Description

In this video, learn about the life of the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.

Transcript

Charlie Chaplin is Greece’s most famous clown and was born in London in 1889. As both of their parent’s battled unemployment on the battle and Charlie experienced poverty and hunger. His experiences that later found their way into his classic films. Chaplin toured with the Stage Company as a 9-year-old and left home to make his own way into a business aged 14. In 1912, Chaplin joined the Keystone Picture Studio in California and put his vaudeville talents to good effect as a comic actor in a series of popular silent films. His first appearance was in the warm real comedy making a living in 1914. It was Chaplin’s second film Kid Auto Races at Venice but his best known character “The Tramp” first made an appearance and appealing vibrant both innocent and world weary, The Tramps struggled across the screen and the audience’s house. Chaplin himself had no idea on the type of character he would be play in the movie until he dons on ill fitting clothes. He said, “The moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he I was. I began to know him about the time I walk downstage he was fully born.” By 1918, Chaplin was successful enough as an actor and director to work on the same studio a certain complete fueled with control. In 1919, he co-founded the United Artists film distribution company with fellow actors Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Director D.W. Griffith, and in an attempt to claw back power from a rapidly developing Hollywood Studio System. Although he often engages in the issue of Keystone’s Slapstick antics, Chaplin’s Little Tramp was also a lady’s man and Chaplin too had a weakness for women especially young ones. His first marriage to a 17-year-old Mildred Harris was disastrous. The couple had a son who lived tragically just two days and the marriage lasted barely two years but the emotional turmoil had created a fate and Chaplin became inspired by the idea of acting with a little boy who is a side kick. Piteously discovered pine size Jackie Cuban on stage. Nature old prodigy who is perfect imitation to Chaplin produced House of Laughter from audiences. In 1921, the film The Kid became Chaplin’s biggest success to date. It was the first featured length film to effectively combine drama and comedy and set a new standard for motion pictures. The arrival of sound by the early 1930s was a dilemma for his performer who made his reputation in pantomime. Well, Chaplin wrote a script for the modern times, he decided against adding dialogue to the film instead of experimenting with the sound effects. The film was notable for the character of the Demille played by Chaplin’s main love of the 1930s Paulette Goddard. She also starred in “The Great Dictator”, Chaplin’s great satire by the United Nazi’s but the relationship had ended inevitable by then. Three years later, he married 18-year old Oona O'Neill, 34 years his junior. The couple had eight children together and remained married until his death. Chaplin’s later years were marked by persecution from anti-communist government officials in the tabloid press who hounded him for his left wing sympathies. He was forced into exile in Switzerland where he was received with open arms, shallow as he was known in Europe received many honors including Poland’s Erasmus prize which was presented by Prince Bernhard in 1965. Prince Bernhard: Charlie The Tramp, Charlie The Defender of the Right to Live of the humble, the poor, the oppressed, Charlie with the generous heart was been able to charm millions of people of all intellectual levels, Charlie, the eternal, sensitive, and indestructible in overmen. For Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day in the 1977 but The Tramp lives on and settled there and a multi reminder of the funniest and saddest clown of all time.