A Comic Genius Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin’s early life was a time of hardship. He was born in a very poor part of London, but his family were well off enough to afford a maid. However, while he was still a child, his family gradually lost everything. His father was a comedian and his mother worked as a dancer and singer. Neither of them was very successful and the family had very little money. They were so poor that, at one time, he and his brothers had only one pair of shoes between them and they had to take turns wearing them. His father eventually deserted the family and later died. The strain caused by this desertion affected Chaplin’s mother’s deeply. Her career fell apart and in the end she became insane. When his mother had to go into an asylum, Chaplin was sent to an orphanage.

The first time Chaplin himself earned any money was by dancing and singing when he was five years old. As a young boy he had many different jobs, but what he loved most of all was working in the theatre. As he said in his autobiography, he felt quite ‘at home’ on the stage in more ways than one—the stage became an escape from the pain of his family life. When he was about fifteen, he joined a travelling theatre company and went on trips to America. On one such tour he was offered a part in a film, so he went to Hollywood, where eventually he became both an actor and a film director.

In his films we see the influence of his early life; a strong feeling of pity for the poor, a romantic view of women (he worshipped his mother) and a love of applause. His comedies were immediately successful. As well as making policemen look foolish, he also often used situations where people find themselves in a ridiculous position, but refuse to admit they have a problem. One of his most famous roles was the little tramp who tries, but fails, to be a gentleman, and so makes us laugh. His films were not always comic; they were often sad and some, like The Great Dictator, contain a strong political message.

As a director, Chaplin was known to be a perfectionist and sometimes made actors repeat a scene many times until he was finally satisfied with the result. Many of the people he worked with found him mean, but it was probably his early experiences of poverty that made him so anxious to be successful. He is probably the most popular comedian of all time. Charlie Chaplin died in Switzerland in 1977 at the age of 88. There is now a statue of him in London, the city of his birth.