Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 14, 1993 TAG: 9301130139
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID KRONKE LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Today he is simply remembered as "The Tramp," the good-hearted, ne'er-do-well clown. The perpetual object of bullies' scorn who somehow always seemed to emerge unscratched. The fearless protector of young ladies everywhere who sometimes even won the fair hand of the woman in question. The scrappy, cane-twirling, hat-tipping survivor who struggled nobly against the torrent of trials these bittersweet modern times had to offer.But Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977), the subject of a new biographical picture directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Robert Downey Jr., was never the winsome innocent he depicted so hilariously and movingly on screen. He was a complex, moody man who became the 20th century's first media superstar, only to arouse scandal in our then-innocent (or so we prefer to think) nation by romancing - and, sometimes, marrying - women still in their teens.
He was condemned as an outsider who made his fortune in America yet refused to contribute to the cause during World War II, as a tax dodger and as a Communist during Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare of the '50s. As he was leaving for a European holiday in 1952, Chaplin was abruptly notified that his re-entry permit had been denied and if he attempted to return to America, he would be tried on "charges of a political nature and of moral turpitude."
When an acquaintance told him, "You are the one artist of the theater who will go down in American history as having aroused the political antagonism of a whole nation," it was intended as a joke. At the time, however, many in America were not laughing.
Even in his early life, Charlie Chaplin had to contend with hardship. He was born into a vaudevillian family, to an alcoholic father who more or less abandoned his family and to a mother who eventually went mad. By 10, Chaplin was performing as a music hall entertainer, and when he was 18, he joined the Fred Karno troupe, which would bring him to America.
His fortunes improved considerably when he made his trek to the states. Silent films were a burgeoning art form, and Chaplin was a natural. His keen sense of physical comedy and his ability to make his every gesture seem fresh and energetic (though in reality, Chaplin was an obsessive perfectionist, often shooting individual scenes from 50 to 200 times) were highly appreciated by audiences in need of comic diversions during World War I.
Chaplin's first film short, made in 1914, was "Making a Living." In his second, "Kid Auto Races at Venice," he wore the costume that would make him a legend. Dapper but tattered, the Little Tramp's outfit bespoke a man of genteel upbringing who had hit upon hard times, but was determined to maintain his dignity nonetheless. Chaplin would make dozens of short films in the ensuing years, occasionally playing other characters, but it was the Tramp that America would embrace.
Flip-flop of the press
The Tramp's popularity soon enabled Chaplin to assume total control of his film work. Chaplin was a one-man moviemaking machine - he eventually would write, direct, star in and compose the music for his films (for "The Great Dictator," he even served as hair stylist). His power was such that in 1919, he formed, along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, an independent studio, United Artists.
It was then that Chaplin was able to develop his craft beyond the film shorts. After misfiring with "A Woman of Paris," a melodrama in which he did not appear, he created one of his finest films, "The Gold Rush" (1925).
The Tramp, a struggling prospector, finds himself in the frozen environs where food is scarce. That set up one of Chaplin's most enduring sequences (recalled in "Chaplin" at, ironically, an elegant dinner party), where he plays with his food and boils and eats one of his boots, savoring it as if it were a delicacy.
About this time some critics began regarding the young film industry as a new art form, and Chaplin as its leading artist. Alas, soon after "The Gold Rush," Chaplin's second divorce was finalized (his first wife left him citing mental cruelty), and newspapers excoriated him for not paying child support. This flip-flop by the press led H.L. Mencken to observe, "The very morons who worshipped Charlie Chaplin six weeks ago now prepare to dance around the stake while he is burned."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in Chaplin's next film, "The Circus" (1928), the Tramp loses the girl. "The Circus" won Chaplin a special Oscar in the first Academy Awards presentation; he would not win another Oscar until he was given an honorary trophy in 1971.
By the early '30s, the film industry had discovered sound, and "talkies" were the rage, effectively rendering Chaplin's art of pantomime archaic. He delayed the production of his next movie, "City Lights," to ponder his future as a filmmaker, but it was released as a silent film in 1931. It stands as perhaps Chaplin's most poignant work.
It relates the tale of how the Tramp befriends a blind flower girl and, after helping himself to the money of a wealthy alcoholic, enables her to get an operation which restores her sight. The Tramp is then imprisoned and upon his release, finds that she has opened her own flower store. The young woman, who all along believed her benefactor to be a rich gentleman, recognizes Charlie from the touch of his hand.
The film's final enigmatic image, the Tramp's multi-faceted expression - he's ashamed of his lowliness, proud that he helped her, overjoyed that she's now a success and sorrowful at the dim prospect of continuing their romance - is doubtlessly Chaplin's finest piece of acting and one of the most moving moments of early film.
Talkie was too talkie
Though few begrudged Chaplin making a silent film in 1931, when "Modern Times" was released five years later, the fact that it, too, was essentially silent led to speculation that the film industry had passed him by. The only spoken words came from recordings or factory intercoms, and Chaplin himself had but one non-silent bit of business where he sang a gibberish song.
Considered primitive at the time, "Modern Times" sought to lampoon technological advances as cruel and dehumanizing. Though he insisted the film was not a political statement, there was, to be sure, plenty of social commentary - the film opens with a shot of sheep blindly following one another, ostensibly to slaughter, which dissolves to a similar shot of factory workers milling to their jobs.
"Modern Times" also introduced to the world Chaplin's latest - and possibly most mature - flame, Paulette Goddard, who was well into her early 20s when they met. In "Modern Times" and "The Great Dictator," Goddard portrayed Chaplin's feistiest and most self-reliant heroines.
"The Great Dictator" was an especially bold contemporary satire of Adolf Hitler (called in the film Adenoid Hynkel, leader of the Double Cross Party) and Nazi Germany. Chaplin took on two roles in the film - the megalomanical Hynkel and a humble Jewish barber reminiscent of the Tramp.
Some said that Chaplin's talkie was too talky, especially his final pedantic speech (curiously, this is the only sequence Attenborough's film shows Chaplin shooting). But the film was his biggest moneymaker, and earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
"Monsieur Verdoux" (1947) was Chaplin's most controversial film, and his most pointed social satire. Gone forever was the Tramp, and in his place was a cold-blooded killer who married wealthy women then killed them to pay the bills of his true, polio-stricken wife and their son.
Though the film had its comic moments, there was little of the warmth or pathos that were Chaplin hallmarks. Audiences were baffled and critics mercilessly pilloried the film, but this sophisticated satire earned a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. (There is no mention of this film at all in "Chaplin").
Chaplin retreated after "Monsieur Verdoux," and created "Limelight" (1952), a sentimental reflection on his long career. Its high point is a routine uniting Chaplin with Buster Keaton, another silent-movie star who had fallen on hard times.
Chaplin's alleged political sympathies got him in even more trouble. Charges were leveled against him that he was a Communist, and he was interrogated at length about his political leanings. When he left the United States for a European vacation with his last wife, Oona, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, he discovered that his re-entry permit had been denied. Chaplin would not return to America for nearly 20 years.
Nor would he make another good film. "A King in New York" (1957) found Chaplin too strident and upset about the Red Scare to make proper fun of it, and "A Countess From Hong Kong" was a lifeless light comedy with stiff performances from its stars, Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando.
He spent the rest of his life with Oona in Switzerland, returning to America only once, in 1971, six years before his death at age 88, to accept an honorary Oscar for his "incalculable" influence on motion picture art.
At the Oscar ceremony, Jack Lemmon introduced him to a thunderous standing ovation. "Words are so futile, so feeble," said Chaplin, who took a hat and cane from Lemmon and imitated the walk that had made him a millionaire more than 50 years earlier. Hollywood celebrities crowded around him as the program ended - and on television, America's final glimpse of Charlie Chaplin ended when the Shell gasoline logo was superimposed over his face.
Keywords:
PROFILE