49 Fun Facts About Charlie Chaplin

In which London district did Chaplin spend his early years with his mother and brother Sydney?

Kennington. Outside a pub at Kennington Cross the boy heard two street musicians play 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee', and he later called it the moment he first discovered music.

Where was seven-year-old Chaplin sent in 1896 when his mother fell ill and had no means to support her sons?

A workhouse: he and his brother were soon moved on to a school for pauper children, where treatment for ringworm meant a shaved head painted with iodine. He was back in a workhouse two years later.

In a famous scene from The Great Dictator, Chaplin's tyrant performs a dreamy solo ballet with what?

A balloon globe: the dictator dances with the world to the prelude from Wagner's Lohengrin, and just when he believes he has it in his grasp, it bursts.

With which clog-dancing troupe did the young Chaplin tour English music halls in 1899 and 1900?

The Eight Lancashire Lads gave Chaplin his professional debut. He quickly won favour as a dancer, but the boy wanted a comedy act instead and soon moved on to acting.

Which role did the teenage Chaplin play in Sherlock Holmes opposite William Gillette?

Billy the pageboy: he first toured in the part opposite H. A. Saintsbury, and played it so well that he was called to London to do it beside Gillette, the original Holmes.

Which music-hall impresario hired Chaplin in 1908 despite finding him pale and puny?

Fred Karno took him on at the urging of Chaplin's brother Sydney, already one of his stars, and his wordless sketch troupe, billed as the Speechless Comedians, trained Chaplin in the mime his films relied on.

Which future comedy star toured North America in the same music-hall troupe as Chaplin?

Stan Laurel, then billed as Stan Jefferson, was Chaplin's understudy in the troupe, and its American tours gave both men a taste for the country where they would make their films.

Chaplin was touring America with a music-hall troupe when which studio lured him away for $150 a week?

Keystone, whose knockabout comedies had not much impressed him. His overnight success on screen had rival studios bidding for him within a year, and he left for $1,250 a week.

Which 1914 film was Chaplin's screen debut, casting him as a top-hatted swindler before he created the Tramp?

Making a Living. Chaplin said the finished film broke his heart because the cutter had butchered his gags, yet a trade paper's reviewer hailed its star as 'a comedian of the first water'.

In which February 1914 short did audiences first see the Tramp?

Kid Auto Races at Venice, improvised in front of real spectators at a children's car race. He had first put on the costume days earlier for Mabel's Strange Predicament, but this film reached cinemas first.

What did Chaplin add to the Tramp costume to give the character age without hiding his expression?

A small moustache: he was undecided whether to look old or young, then remembered that his new boss had expected a much older man. The rest was chosen as a contradiction, from baggy trousers to a tight coat.

In Modern Times, the Tramp is the guinea pig for a time-saving factory machine designed to do what?

Feed workers as they work, so the factory need not pause for lunch. The pace of the conveyor belt soon gives the Tramp a nervous breakdown, and he ends up swallowed by the factory's machinery.

Which studio boss let Chaplin direct in 1914 only after he promised to pay $1,500 if the film flopped?

Mack Sennett had been close to firing him for defying a director, until orders poured in for more Chaplin pictures. The gamble paid off, and Chaplin directed most of his films from then on.

Which actress, discovered for Chaplin's Essanay comedies in 1915, was his leading lady for the next eight years?

Edna Purviance was a San Francisco secretary when a Chaplin scout spotted her in a café. She went on to appear in more than 30 of his films.

Which studio made Chaplin one of the world's highest-paid people in 1916 with a contract worth $670,000 a year?

Mutual, which paid $10,000 a week plus a $150,000 signing bonus and gave him his own studio. The twelve two-reel comedies he made there are widely counted among his finest work.

Which director joined Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in founding United Artists in 1919?

D. W. Griffith. Until then producers had employed the stars and paid them salaries; the four founders became their own employers, financing their own pictures and keeping the profits.

Why did Chaplin marry Mildred Harris in 1918?

A pregnancy scare: she believed she was expecting, which proved a false alarm. Their son, born the following year, lived only three days, and within weeks Chaplin had begun The Kid.

Which child actor, cast at the age of four, played the title role opposite Chaplin in The Kid?

Jackie Coogan, whom Chaplin spotted in his father's vaudeville act. His mother and stepfather later squandered his film fortune, which led California to pass the child-actor law still known as the Coogan Act.

In A Woman of Paris (1923), his first film as an independent producer, Chaplin unusually did what?

Barely appeared in it: he walked on for a few seconds as an unbilled railway porter, and warned audiences in advance not to expect him. The press was ecstatic, but his public stayed away.

The Gold Rush was inspired by a photograph of the Klondike and by the story of which ill-fated group?

The Donner Party, pioneers snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846 who ate hides and finally their dead. Chaplin turned that horror into comedy: his starving Tramp cooks his boot and eats it like a gourmet.

In July 1925, days after The Gold Rush premiered, Chaplin appeared on the cover of which two-year-old magazine?

Time put him on its cover as The Gold Rush opened. In one of the film's most famous scenes, the Tramp spears two bread rolls on forks and makes them dance like a pair of feet.

Whose 1927 divorce petition against Chaplin, leaked to the press, led to calls for his films to be banned?

Lita Grey, the teenager first cast as his leading lady in The Gold Rush, whom he felt forced to marry during the shoot. The scandal of the divorce halted work on his next film for months.

For which film did Chaplin receive a special trophy at the very first Academy Awards?

The Circus, which won him a special award for 'versatility and genius' in writing, acting, directing and producing it. Yet he tied the film so closely to his divorce that his memoirs never mention it.

In City Lights (1931), the Tramp falls for a flower girl who is what?

Blind: she takes the Tramp for a rich man while he scrapes together the money for her cure. When her sight is restored she finally sees who helped her, a scene James Agee called 'the highest moment in movies'.

Japanese officers who killed their prime minister in 1932 also plotted to kill the visiting Chaplin, hoping to provoke what?

War with America. Chaplin, in Japan as the prime minister's guest, escaped because he was watching sumo wrestling with the premier's son when the killers struck.

In Modern Times (1936), the Tramp's voice is heard for the only time on film when he performs what?

A gibberish song: hired as a singing waiter, the Tramp loses the cuffs he wrote the words on and improvises in mock-Italian nonsense, so his one 'speech' could be understood in every country.

Chaplin and Adolf Hitler were born how far apart?

Four days: Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 and Hitler later the same week. The uncanny likeness between the Tramp and the dictator gave Chaplin the idea for The Great Dictator.

What was the name of Chaplin's Hitler parody in The Great Dictator?

Adenoid Hynkel. Chaplin also played the dictator's double, a Jewish barber, his answer to Nazi propaganda that had long labelled Chaplin himself a Jew, which he was not.

Chaplin read The Great Dictator's closing speech on the radio for which president's inauguration?

Franklin Roosevelt's, in January 1941. In the film's finale Chaplin drops the comedy, looks into the camera and pleads against war and fascism, an ending that divided opinion.

Under which law was Chaplin tried and acquitted in 1944 over his affair with actress Joan Barry?

The Mann Act, a 1910 law against taking women across state lines for sex: he had paid Barry's train fare to New York. Some saw his politics behind the charge, and his American image never fully recovered.

Chaplin's fourth wife, Oona, was the daughter of which playwright?

Eugene O'Neill, who was only six months older than his new son-in-law. He disowned the 18-year-old Oona over the marriage, which lasted until Chaplin's death 34 years later.

Chaplin paid whom $5,000 for the idea behind Monsieur Verdoux?

Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his own film about the French wife-killer Landru. Chaplin bought the idea instead and made it his way, with the credit 'Based on an idea by Orson Welles'.

Which author's secret 1949 list of suspected communist sympathisers, sent to a British propaganda unit, included Chaplin?

George Orwell put only a question mark beside Chaplin's name. The 38 people listed were ones he thought unfit to write anti-communist propaganda for the Foreign Office, and the list stayed secret until 2003.

Which fellow silent comedian appeared alongside Chaplin in Limelight, their only feature together?

Buster Keaton, as his partner in a music-hall double act at a benefit show. Few Americans saw it at the time: Limelight was widely boycotted in the US over Chaplin's politics.

What did the US government do in 1952 while Chaplin was at sea, bound for the London premiere of Limelight?

Revoked his re-entry permit, saying he must first answer for his politics and morals. Chaplin decided he was done with 'that unhappy country' and did not set foot in America for 20 years.

In which country did Chaplin make his home from 1953 until his death?

Switzerland: he settled his family at the Manoir de Ban overlooking Lake Geneva, where he wrote his memoirs and he and Oona had four more children. The house is now a museum, Chaplin's World.

In his 1957 satire on McCarthy-era America, filmed in England, Chaplin cast himself as what?

An exiled king, who seeks refuge in America and ends up accused of communism himself. Chaplin kept the film out of the United States, where it went unseen for more than a decade.

Who starred opposite Sophia Loren in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Chaplin's last film and his only one in colour?

Marlon Brando, as a diplomat who finds Loren's stowaway countess in his cabin. Chaplin stayed behind the camera except for a cameo as an old steward, and the reviews were poor.

Which honour brought Chaplin back to America in 1972?

An honorary Oscar, for 'the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century'. It was his first visit in twenty years, and the audience applauded for a reported twelve minutes.

For what did Chaplin win an Academy Award in 1973?

The score of Limelight, a film from 1952. A boycott had kept it from playing a week in Los Angeles, so it only became eligible when it was finally shown there in 1972.

Which Chaplin composition from Modern Times became a hit for Nat King Cole in 1954 once lyrics were added?

Smile was a wordless theme in the 1936 film. It gained its title and lyrics only in 1954, when the tune was reworked to promote the film's reissue, and it went on to become a standard.

How did Chaplin, then 85, receive his knighthood in 1975?

In a wheelchair: too frail to kneel, he sat while the Queen stooped to hang the insignia round his neck. Files released in 2002 showed the honour had been blocked in 1956 over his politics and his morals.

On which holiday did Chaplin die in 1977?

Christmas Day, at home in his sleep, aged 88. The day held a bleak memory for him: he wrote of weeping at his pauper school one Christmas when, as a punishment, he alone was refused the oranges and sweets.

What happened to Chaplin's coffin on 1 March 1978?

It was dug up and stolen for ransom by two men who tried to extort money from his family. Police recovered the coffin about eleven weeks later, and it was reburied in a vault of reinforced concrete.

Which computer company used the Tramp image to advertise its personal computers in the 1980s?

IBM hired a Tramp lookalike in 1981 to give its new PC a friendly, human face, and its ads sold the machine as 'a tool for modern times', echoing a film that had mocked the tyranny of machines.

Who played Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's 1992 biopic?

Robert Downey Jr., the director's choice from the start, though the studio wanted a better-known comedian such as Robin Williams or Billy Crystal. The role won him a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination.

In The Kid, how does the Tramp's adopted boy help him earn money?

By breaking windows with stones, so that the Tramp, following behind as a glazier, is paid to mend them. When officials come to take the boy to an orphanage, the Tramp fights to keep him.

A bronze statue of Chaplin as the Tramp was unveiled in 1981 in which part of London's West End?

Leicester Square, where Sir Ralph Richardson unveiled it. When the square was rebuilt the statue was moved out to a side street for a few years, and it returned in 2016.

Under what title did Chaplin publish his memoirs in 1964?

My Autobiography. It dwells on his early years and private life rather than his film-making, and it later became one of the two books behind Richard Attenborough's film Chaplin.