final dramatic speech in his 1940 film, The Great Dictator, which was critical of blindly following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. In at least one of those speeches, according to a contemporary account in the Daily Worker, he intimated that Communism might sweep the world after the war and equated it with "human progress".

Apart from the controversial 1942 speeches, Chaplin declined to patriotically support the war effort as he had done for the First World War (although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe), which led to public anger. For most of the war he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry . After the war, the critical view towards what he regarded as capitalism in his 1947 black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux led to increased hostility, with the film being the subject of protests in many US cities. As a result, Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirised the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier (one of the few films of the 1950s to do so). After this film, Chaplin lost interest in making overt political statements, later saying that comedians and clowns should be "above politics".

Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States and was a resident from 1914 to 1952, he always retained his British nationality. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of "un-American activities" as a suspected communist sympathizer; and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive secret files on him, tried to end his United States residency. FBI pressure on Chaplin grew after his 1942 campaign for a second European front in the war, and reached a critical level in the late 1940s, when Congressional figures threatened to call him as a witness in hearings. This was never done, probably from the fear of Chaplin's ability to lampoon the investigators.

In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to England; Hoover learned of it and negotiated with the INS to revoke his re-entry permit. Chaplin then decided to stay in Europe, and made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife, to receive an Honorary Oscar. Even though he was invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy Awards), he was only issued a one-time entry visa valid for a period of two months. However, by this time the animosities towards the now elderly and apolitical Chaplin had faded, and his visit was a triumphant success.

At the outbreak of World War I, Chaplin was widely criticized in the British press for not joining the Army. He claimed to have presented himself for service, but was denied for being too small and underweight. Chaplin raised substantial funds for the war effort during War Bond drives, and by making "The Bond," a comedic propaganda film used in 1918. This lingering controversy reportedly prevented Chaplin's knighthood in the early 1930s.

For Chaplin's entire career, some level of controversy existed over claims of Jewish ancestry. Nazi propaganda in the 1930s prominently portrayed Chaplin as Jewish (named Karl Tonstein) relying on articles published in the US press before, and FBI investigations of Chaplin in the late 1940s focused on such claims (for unknown reasons). Paranoia about alleged Jewish domination of the movie industry was probably the root cause underlying this controversy. There is no evidence of Jewish ancestry for Chaplin himself. Chaplin's half-brother, Sydney, was three-fourths-Jewish , but he was never a practicing Jew. For his entire public life, Chaplin fiercely refused to challenge or refute such claims, saying that to do so would always "play directly into the hands of anti-Semites". He often said he would be proud of such ancestry, saying "all geniuses have some Jewish blood in them". His fearless portrayal of Jewish persecution in The Great Dictator bears this conviction out.

Chaplin has also figured in the mysterious events surrounding the death of producer Thomas Ince aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst in 1924, one of Hollywood's greatest mysteries. This was fictionally depicted in the 2001 film The Cat's Meow. The precise circumstances of Ince's death will likely never be known.

Chaplin's lifelong attraction to younger women remains another enduring source of controversy. 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 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.

Chaplin died on Christmas Day, 1977, in Vevey, Switzerland, following a stroke, aged 88, and was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery in Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud. On March 1, 1978, his body was stolen by a small group of Polish and Bulgarian mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva (and reburied under six feet of concrete to prevent another attempt).