讀《卓別林自傳》
大約三十年前，我第一次讀到《卓別林自傳》，記得是在某間市政局公共圖書館。起先我是站在書架邊翻閱，可淚水情不自禁流出來，止也止不住。只得連忙找個座位坐下，定一定神接着看。不行，眼淚還是止不住，不得不摸出紙巾頻頻地擦，引起旁人好奇的目光。
我後來是把那本書借回家讀完的，有六百多頁，我漏夜一口氣讀到最後一頁。不過，讀到第一百多頁，眼淚就沒了。合上書，還有點遺憾，好象我那眼淚有點虎頭蛇尾似的，跟我為這位神人《舞台生涯》流的眼淚不匹配。看那部電影我是先笑後哭，看這部書卻是先哭後——苦笑。
十多年後我重讀這本書，反應竟跟第一次一樣，流了一百來頁的淚水，到最後卻有點為之遺憾。卓別林後來雖然成了一名所到之處都有人夾道歡呼的世界巨星，反而比到處賣藝的青少年時更加孤獨，他媽媽瘋得沒治了，他哥哥成家後另過了，妻子和情人倒是沒斷，一個接一個，但好像都是他孤寂中找不到一個電話可打時拉來的丁。而他創造的角色無論多麼搞笑，眼睛裏永遠有深深的哀傷。最後他雖然遇到了一生摯愛，但年已垂暮，事業也已江河日下。
但我不是為他的孤獨而遺憾，而是為他晚年的政治立場。
卓別林無疑是一位不世出的天才，可即使這樣的天才也有他智慧所不能及的領域。比如政治，尤其是在他頭腦發熱時。
一九四二年，這是個全世界、東西方、美國、以及卓別林個人的轉捩點。世界一大半土地淪陷於法西斯的鐵蹄之下，一大半的人類為自由民主浴血奮戰。而卓別林這一年站上了他事業的巔峰。他的《大獨裁者》讓全世界出了一口惡氣，為之喝采，為之震撼，有人把影片結尾那篇演說拿來與林肯的南北宣戰演說相提并論，他借主角的口向人們呼籲：「戰士們，不要為奴役而戰，要為自由而戰！」丘吉爾感謝他，羅斯福約見他。
在這種情況下，一個人難免不會頭重腳輕，搞不清東南西北了，他竟然接受政府委托，代替稱病的美國駐蘇聯大使發言，發表了那次儼若蘇聯政府代言人的講話。
這位率先向全世界揭示希特勒獨裁者面目的超人，卻沒有認識到斯大林是另一種類型的大獨裁者，也許比希特勒更恐怖，因為具有更大欺騙性。不止壞人、野心家、政客們會被蠱惑；好人、窮人、善良的人更容易上當受騙。苦孩子出身的卓別林，也跟許多輕信的人一樣，相信了蘇聯是全世界勞苦大眾的希望，只看到那人那黨光輝燦爛的正面，看不到他們邪惡恐怖的背面；只看到蘇聯也遭到納粹突然襲擊，沒看到他們原先跟納粹沆瀣一氣入侵弱鄰，分食波蘭；只看到蘇聯的新水庫、新建築、新城市，沒有看到鐵幕後面的大饑荒、大清洗、以及恐怖程度不輸納粹集中營的古拉格群島。
我在第二次讀卓別林自傳時，有些明白自己為何不怎麼喜歡這本書的後半部、尤其是最後那一百來頁了。盡管他晚年遭到迫害去國還鄕，避居瑞士，日子雖然過得舒適優遊，輝煌的演藝事業可說到此玩完，此後再沒拍過一部佳作。其實那時他才六十出頭。政治上的幼稚，縮短了他的藝術生命。
有個細節最能說明卓別林的幼稚無知。一九五四年，有一次他應周恩來邀與之共進晚餐。當時周正在日內瓦跟美、蘇、英、法就韓戰談判。這場談判沒能達成任何協議。但當周見到卓別林，他握住這位天才演員的手，表現出他才是更天才的演員，「他親切地拍了拍我的肩膀，『一切都和平解決了，』他說，『是五分鐘前解決的。』跟着他給聽了這話滿心喜悅的卓別林講了個動人故事，說是當毛澤東勝利進入北京，一百萬中國人去歡迎他，人們「在巨大的廣場盡頭，搭了個高十五英呎的高台，他從台後登上階梯，一露出頭來，一百萬人就掀起浪潮般的歡呼，當領袖毛澤東看見這樣一大群人時，他站定了會兒，接着突然熱淚盈眶。」
卓別林對周的話照單全收，更加堅定了自己反美親共的立場。不過顯然，他連天安門都不知道，更別說在那古老而正在加鎖的長城後面發生了些甚麼事了。玩轉藝術舞台的大師，在政治舞台上只是個初哥。他不會想到，就是這個道貌岸然義正辭嚴的人物，剛剛還向其大佬呈上了一份談判報告，在報告中宣稱：
「儘管我們過去跟美國吵架有經驗，但那到底是野台子戲，那時無法無天，甚麼也不怕，鬧翻了也就那麼回事。」「現在到日內瓦是參加一個正式的國際會議了，因此，要唱文戲，文戲中有武戲。」
卓別林當然更不會想到，他自己也是這出戲的一個角色，不過當然不是主角，充其量也只是個紅軍甲，甚至匪兵甲。
可他至少在寫這本回憶錄的一九五七年，對自己的政治判斷力信心滿滿，就在會見周恩來之前，他在一間飯店碰到丘吉爾，他二人曾經一起推杯換盞，此時卻都感到無話可說。
那時丘吉爾已經在美國發表了那篇著名的演講，第一次提出「鐵幕」的概念，再次警告人們：自由民主又將遭到威脅，而且現在站在那個大獨裁者身邊的不止是墨索里尼和東條英機，是整整一隊大大小小的獨裁者，還有被他們統治的數以十計歐亞國家。可是也跟二戰前一樣，他的預警被世人忽視和嘲笑。便是剛剛在他帶領下贏得勝利的英國選民也抛棄了他。認為他太過激，怕惹翻了斯大林，危及他們得來不易的和平生活。
剛剛去見過赫魯赫夫的卓別林，更對丘吉爾的講辭不以為然，覺得他「雖然以個人百折不撓的勇氣和鼓舞人心的辭令拯救了英國，然而他那篇提到『鐵幕』的富爾頓演說并沒取得甚麼成就，只不過加劇了冷戰而已。」
十多年前我讀到這裏就讀不下去了。可是如今我第三次重讀卓別林自傳，仍然為他的悲慘童年流淚，卻不再為他晚年的政治幼稚病遺憾了。
我把丘吉爾的富爾頓演講也找來重讀一遍，再次感嘆丘吉爾的料事如神。可我也理解了卓別林晚年的政治立場。畢竟，他在美國遭到不公平的審判，幾乎是被驅逐了出來。更重要的是，那是一個「東風壓倒西風」的年代，韓戰、越戰、非洲的獨立浪潮，令大家深信「帝國主義一天天爛下去，社會主義一天天好起來」。就連知識精英們也都紛紛左轉，更別說在資本主義國家有過悲慘童年的卓別林了。想想看，就連在社會主義國家有過悲慘童年的人們，到今天還在唱着「東風吹戰鼓擂」者也不乏其人。
而卓別林至少是一位紳士，就象他創造出的那名不朽流浪漢，是一位詩人、藝術家、夢想者，但卻也是一位紳士。他盡管不理解不贊同丘吉爾的觀點，依然尊重他，敬佩他，彬彬有禮地走到這位前首相桌邊，說要陪他喝一杯咖啡。
我在書的尾聲中看到這一細節，就把書翻到前面，把最令我感動的章節再讀一遍。
My Autobiography is a book by Charlie Chaplin, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1964. Along with Chaplin: His Life and Art, it provided the source material for the 1992 feature film Chaplin.Wikipedia
《卓別林自傳》鍾玉澄翻譯，台北：志文，1982
二十世紀最偉大的批判現實主義電影藝術家、世界喜劇電影之王卓別林暢銷自傳作品。《卓別林自傳》中不僅講述了他無人能及的藝術成就，更提及了他毀譽參半的人生經歷，具有極強的可讀性。書中講述了卓別林與當時世界各領域重要人物的交往經歷，其中不僅有明星大腕，還有達官顯貴，各路高人。如周恩來、愛因斯坦、丘吉爾等。
Out of Limelight … Chaplin in a still from the eponymous film. Photograph: W Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures
Footlights, which runs to 34,000 words, traces the same story as Chaplin's valedictory film Limelight – that of an ageing, alcoholic clown Calvero and the ballerina he saves from suicide.
The film, in which Chaplin played Calvero and Claire Bloom the ballerina, was the final American movie Chaplin made before he was banned from the country for alleged communist sympathies. The novella, which Chaplin wrote in 1948, before the film script, widens and deepens the story, giving an insight into the author's state of mind at the time.
It has lain in Chaplin's archive for decades, but has now been pieced together from a mix of handwritten and typed scripts by Chaplin's biographer David Robinson. It is published by the Cineteca di Bologna, an Italian film restoration institute which has been digitising the Chaplin archive for his family.
Cecilia Cenciarelli, co-director of the Cineteca's Chaplin project, said the novella "has shadows. It's the story of a comedian who has lost his public, by a comedian who at that time had lost his public, who was referred to in the press of the time as a 'former comedian', a 'former successful film maker'".
It is a prequel of sorts to the film, in that it fleshes out "why Calvero has nightmares, why he is so disenchanted with his career, with the public", she said. "The book deals a little more with the relationship of the artist to his audience, with the meaning of art."
"I know I'm funny," says Calvero in the novella, "but the managers think I'm through … a has-been. God! It would be wonderful to make them eat their words. That's what I hate about getting old – the contempt and indifference they show you. They think I'm useless … That's why it would be wonderful to make a comeback! … I mean sensational! To rock them with laughter like I used to … to hear that roar go up … waves of laughter coming at you, lifting you off your feet … what a tonic! You want to laugh with them, but you hold back and laugh inside … God, there's nothing like it! As much as I hate those lousy – I love to hear them laugh!"
Chaplin was going through a bad time in America when he wrote the novella, said Robinson. "He was a big target for J Edgar Hoover … which was effective to the extent that a great deal of middle America turned against him. This was a shock to him, who had been the best loved man in the world for 30 years." These feelings, said Robinson, "work themselves out in the story of Calvero".
Footlights, complete with Robinson's commentary and description of the story's evolution, is being launched by the Cineteca this week, with an event at the British Film Institute Southbank, London, featuring Robinson and Bloom, to whom the book is dedicated. The book will be available from the publisher's website and Amazon, although it does not yet have a British or American publisher – something Cenciarelli is hoping will change.
"It is astonishing that this man who went to school for six months in his life managed to become a writer," she said. "The reason it has never been published before is because the family has been a little protective … but eventually they were convinced this would be a good thing to do."
"He never meant it for publication," said Robinson. "It was something absolutely private … he wrote it for himself."
In his commentary, Robinson writes that Chaplin "can move without warning from the baldly colloquial to dazzling yet apparently effortless imagery, as when the crushed Calvero gazes 'wearily into the secretive river, gliding phantom-like in a life of its own … smiling satanically at him as it flecked myriad lights from the moon and from the lamps along the embankment'".
Chaplin's childhood in south London can be seen, he writes, in a child character's "aversion to parks – 'the dreary, forlorn patches of green, and the people who sat about them, were the living graveyards of the hopeless and the destitute'". The novella also shows "the delight in fine or strange words of the self-confessed autodidact, who kept a dictionary beside him and set out to learn a new word every day: brattled, selenic, efflorescing, fanfaronading and – to the end of his life his all-purpose favourite – ineffable."
"Once he'd got a word he liked to use it, even if it was not quite right for the situation," Robinson said. "Nevertheless he does write amazingly. With his films he worked and worked until it came right, and it is the same with this book. It's a good read. Strange, but good."
Pamela Hutchinson, who blogs about silent film at www.silentlondon.co.uk, called the publication "very exciting".
"There is always tremendous interest in Chaplin – and when so much has been written about him over the years the chance to read his own words, especially ones we haven't heard before, is refreshing," she said. "One of the things that is really wonderful about Limelight is that it shows Chaplin returning to the London of his youth: the tenements and music halls that he knew.
"To read what he was writing about this world in the 40s confirms our fondly-held belief that Chaplin never forgot his British roots throughout his successes in the States.
"The subject matter of Limelight – poverty, mental health and the variety stage – as well as its London setting, could have been plucked straight from his childhood. The drafts of this novella confirm that these things were still playing on his mind late in his life."
默片喜劇大師卓別林(Charlie Chaplin)曾寫下個人唯一一部小說，這件事幾乎沒有人知道，現在這部小說「舞臺生涯(Footlights，暫譯)」即將首度公開。
卓別林1948年寫下小說「舞臺生涯」，內容描述1名小丑成功說服1名舞者不要自殺。這部小說之後改編成卓別林電影「舞台春秋」(Limelight)，小說4日在英國倫敦亮相。
義大利電影修復機構「波隆那電影資料館」(Cineteca di Bologna)將以英文出版這本小說。這個機構一直與卓別林傳記作家羅賓遜(David Robinson)重建卓別林檔案中發現的草稿。
卓別林1889年在倫敦出生，父母生活拮据，在戲院擔任藝人維生。卓別林少年時期在蘇活區(Soho)的戲院工作，最後終於成為劇團演員。
根據羅賓遜，卓別林在小說中描述酒醉小丑與絕望芭蕾女伶之間的關係，可能是他1916年遇到俄羅斯傳奇舞者尼金斯基(Vaslav Nijinsky)時所得到的靈感。
「這位畫家的表現，好像這晚會不是為他而辦的。這令人想起查理‧卓別林在聚會中尋找誰是慶祝會的真正主角，卻獨獨想不到主角是他自己。」《盧奧》(Georges Rouault) ，台北：文庫出版社，1994
1977.12.25 Chaplin 過世時. 我在英國South End 某家度聖誕節 不記得主人說此惡耗.......
2013.10.7 電視報導Chaplin瑞士的故居將改為博物館。 其孫女說: 他晚年最怕名沒他世........
我的日本朋友Kawase先生說 ， 世界上唯一看完Chaplin生前自己拍攝的生活影片檔案的，是某日本人，似乎花了一年多.......
改天跟他要詳細資料
Chaplin's final home, Manoir de Ban in Switzerland, is in the process of being converted into a museum exploring his life and career, to be opened in 2015.[435] The Swiss town of Vevey, where he spent the last 25 years of his life, named a park in his honour in 1980 and erected a replica of the Doubleday statue there in 1982.[433] In 2011, two murals depicting Chaplin on two 14-storey buildings were unveiled in Vevey.[436] Chaplin has also been honoured by the Irish town of Waterville, where he spent several summers with his family in the 1960s. A statue was erected in 1998,[437] and since 2011 the town has been host to the annual Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival, which was founded to celebrate Chaplin's legacy and to showcase new comic talent.[438]
查爾斯·斯賓賽·「查理」·卓別林爵士，KBE（英語：Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin，1889年4月16日－1977年12月25日）是一位英國喜劇演員及反戰人士，後來也成為一名非常出色的導演[2]，尤其在好萊塢電影的早期和中期他非常成功和活躍。他奠定了現代喜劇電影的基礎，與巴斯特·基頓、哈羅德·勞埃德並稱為「世界三大喜劇演員」，卓別林戴著圓頂硬禮帽和禮服的模樣幾乎成了喜劇電影的重要代表，往後不少藝人都以他的方式表演。
卓別林最出色的角色是一個外貌流浪漢，內心則一幅紳士氣度、穿著一件窄小的禮服、特大的褲子和鞋、戴著一頂圓頂硬禮帽、手持一根竹拐杖、留著一撇小鬍子的形象。在無聲電影時期卓別林是最有才能和影響最大的人物之一。他自己編寫、導演、表演和發行他自己的電影。從在英國的大劇院作為孩童演員登台演出，到他88歲高齡逝世為止，他在娛樂業從事了70多年的生涯。從狄更斯式的倫敦童年一直達到了電影工業的世界頂端，卓別林已成為了一個文化偶像。
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 2 Filmmaking
- 3 Legacy
- 4 Awards and recognition
- 5 Filmography
- 6 Notes and references
- 7 External links
-
2008.11.14
December 26, 1977
OBITUARY
Chaplin's Little Tramp, an Everyman Trying to Gild Cage of Life, Enthralled World
By ALDEN WHITMAN
No motion picture actor so captured and enthralled the world as did Charles Spencer Chaplin, a London ragamuffin who became an immortal artist for his deft and effective humanization of man's tragicomic conflicts with fate. In more than 80 movies from 1914 to 1967, he either portrayed or elaborated (he was a writer and director as well as an actor) the theme of the little fellow capriciously knocked about by life, but not so utterly battered that he did not pick himself up in the hope that the next encounter would turn out better.
His harassed but gallant Everyman was the Little Tramp, part clown, part social outcast, part philosopher. He was "forever seeking romance, but his feet won't let him," Chaplin once explained, indicating that romance connoted not so much courtship as the fulfillment of fancy.
Stumble Chaplin's Everyman might, but he always managed to maintain his dignity and self-respect. Moreover, he sometimes felled a Goliath through superb agility, a little bit of luck and a touch of pluck. There was pathos to the Little Tramp, yet he really did not want to be pitied.
The essence of Chaplin's humor was satire, sometimes subtle as in "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush," sometimes acerbic as in "The Great Dictator" and "Monsieur Verdoux." "The human race I prefer to think of as the underworld of the gods," he said. "When the gods go slumming they visit the earth." And what they saw mostly was uncelestial folly.
In ridiculing that folly Chaplin displayed a basic affection for the human race. He was serious and funny at the same time, and it was this blend of attitudes that elevated his comedy beyond film slapstick into the realm of artistry.
Rebounding From Adversity
A serious theme in "The Gold Rush," for example, is man's inhumanity to man. The comedy arises from the hero's adversity, illustrated by his boiling and eating of his shoe with the eclat of a gourmet. The element of contrast exemplified by that scene was at the root of Chaplin's comedy. This sense of comedy tickled the fancy of millions in the United States for half a century, despite some notoriety that came to Chaplin through marital and political misadventures.
The Little Tramp, the comedy character that lifted its creator to enduring fame, was neatly accoutered in baggy trousers, outsize shoes, and undersize derby redolent of decayed gentility, a frayed short cutaway and a sporty bamboo cane. A jet black mustache completed the costume. What made it all fit together was that it complemented Chaplin's slight stature--he was 5 feet 4 inches tall--and his slimness--he weighed about 130 in his prime years.
Although Chaplin often suggested that the costume was a studied contrivance, the fact seems to be that it was arrived at by accident in 1914 when he was breaking into films with Mack Sennett. Sennett, famous for his Keystone Kops and other comic shorts, sent Chaplin to Venice, Calif., to make a bit of film eventually called "Kid Auto Races at Venice."
He was told to wear something funny, and he assembled, on a grab-bag basis from other members of the company, pants belonging to Fatty Arbuckle, size 14 shoes each placed on the wrong foot, a tight coat, a colleague's derby, a prop cane and a false mustache that he cut down to fit his face. The splayed shuffle was a touch made up on the spur of the moment.
With a few exceptions Chaplin used the costume for about 25 years, and it was his symbol for a lifetime. The artistry with which it was employed, of course, evolved, so that the Little Tramp of "Modern Times" was a far more complex character than that in "Kid Auto Races at Venice."
The explanation for this was the meticulousness with which Chaplin studied the structure of comedy. Desiring to make audiences laugh, he analyzed the ingredients of his approach to comedy and each scene that went into the whole.
'Desperately Serious'
"All my pictures are built around the idea of getting me into trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman," he wrote early in his Hollywood career, adding:
"That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head."
One of Chaplin's basic routines had to do with dignity. "Even funnier than the man who has been made ridiculous is the man who, having had something funny happen to him, refuses to admit that anything out of the way has happened, and attempts to maintain his dignity," he wrote in 1918. He continued:
"I am so sure of this point that I do not try to get myself into embarrassing situations, but I also incriminate the other characters in the picture. When I do this, I always aim for economy of means. By that I mean that when one incident can get two big, separate laughs, it is much better than two individual incidents.
Achieved Artistic Control
"In 'The Adventurer' I accomplished this by first placing myself on a balcony, eating ice cream with a girl. On the floor directly underneath the balcony I put a stout, dignified, well-dressed woman at a table. Then, while eating the ice cream, I let a piece drop off my spoon, slip through my baggy trousers and drop from the balcony onto this woman's neck.
"The first laugh came at my embarrassment over my own predicament. The second, and the much greater one, came when the ice cream landed on the woman's neck and she shrieked and started to dance around. Only one incident had been used, but it had got two people into trouble, and had also got two big laughs.
"Simple as this trick seems, there were two real points of human nature involved in it. One was the delight the average person takes in seeing wealth and luxury in trouble. The other was the tendency of the human being to experience within himself the emotions he sees on the stage or screen."
In his early days in Hollywood Chaplin had little to say about how his moves were constructed or filmed. Later, though, he achieved artistic control, and he took infinite pains in perfecting each scene, often shooting hundreds of feet of film for a few minutes of final screen action.
"With only a rudimentary idea in his head he concocted the story as he went along." Theodore Huff wrote in "The Literature of Cinema." "Some pictures changed completely in the course of production. He improvised a scene or a series of gags, then discussed the results the next day in the projection room. A bit might be used or all of it might be reshot; or the whole project might be scrapped and some other idea substituted. . . . In 'City Lights' the meeting of the blind flower girl and the tramp took months before the variation that satisfied Chaplin was reached."
A Train of Possibilities
Some of Chaplin's best comic situations resulted from his keen-eyed observation of life around him. "I watch people inside a theater to see when they laugh, I watch them everywhere to get material which they can laugh at," he explained.
"I was passing a firehouse one day," he went on, "and head a fire alarm ring. I watched the men sliding down a pole, climbing onto the engine and rushing off to the fire.
"At once a train of comic possibilities occurred to me. I saw myself sleeping in bed, oblivious to the clanging of the fire bell. This point would have universal appeal, because everyone likes to sleep. I saw myself sliding down the pole, playing tricks with the fire horses, rescuing my heroine, falling off the fire engine as it turned a corner, and many other points along the same lines.
"I stored these points away in my mind and some time later, when I made 'The Fireman,' I used every one of them.
"Another time, I went up and down a moving staircase in a department store. I got to thinking how this could be utilized for a picture, and I finally made it the basis for 'The Floorwalker.'
"Watching a prize fight suggested 'The Champion,' in which I, the small man, knocked out a big bruiser by having a horseshoe concealed in my glove."
Added to Chaplin's talent for perceiving the comic potential in everyday occurrences was his skill at using contrast. "Contrast spells interest," he once remarked.
"If I am being chased by a policeman, I always make the policeman seem heavy and clumsy while, by crawling through his legs, I appear light and acrobatic. If I am being treated harshly, it is always a big man who is doing it, so that, by the contrast between the big and the little, I get the sympathy of the audience, and always I try to contrast my seriousness of manner with the ridiculousness of the incident."
Entering motion pictures in what was virtually the medium's infancy--before the advent of feature-length films and, of course, sound--Chaplin was obliged to rely on situational comedy and on pantomime, the use of mute gestures and facial expressions to convey emotion. Transcending linguistic barriers, this form of body language permitted the actor to be readily understood by peoples everywhere.
Affection and Adulation
"I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ," Chaplin said matter-of-factly early in his career.
Indeed, after only two years on the screen, "he was unquestionably the top figure in the motion picture industry," according to Mr. Huff. Audience demand for his pictures was phenomenal. For example, one New York theater played his films continuously from 1914 to 1923, stopping only because the building burned down.
By 1917 world-renowned performers visited his studios--Ignace Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky, Nellie Melba, Harry Lauder. When the Nijinsky ballet played Los Angeles, its dancers spotted Chaplin in the audience and halted the show for a half hour while they embraced him. His popularity at the box office won him a $1-million contract--a stupendous sum in 1917--for eight pictures over 18 months.
Some notion of the adulation of the actor may be inferred from the response to his bond tours in World War I--crowds of 30,000 in New York, 65,000 in Washington, 40,000 in New Orleans. Going to Europe in 1921--"The Tramp, "Shoulder Arms" and other of his classics had, of course preceded him--Chaplin was mobbed in London and Paris. The latter city declared a public holiday for the premiere of "The Kid." Few men in this century in any field attained his stature with the public. "Charlie," "Charlot," his first name in any language bespoke affection amounting to idolatry.
At the same time, Chaplin widened his intellectual and social world., meeting and becoming friendly with Max Eastman, the radical writer; Upton Sinclair, the Socialist novelist; James M. Barrie, the British playwright; H. G. Wells, the British writer; Waldo Frank, the novelist and critic; Georges Carpentier, the boxer, and St. John Irvine, the British dramatist. Throughout his life, he enjoyed the shuttlecock of wits with bright and learned men and women.
With his success, he was taken up by society figures--Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Elsie de Wolfe, Princess Xenia of Greece and hundreds of others. Although Chaplin was not generally accounted vain, he was impressed, as the latter portion of "My Autobiography" attests. Written after his forced absence from the United States and in perhaps an understandable mood of irritation, the book concludes with accounts of his reception in Europe after 1952 by socially and governmentally prestigious people, in whose attentions he basked.
Other comic actors of the silent or early-sound era--Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and W. C. Fields--also enjoyed acclaim and their pictures were often revived; but none, with the possible exceptions of Fields, created a genre. Even the Marx Brothers, in the opinion of many critics, could not rival Chaplin in creativity and fertility.
One explanation was that Chaplin's command of pictures after 1917 was complete. He was the author, star, producer, director and chief cutter. Moreover, as Mr. Huff's book noted:
"He himself played every character in every one of his pictures, to show the actors, men and women, exactly how he wanted them to do a character or a scene. And he accompanied each actor's miming with a running commentary of suggestions, criticism or encouragement."
In one film, "The Great Dictator," he served as hairdresser in the belief that he could do a better job than a professional coiffeur of arranging Paulette Goddard's hair to resemble a scrubwoman's. This impulse to perfectionism, costly in terms of time and film exposed, caused Chaplin many moments of anxiety and self-doubt. His usual solution was to spend a couple of days in bed working through his problem.
Exuberance From Confidence
Over all, however, Chaplin possessed an egotism that did not admit of defeat. "You have to believe in yourself,"--"that's the secret," he once advised his son Charles Jr. "I had that exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself."
Even as a London waif "I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world," he recalled.
Born April 16, 1889, in south London, Charles Spencer Chaplin was the son of a vaudevillian and a music hall soubrette, whose stage name was Lily Harley. By an earlier union, Chaplin's mother, Hannah, had a son, Sydney, four years the actor's senior. Sydney was to become his half-brother's business manager.
The elder Chaplin was a heavy drinker. "I was hardly aware of a father, and do not remember him living with us," Chaplin wrote. The couple separated shortly after he was born, and for a time Mrs. Chaplin was able to support herself. But her voice lost its quality, and "it was owing to her vocal condition that at the age of 5 I made my first appearance on the stage."
"I remember standing in the wings when mother's voice cracked and went into a whisper," her son recalled. "The audience began to laugh and sing falsetto and to make catcalls. It was all vague and I did not quite understand what was going on. But the noise increased until mother was obliged to walk off the stage. When she came into the wings she was very upset and argued with the stage manager who, having seen me perform before mother's friends, said something about letting me go on in her place,
Captivated His Audience
"And in the turmoil I remember him leading me by the hand and, after a few explanatory words to the audience, leaving me on the stage alone. And before a glare of footlights and faces in the smoke, I started to sing, accompanied by the orchestra, which fiddled about until it found my key."
The lad captivated his audience, especially when "in all innocence I imitated mother's voice cracking," and he was greeted by laughter and cheers and applause.
Very shortly, however, Mrs. Chaplin's fortunes dwindled, and she and the two children were obliged to enter the Lambeth workhouse. Then the boys were dispatched to an orphanage outside London. "Although we were well looked after, it was a forlorn existence," Chaplin wrote of those years. The institution practiced flogging, and at the age of 7 he received a severe caning. Moreover, for suspected ringworm, his head was shaved and iodined and he was put in an isolation ward.
Sydney went off to sea for a while and young Charles passed through a succession of workhouses. Meantime, Mrs. Chaplin was committed briefly as insane. When she was released, the small family again lived in penury, relieved slightly when Charles joined a troupe of clog dancers. He never forgot his days of poverty and the struggle for the necessities of life. Nor, when he was wealthy and famous, did he neglect his mother, seeing to it that she was well cared for in her eventual emotional breakdown. Finally, he took her to California, where she died.
Clog dancing lasted only briefly, followed by weeks and months of catch-as-catch-can existence. "I (was) newsvender, printer, toymaker, doctor's boy, etc., but during these occupational digressions, I never lost sight of my ultimate aim to become an actor," Chaplin recalled. "So, between jobs I would polish my shoes, brush my clothes, put on a clean collar and make periodic calls at a theatrical agency)."
At 12 1/2 his persistence was rewarded, and he received a small stage part, then toured the provinces as Billy in William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes." Later, he played the part with Mr. Gillette in London, receiving favorable notices. An awkward age followed, however, in which he received several burlesque bookings. Then came a substantial run in "Casey's Court Circus," in which he impersonated a patent-medicine faker.
Switch to Pantomime
In this engagement, according to the Huff biography, Chaplin decided to become a comedian. He also learned the unimportance of the spoken word. "Once, while playing in the Channel Islands," Mr. Huff wrote, "he found that his jokes were not getting over because the natives knew little English. He resorted to pantomime and got the desired laughs."
His success landed him a job with the Fred Karno Company. "With Karno he learned the hard way, traveling all over Britain and going twice to America," according to John Montgomery, a writer on films. "The repertory was varied; there were sketches about drunks, thieves, family relations, billiards champions, boxers, Turkish baths, policemen, singers who prepared to sing but somehow never started, conjurors who spoiled their own tricks and pianists who lost the music. . .a wide variety of subjects, mixed with a little honest vulgarity."
The Karno troupe was Chaplin's polishing school, for it taught him the rich lessons of his trade by which the actor makes an audience laugh. In 1913, Mack Sennett, then the producer of short film comedies for an insatiable public, signed the actor for $150 a week.
"I hated to leave the troupe," he recalled. "How did I know that pictures were going to be a successful medium for pantomime? Suppose I didn't make good?"
Nevertheless, he joined Sennett in Los Angeles, and made his debut in "Making a Living," a one-reeler that appeared in 1914. In those early Sennett comedies, there was no scenario. "We get an idea, then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy," Sennett explained.
Chaplin changed that by adopting an identifiable character--the Little Tramp--which allowed the public to single him out from other comedians.
35 Sennett Films
In his year with Sennett, Chaplin played in 35 films, including "Tillie's Punctured Romance," a six-reeler that also starred Marie Dressler and Mabel Normand. It was the screen's first feature-length comedy, and it is occasionally shown today in various cut-up versions. Others of the Keystone, or Sennett, films have been mutilated or rearranged, according to the Huff book, which notes, "Rarely does one come across an unmutilated Keystone original."
The originals of these films were shown around the world and they inspired such songs as "When the Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin." The renown they brought to Chaplin enabled him to shift to the Essanay Company for the then grand sum of $1,250 a week. For Essanay he made 14 films in 1915, including "The Tramp," his first generally recognized classic and the first in which he introduced a note of pathos.
In the picture, Chaplin, a tramp, saves a farmer's daughter, played by Edna Purviance, from a robber gang, for which he is rewarded with a job on the farm. Routing the gang again, he is shot in the leg and nursed by the daughter. The tramp's happiness is unbounded until the girl's sweetheart arrives. Realizing his fate, the tramp scribbles a farewell and departs.
In the fadeout, Chaplin's back is to the camera. He walks dejectedly down a long road. Then he pauses, shrugs his shoulders, flips his heels and continues jauntily toward the horizon. Several variations on this theme were used in later Chaplin films, notably in "Limelight."
After his Essanay period Chaplin went to the Mutual Company for $670,000 a year. He was 26, three years out of vaudeville and perhaps the world's highest paid performer. The sudden advent of wealth had little immediate effect on his life-style. When he signed his Mutual contract he remarked, "Well, I've got this much if they never give me another cent--guess I'll go and buy a whole dozen ties."
He was living at the time in a small hotel room and he kept away from Hollywood parties, preferring to roam at night through Los Angeles's poorer quarters. Shortly, however, he moved to larger quarters, hired a secretary, bought a Locomobile and acquired Toraichi Kono, a combination valet, bodyguard and chauffeur. Kono, as he was generally called, remained with the actor for about 20 years, serving as the keeper of his privacy.
Fortune in the Millions
In time Chaplin grew passionately attached to money. Although he was not a tightwad, neither was he a conspicuous spender, save on his own comfort. In the end, his fortune was in the millions.
And he insisted toward the close of his life that he had been actuated all along by money. "I went into the business for money, and the art grew out of it," he said. "If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth."
However, those who were close to Chaplin in his early film years were impressed by his painstaking search for artistry. In doing the two-reel "The Immigrant" in 1917, for instance, he shot 90,000 feet of film to obtain the 1,899 feet of the finished picture. His dozen Mutual films were all two-reelers. They included some ranked among his best-- "The Floorwalker", "The Fireman," "The Vagabond" and "Easy Street."
The negatives were not preserved, and the worn an duplicated prints that are sometimes shown at "Chaplin festivals," according to critics, bear only slight relationship to the quality of the original films.
His Own Producer
When the Mutual contract was up, Chaplin went to First National for $1-million for eight pictures over 18 months. For the first time he was his own producer in his own studio. Actually he made nine pictures over five years, and these included some of his greatest achievements--"A Dog's Life," "Shoulder Arms" and "The Kid."
Sparing of caricature, "A Dog's Life" derives its humor from the parallels between a dog's existence and that of a vagabond. "Shoulder Arms" is Everyman at war, and, according to Jean Cocteau, "It moves like a drumroll." For "The Kid," Chaplin employed Jackie Coogan, a 5-year-old with mischievous brown eyes. Hailed as "a picture with a smile-- perhaps a tear," the movie was a chapter out of Chaplin's own slum life. It contains little horseplay and much emotional intensity. Coogan's tears were real, induced by the sad stories Chaplin spun for him at necessary moments.
Marriages and Divorces
During the preparation of "The Kid" for release, Chaplin was embroiled in the first of several marital and extra-marital episodes that were to plague him. Good-looking and attractive to women, he was involved in a score of more of alliances, many with glamourous actresses, but these were usually discreetly handled. Not so with his first two marriages.
In 1918, when the actor was 29, he abruptly married 16-year-old Mildred Harris. They were divorced two years later in a fanfare of publicity. Four years afterward he married Lolita McMurry, also 16, whose stage name was Lita Grey. She was ensconced in her husband's 40-room mansion, from which Chaplin soon fled. Two children, Charles Jr. and Sydney, were born of the union, which ended in 1927 after a sensational divorce case, in the course of which Chaplin pictures were barred in some states at the urging of women's clubs.
The actor's third wife was Pauline Levy, a chorus girl whose film name was Paulette Goddard. The two met in 1931, when Miss Goddard was 20, and according to Chaplin, were married in 1936. They were divorced in 1942 without public fuss.
Meantime, in 1941, the actor met Joan Berry, a 21-year-old aspiring actress known as Joan Barry. She later charged that he was the father of her daughter, and Chaplin was once again the subject of lurid headlines. He was indicted for allegedly taking Miss Barry across state lines for immoral purposes, but this charge was dropped and he was acquitted of three related accusations.
Miss Barry, however, filed a paternity suit, in which blood tests demonstrated that Chaplin was not her child's father. Nonetheless, a jury found against him and he was ordered to support the infant.
In the midst of these troubles, in 1943, Chaplin, then 54, married 18-year-old Oona O'Neil, the playwright's daughter, over her father's vigorous objections. Their marriage proved happy and lasting, and it produced eight children.
Chaplin's later films were made for United Artists, a company he founded in 1919 with three Hollywood friends, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and David Wark Griffith. Chaplin's initial picture for this concern was "A Woman of Paris," a comedy of manners that he produced and directed without starring in it. Considered a milestone in screen history for its influence on movie style, it was based in part on the life of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, briefly Chaplin's mistress, and it stressed social sophistication. In it Adolphe Menjou made his debut as a suave philanderer.
"The Gold Rush"--"the picture I want to be remembered by," Chaplin said--came out in 1925 and it once again confirmed his hold on the public. It has been frequently revived and much analyzed.
Less successful with the critics was "The Circus," which opened in 1928. It seemed to lack the feeling of "The Gold Rush," and its comedy twists were short on flair. Its shortcomings, however, appeared less evident in revivals.
Starting work on "City Lights" in 19218, the actor faced a crisis in the advent of talkies. He was fearful that spoken dialogue would impair the character of The Tramp, cause difficulties in his reliance on pantomime and cut into foreign sales. Moreover, many of Chaplin's effects had been achieved by undercranking the camera, a feat impossible at the set speed of a motor-driven sound camera. After some thought, Chaplin decided to defy the new technology, and "City Lights" was produced as a silent picture with a musical score.
The story of the blind flower girl, played by Virginia Cherrill, used more than 800,000 feet of film over two years. The tragicomedy was an enormous triumph when in opened in 1931, and outgrossed many slick sound films in revivals over the last 40 years. Many critics rank "City Lights" as among Chaplin's greatest creations.
Reputation as Radical
The picture's appeal was one factor in Chaplin's conquering tour of Europe and the Orient--a whirl of meetings with statesmen, writers, artists and celebrities. Returning to Hollywood, he embarked upon "Modern Times," a satire on mass production, which at the time gave the actor a reputation as a radical.
"It [the picture] started from an abstract idea, an impulse to say something about the way life is being standardized and channelized, men turned into machines--and the way I felt about it," he said of his witty social parable.
The Little Tramp disappeared with "Modern Times," and with "The Great Dictator" Chaplin joined the sound-picture ranks. A ferocious ridicule of Hitler and Mussolini, the film has grown in stature over the years as its political implications have been, according to critics, more fully realized. "I want to see the return of decency and kindness," Chaplin said at the time. "I'm just a human being who wants to see this country a real democracy . . ."
Despite "The Great Dictator," the nineteen-forties were difficult years for Chaplin. His private life provided a headline festival for the tabloid press; he was vexed by income tax trouble; his wartime speeches calling for a Western second front to crush Hitler irked many conservatives; and "Monsieur Verdoux" did poorly at the box office.
This fugue of troubles was intensified by the advent of the cold war. The actor came under fire for introducing Henry A. Wallace at a rally and for protesting the deportation of Hanns Eisler, the composer and a onetime Communist. Westbrook Pegler, the columnist, denounced him, and Representative John E. Rankin, a right-wing legislator from Mississippi, demanded his deportation. Chaplin's life "is detrimental to the moral fabric of America," Mr. Rankin asserted, urging that he be kept "off the American screen and his loathsome pictures be kept from the eyes of American youth."
Finally, in 1952, the actor, a British subject, was virtually exiled by the United States. While he was sailing to Britain on vacation, the Attorney General announced that he could not re-enter the country unless he could prove his "moral worth." Piqued, Chaplin spent the rest of his life in Europe, settling on a 38-acre estate at Vevey, Switzerland.
A Special Academy Award
In 1972, however, amends of a sort were made to Chaplin. He visited the United States to receive a special Oscar from the Motion Picture Academy and to accept accolades in New York. By this time the once-bubbling actor had aged into senility. He could do little more than bow and smile in response to expressions of affection for him and his art.
Meantime, critical opinion vindicated Chaplin's belief that "Verdoux" was a brilliant picture. Its satire of a business- and war-minded world was more appreciated in the context of opinion in the 1960's and 70's than it had been in the late 40's.
Apart from "Limelight," Chaplin's final films--"The King in New York" and "A Countess From Hong Kong"--were accounted by many critics as lesser works.
In his declining years Chaplin looked back with happiness on his early days in the movies at Keystone and Essanay.
"I was able to try anything in those days," he said. "I was free."
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