Chaplin was in, wrote, directed, or produced more than 80 movies, most of which were silent. He won two Oscars and wrote the music for many of his movies. On his 83rd birthday, he got a Special Academy Award, his last Oscar. He also won several international awards, and at the height of his popularity, he was as well-known as The Beatles. Instead of Beatlemania, people were crazy about Chaplin.
Charlie went from being very poor to being Hollywood’s biggest star at a time when Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, John Barrymore, and Douglas Fairbanks were also big names. He married 4 times and had eleven kids from those marriages. Women followed him, hated him, and loved him. His fans loved him so much that they treated him like a god.
Still, he was sad and lonely for most of his life. In 1952, FBI agents kicked Chaplin out of the U.S. because they thought he was a communist. But if he is known for anything today, it is that he changed how comedy was shown in movies when they were first made. He moved from the one-dimensional chase scenes in Keystone Cops to deeper, more emotional movies.
Chaplin: From Poverty to Prosperity
A lot of Charlie Chaplin’s sadness came from his early years. In London, England, his family was very poor in the late 1800s. His parents were entertainers, but they had messed up his mental health. His mother was constantly in and out of hospitals, and his father was an alcoholic who left the family.
Hannah was his birth mother, and even though she loved Charlie and Sidney, she was rarely able to take care of them. His talented vaudeville performer father, Charles Sr., died of cirrhosis. When Chaplin’s crazy mother went to a mental hospital, the state put Charlie and Sidney in an orphanage called the Workhouse.
He never stopped caring about his mother, though. When he got rich, one of the first things he did was buy a house for his mother near the Pacific Ocean. When I believe in Chaplin in his tramp outfit, I think of the troubled comedian who worked as hard as anyone to improve his life. Even in his free time, he read the classics, which made him smarter and more respected.
As his fame grew, he became friends with most of the famous people of his time, including Churchill, Gandhi, Khrushchev, William Randolph Hurst, Zola, Manet, and many others. By the time Charlie was 33, he was on top of the world. He had been a comedian for years and then made movies.
Even though he was smart and creative, it rarely made Charlie happy. He felt like he needed to do something better and grander. His movies weren’t just fun distractions; they were masterpieces like the satirical The Dictator, which caused a lot of debate about whether he should have made a movie about Hitler.
Chaplin: Box Office Hit, Emotional Mess
Charlie Chaplin had a lot of money. He could make any movie he wanted and live in style. He didn’t show off his money as William Randolph Hurst did. Even though he was financially stable, he still had panic attacks and big mood swings. He was afraid of losing his money and land.
After each movie, he felt depressed, and his emotions were so drained that he had to be alone for days to heal. I don’t think he got over what happened to him as a child. He saw his mother have a mental illness and go in and out of hospitals, and their father left them all.
He was put in a workhouse when he was nine years old and survived there for the remainder of his life. Who wouldn’t feel sad and doubtful about the institutions of society? Chaplin’s whole life seemed to be full of trouble. Not only was his childhood hard, but so was his life as an adult.
The government thought he supported communism and worked with the Russians to do bad things. His taxes were not paid. Mary Pickford, one of his best friends, turned against him. He paid for abortions that were against the law and secretly moved an ex-lover from the Film industry to New York to get rid of her.
Charlie Chaplin & Oona O’Neill
Compared to his great work in movies and the love he found with his last wife, the list of problems was short. The sister of Eugene O’Neill, Oona O’Neill, made Chaplin’s life happy and stable. Chaplin was 54 when he met Oona, who was young, smart, beautiful, funny, and a great mother.
She was the perfect woman for him. She comprehended Charlie and what he needed on an emotional level, which helped their marriage a lot. In 1977, Chaplin died at his residence in Vevey, Switzerland. His wife, Oona, his kids, and his grandchildren surrounded him. He was 88.
He worked in movies for 54 years and made 81 movies. He was one of the people who started the United Artists Studio. Queen Elizabeth II made him a knight at Buckingham Palace in central London. It was a life that started rough but ended magically.