Charlie Chaplin-the Comedy King.

Charlie Chaplin. (1889-1977)

Charlie Chaplin was born on 16^th April 1889.  To-day is his 123 Birth-day.

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. 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 half brother, then working for the Fred Karno Company, found a place for him in the troupe. 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 note-worthy films are:

The Gold Rush.

Modern Times.

Monsieur Verdoux.

The Kid.

The Great Dictator.

The Circus.

A Woman of Paris.

A King in New York.

City Lights.

The Pilgrim.

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 Oona 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 at Corsier-sur-Vevey, near Vevey,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. His autobiography was published in 1964.