Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr., (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977), better known as
Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field.
Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer) English Comedian and Actor
The Kid is a 1921 Charlie Chaplin film. It featured Jackie Coogan as his adopted son and sidekick. It was a huge success, and was the second-highest grossing film in 1921, behind The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Kid is about a Tramp (Chaplin) that finds an abandoned baby in an alley and takes care of him. As the baby gets older, they are perfect together and they form little schemes to scam people in order to survive. d The Kid is notable as being the first feature length comedy film to effectively combine comedy and drama, as one of the opening titles says: "A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear..." The most famous and enduring sequence in the film is the Tramp's desperate rooftop pursuit of the welfare agents who have taken the child, and their emotional reunion. Audiences of the time were deeply affected by the film and the relationship of the Kid with the much-loved Tramp character, from whom they had not previously seen such emotional depth.
Chaplin and Coogan both give remarkable performances in
The Kid. The film made Coogan, then a vaudeville performer, into the first major child star of the movies.
More of Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin, The Kid (3 Sheets)41 x 81 inches
Limited Edition
$899.99
Pulled one color at a time from separate plates, this lithograph has been sequentially numbered in pencil in the lower left border by the publishers curator.Charlie Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually scored his own films. Chaplin was also one of the most creative and influential personalities in the silent-film era. His working life in entertainment spanned over 65 years, from the Victorian stage and music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, almost until his death at the age of eighty-eight. Chaplin's high-profile public and private life encompassed highs and lows with both adulation and controversy.
His principal character was "The Tramp" (known as "Charlot" in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey). "The Tramp" is a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman. The character wears a tight coat, oversized trousers and shoes, and a derby; carries a bamboo cane and has a signature toothbrush mustache.
Charlie Chaplin in The Tramp
Chaplin's first film appearance was in
Making a Living a one-reel comedy released on February 2, 1914.
Chaplin won one Oscar and was given two honorary Academy Awards in his lifetime.
In 1972, he won an Oscar for the Best Music in an Original Dramatic Score for the 1952 film
Limelight.
Chaplin had originally been nominated for both Best Actor and Best Comedy Directing for his movie
The Circus, but his name was withdrawn and the Academy decided to give him a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing
The Circus" instead. The other film to receive a special award that year was
The Jazz Singer. Chaplin's second honorary award came forty-four years later in 1972, and was for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century". He came out of his exile to accept his award, and received the longest standing ovation in Academy Award history, lasting a full five minutes.
Charlie Chaplin, Dog's Life
60 x 44 inches
Giclee Print
$299.99
This art print was created using a sophisticated digital printer. The Giclee printing process delivers a fine stream of archival ink on archival paper, resulting in vivid, pure color and exceptional detail that is suitable for museum or gallery display.
Charlie Chaplin Knighted
He was named in the New Year's Honours List in 1975 and, on March 4, was knighted at age eighty-five as a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1931, and again in 1956, when it was vetoed by the then Conservative government for fears of damage to relations with the United States at the height of the Cold War and planned invasion of Suez of that year.
Death Of Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin died in his sleep on Christmas Day, 1977, in Vevey, Switzerland, aged eighty-eight. He was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Vaud, Switzerland. On March 1, 1978, his corpse was stolen by a small group of Polish and Bulgarian mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under two metres of concrete to prevent further attempts.
Some Of Charlie's FilmsSome of Charlie Chaplin's silent films include Making a Living - 1914, Kid Auto Races at Venice - 1914, Mabel's Strange Predicament - 1914, Shoulder Arms - 1918, The Kid - 1921, The Pilgrim - 1923, A Woman of Paris -1923, The Gold Rush - 1925, City Lights - 1931 Modern Times - 1936 and The Circus - 1928 which has a nonsensical song by Chaplin and is therefore not completely silent.
His dialogue films made in Hollywood were The Great Dictator - 1940, Monsieur Verdoux - 1947, and Limelight - 1952 and A King in New York - 1957
Also " A Countess from Hong Kong" (1967), starring Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, in which Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward, and in which he written, directed and produced .
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Charles Chaplin, The Funniest Man in the WorldThe Music of Charlie Chaplain
In the 1970s, Chaplin wrote original music compositions and scores for his silent pictures and re-released them. He composed the scores of all his First National shorts, and of
The Kid and
The Circus.
It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and another as a singer for the title music of The Circus (1928).
The best known of the songs he composed is "Smile", composed for the film "Modern Times" and given lyrics to help promote a 1950s revival of the film, famously covered by Nat King Cole. "This Is My Song" from Chaplin's last film "A Countess From Hong Kong," was a number one hit in several different languages in the 1960s (most notably the version by Petula Clark and discovery of an unreleased version in the 1990s recorded in 1967 by Judith Durham of The Seekers), and Chaplin's theme from Limelight was a hit in the 1950s under the title "Eternally." Chaplin's score to Limelight was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972 due to a decades-long delay in the film premiering in Los Angeles making it eligible.
Charlie's Last Work
One of Chaplin's last completed works, the score for his unsuccessful 1923 film A Woman of Paris, was finished in 1976.
