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| Charles Chaplin |
Saturday 5 March 2011
Arecent headline in the Birmingham Mail read: "Charlie Chaplin may have been from Birmingham." It reports on a letter found by Chaplin's daughter Victoria, after her father's death, that suggests south London's most famous son may have been a Gypsy born in Smethwick. We may never know the truth: Chaplin's birth certificate has never been discovered. But we do know that his parents worked in the music halls, and that he worked in the entertainment industry for more than 75 years, and that many of his 11 children became actors: the Chaplin family story is as complex, sad and delightful as one of his finest slapstick routines. He wrote in My Autobiography (1964): "To gauge the morals of our family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water."
Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr, was a singer. His mother, Hannah Hill, appeared in music halls under her stage name, Lily Harley. Chaplin was born in 1889 – probably in Walworth in south London, but possibly in Smethwick. When Hannah married Charles, she already had a son, Sydney, by another man. And when Charles Sr went on tour to America, she promptly began an affair with another music hall star, Leo Dryden, by whom she had a third son, Wheeler – so Chaplin had two half-brothers. Charles Sr abandoned his wife, and then Leo did the same, taking Wheeler with him. Hannah spent the rest of her life in and out of mental hospitals, and the young Charles found himself in a poor law school at Hanwell, London. It is no exaggeration to say that he grew up in what he calls, in My Autobiography, "the lower strata".
Chaplin had his first break in show business with a troupe of child performers, the Eight Lancashire Lads. He then worked with the comedy impresario Fred Karno, and in 1912 he was spotted on a Karno tour in America by the Keystone Film Company. His career as a silent movie star had begun.
In 1918 he met a child actress, Mildred Harris, at a party given by Sam Goldwyn. Harris was 16; Chaplin was 29. They married in haste, Chaplin believing that Harris was pregnant. She was not. But in 1919 she gave birth to a child, who died at just three days old. The couple divorced in 1920.
In 1924 he met another child actress, Lita Grey. She too was 16. She became pregnant and they married and had two sons, Charles and Sydney. They divorced three years later, with Lita accusing Chaplin of cruelty. The divorce settlement, according to Chaplin's biographer David Robinson, was at that time the largest in American legal history.
In 1936 he married Paulette Goddard, his co-star in the films Modern Times and The Great Dictator. This was a first: Goddard was not a child actress, and they had no children, but still they divorced, in 1942. And then, finally, in 1943 Chaplin married Oona O'Neill, the daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Oona was 18; Chaplin was 54. They had eight children.
Looking back on their marriage in My Autobiography, Chaplin wrote: "For the last 20 years I have known what happiness means. I have the good fortune to be married to a wonderful wife. I wish I could write more about this, but it involves love, and perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express."
Among the many Chaplin children and grandchildren there are too many actors to mention, except perhaps one, James Thiérrée, the son of Chaplin's second daughter, Victoria, and Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée. It is difficult to describe exactly what Thiérrée does; you'll find it on YouTube. What is certain is that it is as close in our time to the spirit of Chaplin's silent greats.
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