Charlie Chaplin

CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Early life in London
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, supposedly in Walworth, London, England. (In 2011, a letter, written to him in the 1970s, came to light, suggesting that he had been born in a gypsy caravan at Black Patch Park in Smethwick, Staffordshire.) His parents were entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr.,was a vocalist and an actor while his mother, Hannah Chaplin, was a singer and an actress who went by the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. His mother lived with Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney on Walworth.
His paternal grandmother's mother was from the Smith family of Romanichals, a fact of which he was extremely proud,though he described it in his autobiography as "the skeleton in our family cupboard". Charles Chaplin Sr. was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with him and his mistress. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother lived at Cane Hill Asylum. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temples Boys School. Hisfather died of cirrhosis when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Then he lived as a part of a troupe of young male dancers, The Eight Lancashire Lads.
A larynx condition ended the singing career of Hannah Chaplin. After her re-admission to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in a workhouse in south London, moving several weeks later to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell.
In 1903Chaplin secured the role of Billy the pageboy in Sherlock Holmes, written by William Gillette and starring English actor H. A. Saintsbury. Saintsbury took Chaplin under his wing and taught him to marshal his talents. In 1905 Gillette went to England with Marie Doro to debut his new play, Clarice, but the play didn’t go well. When Gillette staged his one-act curtain-raiser, The Painful Predicamentof Sherlock Holmes as a joke on the British press, Chaplin was brought in from the provinces to play Billy. When Sherlock Holmes was substituted for Clarice, Chaplin remained as Billy until the production ended on December 2nd. During the run, Gillette coached Chaplin in his restrained acting style. It was during this engagement that the teenage Chaplin fell hopelessly in love with Doro, but hislove went unrequited and Doro returned to America with Gillette when the production closed.
They met again in Hollywood eleven years later. She had forgotten his name but, when introduced to her, Chaplin told her of being silently in love with her and how she had broken his young heart. Nothing came of it until two years later, when they were both in New York and she invited him to dinner and adrive. Instead, Chaplin noted, they simply “dined quietly in Marie’s apartment alone.” However, as Kenneth Lynn pointed out, “Chaplin would not have been Chaplin if he had simply dined quietly with Marie.”
First years in the United States
Chaplin first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months in England, he returned to the U.S. for a second tour,arriving with the Karno Troupe on October 2nd, 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel shared a room in a boarding house. Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the US. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and "Fatty" Arbuckle. Sennett hired himfor his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living, was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance.
Sennett...