He gained worldwide fame with his portrayal of the pathetic, yet funny little tramp (Charlot) in American silent films. He became one of the most well-known people in the United States within two years of his first film in 1914.
In the early 1920s, he took part in films that he produced.
Although he was content to appear in only a few films after the transition to sound cinema in the late 1920s, he almost never lost his fame because his early films were considered cinema classics and attracted the attention of new audiences.
Major feature-length comedy films include The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
British film actor and director Charlie Chaplin (real name Charles Spencer Chaplin) was born on April 16, 1889, in London, the capital of England. He died in Switzerland on December 25, 1977.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.
He learned to sing and dance from his mother, Hannah, and his father, Charles Chaplin, who were both music hall actors.
He made his stage debut at the age of eight in a clog dance show, "Eight Lancashire Lads". Because his father died shortly thereafter and his mother was frequently in and out of mental hospitals, Chaplin's childhood was spent in trouble in boarding schools and orphanages.
During this period, he sometimes found temporary stage jobs and sometimes had to live on the streets. When he was seventeen, his half-brother Sydney found him a job in the Fred Karno vaudeville troupe, where he worked and performed a variety of dances, plays, and comedy shows.
He worked with Karno until 1913 and starred in numerous music hall sketches. That year, he was spotted on tour in New York by Mack Sennett, Keystone's producer of slapstick one-reelers.
Chaplin started his film career in December 1913, earning $150 a week, and never returned to the stage.
Chaplin created his famous look, consisting of a bowler hat, a tight frock coat, slacks, large shoes, a mustache, and a cane, in his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venic (1914). However, the characteristics of this type were not yet fully formed.
However, despite being produced at a rapid rate of two films a week, Chaplin's comedies were an extraordinary success. Shortly after, Chaplin was allowed to direct his own films, and his fees gradually reached astronomical figures.
In 1915, he received $1,250 a week from the Essanay company, in 1916 he received $10,000 a week from the Matual company plus $150,000 for the contract, and in 1917 he received $1 million from the First National company for eight films.
Two years later, he formed United Artists with the leading stars of the period, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and the famous director D W Griffith, on the condition that each of them distribute their films independently. After his contract with First National ended with the film The Pilgrim (1923), he made films exclusively for his own company until A Countess from Hong Kong, which he made for Universal in 1966.
Chaplin's rapid rise was partly due to the development of the star system, in which the actors in the films were more important than their subjects in the marketing of his films. In fact, the fact that Chaplin's screen persona, along with Pickford, Fairbanks, and others, was accepted with great enthusiasm by the public was also very effective in the establishment of this system. In The Tramp (1915), Chaplin began to underline the likeability of the little tramp he created in order to make him not only entertaining but also lovable.
Because he was the star, director, and writer of his own films, he was in a unique position to examine the implications of the character of Charlie. Charlo, whom a critic described as "a type of poor drawn from the perspective of the rich" and whom Chaplin called "the little man", appeared in Easy Street (1917), Shoulder Arms (1918), Yumurcak, Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times and his first sound film. It was developed in films such as Charlie Dictator.
Chaplin had a very eventful private life. Three of his four marriages were to the leading actors of his films, Lita Gray in 1918 and Paulette Goddard in 1936. In 1943, he married Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. His first two divorces and the paternity suit filed against him in 1944 created a sensation.
Chaplin made headlines again in 1942 when he called for a second front in the war against the Germans. The fact that he never became a US citizen also played a role in the attack on his political stance. Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a sarcastic adaptation of the Bluebeard story, angered the American military as well as many others.
Chaplin left the country in 1952 after the US government pressed him for tax debt and some politicians and columnists claimed that he was involved in subversive activities. When he learned that his right of return would be investigated by the US Department of Justice, he announced that he gave up this right in Geneva in 1953.
After that, he started living with his family in Corsier-sur-Vevey, near Vevey, Switzerland. A King in New York, which he made in London in 1957, was a comedy full of criticisms of the Anti-American Activities Committee, meaningless television commercials, and other aspects of American-style life.
The film led to increased accusations of pro-communism, which Chaplin specifically denied. In 1966, he shot A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, for which he wrote the script and appeared in a small role. He went to the USA to receive the special Oscar award given to him in 1972.