The King of Comedy

Ever heard of Charles Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin)?

He's said to be the King of Comedy.

HIS EARLY LIFE

About the year 1900, a small, dark haired boy named Charles Chaplin was often 

seen waiting outside the back entrances of London theaters. He looked thin and 

hungry but his blue eyes were determined. He was hoping to get work in show 

business. He could sing and dance. His parent were music hall artist and he had 

been born in to the life of the stage. And although his own boyhood was 

painfully hard, He knew how to make people laugh.

The boy's suit was in rags. It wasn't always possible to get work. He traveled 

for a while with a song-and-dance act called "the eight Lancashire Lads". At 

first, He played the part of a dog. The boys slept crowded together each night 

in a different lodging house in different towns. They missed their mothers. As 

they lay in bed, they listen to the sound of drunken fighting in the street 

outside.

His own father had died from drinking too much. And his mother wasn't really 

able to look after Charlie and his older half brother, Sid. She was often sick 

in the mind and has to be sent to the hospital. Even when she was home with 

them she seemed to live in a different world. Her illness made the boys very 

sad.

As young men, he and his brother traveled to America in a small company of 

actors and acted in various cities.

One day, Charlie was invited to join a new company that was making film 

comedies. He accepted the offer and soon became popular. Very soon he had made 

dozens of short films for this company. But it was in his second film that he 

wore the clothes which made his reputation___

The black hat, huge shoes, stiff mustache and walking stick.

He intended simply to make people laugh. But the odd disguise made him look 

both comic and sad. And in the pictures that followed, the character of the 

little tramp continue to grow out of the clothes he had decided to wear.

His appearance was a popular success, right from the beginning.

The character of the "little tramp", which Chaplin played in hundreds of 

films, is one everyone can understand. The poor man makes all kinds of stupid 

mistakes. He's always in trouble. Yet he dreams of greatness. He makes us laugh 

with his crazy attempts to escape his cruel fate. He finds surprising ways out 

of every difficulty. And life never quite destroys him. The little tramp is not 

very different from the cold, homeless, poorly dressed child who refused to 

despair.

Like the child is weak, frightened and foolish, but he never gives up.

By the time he was thirty, Chaplin was the greatest, best known and best loved 

comedian in the world. He received thousands of dollars for each film he made.

He had formed his own film-making company and was writing and producing his 

own films. He was welcomed by excited crowds who surrounded him wherever he 

went. But he work very hard and had very few close friends.

He became to dislike America, where he had lived for forty years and where he 

had become a great man.

He moved with his wife and their large family to Switzerland. He describe 

himself as a citizen of the world, rather than of any particular country. His 

most famous pictures dates from the 1920 and 1930's, the time of the silent 

films. But, to many people the world over, Charles Chaplin was still the King 

of Comedy.

In the last few years of his long life, He returned to the USA and Great 

Britain to receive honors for His work done in the cinema.

He died in Switzerland on Christmas day in 1977, at the age of eighty-eight. 

There was sadness all over the world at news of his death.

HIS MOVIE TREND

Even people who don't understand English can enjoy Chaplin's films because 

they are mostly silent. It isn't what he says that makes us laugh. His comedy 

doesn't depend upon words or language. It depends upon little actions which 

meant the same thing to people all over the world. Acting out, without words, 

of common human situations plays an important part in the dances and plays of 

many countries. It's a kind of world language.

Chaplin raises his thick eyebrows or rolls his eyes.

From his first appearance people know what to expect from the mild little man 

with still black mustache, wide-open eyes, round black hat and shoes too large 

for his feet. He'll rush from one accident to the next. He is likely to 

struggle through snow, slip on ice, fall from windows, slide off bridges. He'll 

fight men who are twice his size and fall in love with women who hardly notice 

him at all.

Characters stronger, richer and braver than him will swear at him and insult 

him and drive him away. But somehow he'll always fight back. He'll land on his 

feet, make the best of his broken heart, and go on as before. He straightens 

his coat or swings his walking stick in the air. He hides behind a fat lady or 

creeps under a table to escape from enemies.

Trying to be brave, He faints away on the floor. He shakes the dust off his 

rags to make a proud appearance at some grand social occasion. He pretends to 

be what he's not and never could be___a rich, successful, important man. It is 

all so hopeless and impossible that it makes us laugh. This is the secret of 

Chaplin's huge success.

In one of his most famous films, "The Gold Rush", a girl plays tricks on the 

little man. Then she begins to feel sorry for him and treats him kindly. He 

mistakes her pity for love.

The girl in "city light" is blind. While she cannot see what he looks like she 

thinks he is the most wonderful man she has ever met. But when she recovers her 

sight and sees what a foolish figure he is. This sadness gives Chaplin's films 

a depth of human experience which few comedians can equal.

HIS MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

He once wrote, "you have to believe in yourself. That's the secret. Even when 

I was in the children's home, when I was wondering in the streets trying to 

find enough to eat to keep alive, even then I thought of myself as the greatest 

actor in the world". Without faith in himself, he said, He would have gone down 

in despair.

HIS LOVE LIFE

In 1918 he met a child actress, Mildred Harris, at a party given by Sam 

Goldwyn. Harris was 16; Chaplin was 29. They married in haste, Chaplin 

believing that Harris was pregnant. She was not. But in 1919 she gave birth to 

a child, who died at just three days old. The couple divorced in 1920.

In 1924 he met another child actress, Lita Grey. She too was 16. She became 

pregnant and they married and had two sons, Charles and Sydney. They divorced 

three years later, with Lita accusing Chaplin of cruelty. The divorce 

settlement, according to Chaplin's biographer David Robinson, was at that time 

the largest in American legal history.

In 1936 he married Paulette Goddard, his co-star in the films Modern Times and 

The Great Dictator. This was a first: Goddard was not a child actress, and they 

had no children, but still they divorced, in 1942. And then, finally, in 1943 

Chaplin married Oona O'Neill, the daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill. 

Oona was 18; Chaplin was 54. They had eight children.

Looking back on their marriage in My Autobiography, Chaplin wrote: "For the 

last 20 years I have known what happiness means. I have the good fortune to be 

married to a wonderful wife. I wish I could write more about this, but it 

involves love, and perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations 

because it is more than one can express."

Among the many Chaplin children and grandchildren there are too many actors to 

mention, except perhaps one, James Thiérrée, the son of Chaplin's second 

daughter, Victoria, and Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée. It is difficult to describe 

exactly what Thiérrée does.