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He has been called the single most influential artist in the history of motion pictures; certainly no other movie star enjoyed the international, iconographic status he attained early in the silent era and maintained well past the coming of sound. And certainly no other creative talent did as much as he to elevate screen comedy to a high art. Perhaps most significant, though, is the fact that he helped make the motion picture a medium of emotional expression, taking it forever out of the category of a mere flickering novelty.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born to British music-hall entertainers who had skirted around the edges of prosperity without ever achieving it. His parents separated when he was only a year old, and he stayed with his mother, whose stage career dissipated as he got older. Chaplin's father died a hopeless alcoholic, and his mother's increasingly fragile health and tenuous mental state forced him and older half-brother Sydney to work for their suppers. Already steeped in show-business traditions, he did some childhood hoofing and occasionally acted on the legitimate stage. At the age of 17 he joined the music hall troupe of impresario Fred Karno, with whom he honed his pantomimic skills.

While touring with Karno in America in 1912, Chaplin-whose comic drunk was the highlight of the troupe's show-was seen by Mack Sennett, the godfather of movie comedy, who hired him away to appear in moving pictures. He debuted on screen in Making a Living (1914), all but unrecognizable in top hat, frock coat, and mustache. Kid Auto Races at Venice (also 1914) saw him wearing a derby hat and droopy trousers, and brandishing a cane; it was the first appearance of what would come to be known as "the Little Tramp," a character Chaplin continued to refine in his short-subject appearances during a year-long tenure with Sennett's Keystone company.

He began directing with his 13th film, Caught in the Rain (also 1914), and gradually moved away from the simple slapstick frenetics of the Keystones. Already a familiar face to moviegoers, and an increasingly valuable property to Sennett, Chaplin felt he was worth more than the $175 a week he was getting paid, and in 1915 signed with Essanay (another pioneering film company) for $1,250 a week with bonuses. He maintained complete creative control over his short subjects, and during the Essanay period evolved the Tramp character further, adding the little subtleties and the touch of pathos for which he became famous worldwide. The Tramp was truly an Everyman for international audiences, all of whom could easily identify with the downtrodden little fellow whose eternal optimism in the face of adversity inspired them all. It was The Tramp (1915) that gave audiences their first glimpse of a Chaplin trademark: the final shot of the little fellow, alone, shuffling away from the camera down a long, barren stretch of road.

In 1916 Chaplin moved operations to Mutual. By now he commanded a weekly salary of $10,000 (with bonuses adding up to $150,000), enjoyed creative autonomy, and was given a month to produce each of his two-reel comedies-in an era when most were cranked out in a few days. With his characterization set, he applied himself to crafting his films with painstaking precision, often improvising and rehearsing for days to get a sequence that might last only a minute or less. His skill at pantomime and his athletic flair for expressive physical comedy manifested themselves in set pieces that were choreographed like dance routines with split-second timing. Easy Street, The Rink, The Cure and The Immigrant are just a few of the brilliant comedies Chaplin made during his stay at Mutual in 1916-17.

First National beckoned him with a million-dollar contract in 1918, demanding only a minimal output (initially eight two-reelers per year) but anticipating the same huge worldwide profits that had come to be expected of his films. A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms (both 1918), and The Kid (1921, his first feature film) are among his best efforts for First National. As well compensated as he was, though, Chaplin longed for the total freedom and security of his own company. In 1919 he co-founded, along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D. W. Griffith, the United Artists Corporation, through which the four cinematic giants would release their subsequent product. When Chaplin's contract with First National ran out, he made films exclusively for UA distribution, never again returning to the shackles of a studio contract.

He directed his first United Artists release, the sophisticated A Woman of Paris (1923), which starred his former leading lady Edna Purviance and Adolphe Menjou; Chaplin himself took only a brief cameo. The film flopped badly, and a chastened Chaplin returned to the security of his Little Tramp for The Gold Rush (1925), one of his enduring masterpieces, still an often-revived favorite from the silent era. It exuded the great attention to detail, both in setting and performance, that would become a Chaplin hallmark even as it reduced his output. Fully three years elapsed between it and The Circus (1928), another fine comedy, for which he was awarded a special Oscar at the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1928.

Chaplin had by this time already been the recipient of unwanted controversy. Although he campaigned vigorously for the sale of U.S. War Bonds during World War 1, he was castigated for not returning to his homeland to join the Armed Forces (actually, a medical problem kept him out of uniform). His penchant for younger women found him marrying two 16-year-olds, Mildred Harris (an actress from whom he was divorced after two years) and Lita Grey (who bore him two sons and won a million-dollar divorce settlement after three years), a 19-year-old starlet, Paulette Goddard (from whom he was divorced in 1942), and finally, 18-year-old Oona O'Neill (the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill). All these liaisons generated reams of unwelcome publicity.

In 1928, the talking-picture revolution threw the entire movie industry into turmoil, but Chaplin dealt with sound in his own unique way: He simply ignored it. He reckoned, correctly, that sound would ruin the simple appeal of his Tramp character, and hurl the pathetic little figure into a world more real (and certainly more coarse) than the stylized fantasy milieu he then inhabited. City Lights (1931), his next and arguably greatest picture, made certain concessions: It sported a fully orchestrated musical score-composed, for the most part, by Chaplin himself-and used sound effects sparingly, and to clever effect. The story itself concerned the Tramp's efforts to help the blind girl he loved hopelessly, and the final scene-in which, having had her sight restored through his efforts, the girl first sees that her benefactor is a shabby little wretch still brings sobs to the throats of audiences with its exquisite poignancy.

Modern Times (1936) saw Chaplin flouting convention yet again by delivering to moviegoers another silent film. Another masterwork, it co-starred Paulette Goddard, the former chorus girl whom he married in 1933. A brilliant commentary on the insanity of a rapid-paced, highly industrialized (and, in Chaplin's view, dehumanized) society, it delighted audiences with richly orchestrated comic set pieces. Unfortunately, its apparent anticapitalist overtones would come back to haunt the filmmaker years later.

The Great Dictator (1940) earned Chaplin several Oscar nominations - - for his acting, the script, and Best Picture - - and saw him tackle dialogue for the first time. It offered a relentlessly ridiculous caricature of Hitler and Nazism, and gave movie fans their last look at the Little Tramp, incarnated for this picture only as a Jewish barber whose resemblance to a fascist dictator gets him into trouble.

Chaplin was off the screen for seven years, during which time the motion picture matured to the point where his next contribution didn't seem nearly as important as his previous efforts. Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a bitter, cynical black comedy, cast him as a murderous Bluebeard, a characterization not appreciated by film fans of the day. (It did, however, get nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar.) The story's pacifist leanings ran him afoul of political conservatives in America, then marshaling their forces for the Cold War against Communism. They pointed to Verdoux and also to Modern Times and its implied distaste for capitalism, and set Chaplin up to be knocked down by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which suspected him of being a Communist. He denied the charges while testifying before the committee, but public outcry for his deportation continued.

Chaplin, for all his years in America, never bothered to become a citizen, and when he went to London in 1952 with fourth wife Oona, he was informed that he would not get a reentry visa to America. Ironically, he was on his way to the British premiere of Limelight his nostalgic tale of a once-great music-hall performer fallen on hard times. Although the film had several wonderful sequences including one that teamed him with another legendary film comic, Buster Keaton - - it impressed many as overlong and indulgent. With the U.S., his most important market, sour on him, Chaplin found himself the producer of another flop. (Because it was never "officially" released in Los Angeles in 1952, Limelight was eligible for an Academy Award twenty years later, and in fact won one, for Best Score, in 1972!)

A profoundly bitter Chaplin resolved never to return to America. He settled in Switzerland with Oona and their children (one of whom, Geraldine, became an actress in film), lampooning with considerable bitterness American manners and mores in A King in New York (1957, unreleased in the U.S. until 1976), and gamely attempting a directorial comeback with A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), a totally anachronistic, poorly realized romantic comedy starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren.

In 1972 Chaplin consented to return to America for the Academy Awards ceremony, where he was presented a special Oscar for career achievement to a tumultuous ovation from the assembled crowd of Hollywood dignitaries. He was similarly feted later at New York's Philharmonic Hall, and was knighted by the Queen in 1975. His "My Autobiography" was published in 1964. A biographical film, Chaplin, was released in 1992.


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