The Comedian-Charlie Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin. (1889-1977)

16-04-2012 will be Charlie Chaplin’s 123 Birthday.

He was born in London on 16-04-1889.

Chaplin was the son of Charles and Hannah Chaplin, music-hall performers, and he first appeared on stage at age eight in a clog-dancing act, "Eight Lancashire Lads."

Because his father died soon after, and his mother was often in and out of mental institutions, Chaplin's early life was a dreary succession of boarding schools and orphanages, interspersed with occasional stage engagements and periods when he lived in the streets.

When Chaplin was 17 his older  brother, then working for the Fred Karno Company, found a place for him in the troupe.

He remained with Karno, performing in numerous music-hall skits, until 1913, when he was signed for the movies by the Keystone Company: Mack Sennett, the producer of Keystone's slapstick one-reelers, had noticed Chaplin in New York City during a Karno tour.

Chaplin's film career began in December 1913 at $150 a week. He never returned to the stage.

Chaplin hit upon his famous costume--derby hat, tight frock coat, baggy trousers, out-sized shoes, moustache, and cane--while making his second picture, Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), though the full pathos and significance of the tramp character had not yet been realized.

His comedies were, however, sensationally successful from the start, even though they were made at a rate of two a week. Soon he was allowed to direct all his films, and his salaries soared: $1,250 a week from Essanay (1915); $10,000 a week, plus a $150,000 bonus for signing, from Mutual (1916); $1,000,000 for eight pictures from First National (1917).

Two years later Chaplin--together with two other of the foremost stars of the day, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and the director D.W. Griffith--formed United Artists so that each could produce and distribute his own films independently.

After his First National contract ended with The Pilgrim (1923), Chaplin produced only for his own company until making A Countess from Hong Kong for Universal in 1966.Chaplin's meteoric rise was due in part to the emergence of the star system--the selling of films on the basis of featured performers rather than titles or plots; indeed, the public's eager reception of the Chaplin screen personality, along with those of Pickford, Fairbanks, and others, did much to establish the system.

In The Tramp (1915) Chaplin first inserted the note of pathos that was to make his little tramp not only amusing but endearing. As star, director, and writer of his own pictures, he was in a unique position to explore the implications of the character, described by one critic as "the destitute person shown in the perspective of the wealthy."

This "little fellow," as Chaplin called him, was developed through such films as Easy Street (1917), Shoulder Arms (1918), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940), the last being his first talking picture. The tramp figure reemerged, albeit briefly, in the autobiographical Limelight (1952).Chaplin's personal life was often stormy.

He was married four times--to three of his leading ladies, Mildred Harris (1918), Lita Grey (1924), and Paulette Goddard (1936), and, in 1943, to Ona O'Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill--and his first two divorces produced sensational headlines, as did a paternity suit in 1944.

There were headlines also when, in 1942, Chaplin called for a second front in the war against Germany; his political stance was attacked, in part, on grounds that he had never become a U.S. citizen. His film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a mordant version of the Bluebeard story, angered the American Legion, among others. Pressed by the United States government for back taxes and linked by politicians and newspaper columnists with allegedly subversive causes, Chaplin left the country in 1952. Informed that his reentry rights would be questioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, he surrendered his reentry permit at Geneva in 1953.

Thereafter, Chaplin and his family lived in Switzerland. In 1957 he produced in London A King in New York, a comedy laden with sermons against the House Committee on Un-American Activities, inane television commercials, and other aspects of American life.

The film brought fresh accusations of pro-communism, which Chaplin specifically denied. In 1966 he wrote, directed, and appeared briefly in A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. In 1972 he returned to the United States to receive a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.