HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2025-02-14T15:22:22.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/people/charlie-chaplin/feed/atom HistoryExtra <![CDATA[My history hero: Charlie Chaplin]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/my-history-hero-charlie-chaplin/ 2025-02-14T15:22:22.000Z 2018-03-17T13:37:57.000Z Charlie Chaplin was a comedian and film-maker whose ‘Little Tramp’ persona helped make him silent cinema’s biggest star. He grew up in London in poverty, began performing in music halls as a boy, and at 18 or 19 joined the Fred Karno troupe, ending up in Hollywood. He was later accused of communist sympathies and forced out of the US, settling in Switzerland, where he died aged 88.
When did you first hear about Charlie Chaplin?
Through my coal miner dad, John, who took me at the age of five or six to the local cinema to see one of his films. My father – the other great hero in my life – loved the old comics and laughed so much that he fell off his seat into the aisle and was reprimanded by the cinema management. I was in stitches too. That cinema trip was the start of my lifelong love of Chaplin.
What kind of person was he?
Chaplin was the first great film star and the man who practically invented film comedy. He was an extraordinary individual – one of the true giants of the 20th century. He wasn’t a nice man, but most talented geniuses are not. He knew what he wanted, he was a slave-driver in the studio, and he worked people until their legs dropped off. But look where he came from: he was sent to the workhouse at seven, and when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. So he was more than a genius, he was a survivor.
What made Chaplin a hero?
First and foremost, his ability to make the world laugh. And the world needed cheering up after the horrors of the First World War. His Little Tramp brought so much joy to so many people – you would have to be made of stone not to laugh at Chaplin. He spent years perfecting his craft, and his pratfalls, props (such as his bowler hat and cane) and funny walk were the product of his music hall years. Secondly, the fact that despite growing up in unimaginable poverty, he went to America and achieved so much, helping to create the Hollywood we know and becoming a cinema legend. Comedians since owe so much to him, and his humour endures to this day.
What was his finest hour?
For me The Circus (1928), in which the ringmaster of a struggling circus hires Chaplin’s Little Tramp as a clown, but discovers he can only be funny unintentionally. It earned him Oscar nominations for best actor, best director and best writing, but the Academy gave him a special award for “writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus”. In truth, he had so many finest hours, be it The Goldrush (1925), Modern Times (1936) or The Great Dictator (1940).
Is there anything you don’t particularly admire about him?
Nobody is perfect, and Chaplin certainly wasn’t. He liked teenage girls, and today he’d have been driven out of the film business. But I’m not judging him by his private life, I’m judging him by his genius for making people laugh.
Are there parallels between Chaplin’s life and your own?
None at all. My family might have been poor and working class, but I had a happy, safe life, while he had a dreadful childhood.
If you could meet him, what would you ask him?
Sadly, I never got to interview Chaplin. I think he was frightened to appear on a chat show in case his private life came up. Besides, I’d have needed a dozen chats to cover his extraordinary life! If I had met him, I’d have thanked him for making my dad laugh.
Michael Parkinson was talking to York Membery.
Michael Parkinson is a broadcaster, journalist and author who presented the talk show Parkinson from 1971–82 and 1998–2007. His new CD, The Great American Songbook, is out now.
Discover more history heroes through Radio 4’s Great Lives.
This article was first published in the April 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[The legacy of partition: an interview with Babita Sharma]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-legacy-of-partition-an-interview-with-babita-sharma/ 2025-02-14T15:25:22.000Z 2017-08-18T08:27:53.000Z Following the end of the Second World War in 1945 and after decades of campaigns and protest to end British colonial rule in India, it was announced in 1946 that the Raj would withdraw. In March 1947, Louis Mountbatten was appointed the final viceroy of India. He was sent by British prime minister Clement Atlee to oversee the departure, and to address the growing tensions between political and religious parties that had resulted in brutal violence, particularly in north and east India.
Within months of Mountbatten’s arrival, a partition plan was swiftly drawn up which would split India into two separate nations: India (with a majority Hindu population) and Pakistan (with a majority Muslim population). A huge amount was left undecided, from the geography of the border to a plan for the mass migration across the new divide. Following the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, between 12 and 15 million people were forced to journey hundreds of miles; the period was scarred by split families and communities, suffering and uncertainty, and extreme ethnic violence.
The father of journalist and presenter Babita Sharma was one of the millions or people displaced by partition. Together with fellow journalist Adnan Sarwar, Sharma travelled the still volatile border of Pakistan and India 70 years on, discovering more about the lives of those who lived there. Ahead of her new BBC Two series, she talked to History Extra about her 2,000-mile journey…
Q: In Dangerous Borders, you explore the varied legacy of partition in India and Pakistan today. Can you tell us a little about where you start and a few of the stories you explore in your series?
A: We began our journey in Adipur in the state of Gujarat, India, which became the entry point into the nation for a lot of people leaving the vast area of Sindh province during partition. When the border was drawn up, people from the Sindhi community found themselves broken and separated, so they travelled to Adipur. Back then it was virtually nothing, an area of shacks and shanty towns that made a refugee village. Fast-forward 70 years and it’s a bustling, vibrant, economically successful place, which has really carved out its own successful story of partition.
In the first episode, we explore a remarkable event held each April in Adipur, as the town hosts a Charlie Chaplin parade. The sun is at its highest and the heat is 45C, and this Indian town has parades and flotillas, music and bands, and everyone is dressed up as Charlie Chaplin.
(Image Credit: BBC/October Films)
This is down to one man in Adipur, born during partition, who felt an affinity with the comic actor after hearing that Chaplin had met Mahatma Ghandi in Downing Street in 1931. Apparently, the two struck up an unlikely friendship after the meeting. Chaplin, himself a refugee, seemed to take a lot of inspiration from Gandhi and his messages of hope, respect and peace. Every year, the parade ends at the temple where some of Gandhi’s ashes are scattered.
It’s quite a bizarre event. Everyone is wearing hats and sticks and the moustache and they all waddle around and do Charlie Chaplin jokes! It shows how the people of Gujarat just want to embrace life and celebrate two people that, for them, symbolised so much.
Q: You have a personal connection to partition, as your father’s family moved from a town which is now in Pakistan, to Delhi in India. What do you know about your father’s journey?
A: My father was born in a small place called Sialkot in what is now Pakistan. My grandfather was an architect who travelled the length of India designing canals: his job would often take him to Delhi and Mumbai. In 1945-6, my grandfather was working in Delhi and, as partition became a more likely prospect, he was increasingly concerned about the family that he’d left behind in Sialkot, including my father who was four years old at the time.
My grandfather was good friends with a Muslim man, Uzam Niddin, who promised my grandfather he would buy train tickets for his family and send them from Sialkot, across the border into Punjab and to safe passage. That’s the story of partition that I grew up with: my father and his family were essentially displaced along with millions of other Hindus who had to cross the border into what we now know to be India, because of the impending plan that was outlined by the British.
Q: What are his memories of the journey?
A: Dad recalls it quite vividly, going from the familiarity of Sialkot into something that was completely unknown, via a train journey that lasted for hours and hours. You’d think that once he crossed onto the India side he would reach some peace or safety, but once in Delhi the tragedy and the destruction of what had happened became more and more apparent. There were still mass killings and dead bodies crossing the border from either side, and my father lived right by one of the main train stations in Delhi, which became a hub for corpses coming in and out. It’s shocking to think this happened regularly for years after the partition was formally agreed.
It’s only now, at the age of 76, that my father has been able to talk about it. He almost laughs it off, because it’s so difficult to comprehend what they saw through young eyes. The trauma is so deep rooted that it’s better to laugh it off, or not talk about it for decades. When we watched the trailer together for this documentary, he admitted was a difficult experience for him.
Journalist and presenter Babita Sharma pictured beside a sign to Sialkot, Pakistan, the birthplace of her father. She could not visit the town during filming due to her Indian visa. (Image credit: Babita Sharma)
Q: How much did the people in these varied communities know about the process of partition or how the new border was being created?
A: People who weren’t in administrative assemblies or part of the political process did not have a clue. There was no consultation, nothing like town hall meetings detailing what was going to happen. They would know, through public figures and through talk in the community, that – as they would put it – ‘shit was going to hit the fan’. But nobody actually knew when, how or what.
My father’s family left the year before it happened because they knew that the situation would get worse and worse. My grandfather was well known in the community and he knew problems ahead. He knew there would be no planning and no structure so everyone had to fend for themselves. It was so shocking because in my dad’s community, everyone – Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims – all lived together. There was no separation until that point.
Q: What did you find out about what life was like for many of the people who crossed the border?
A: As you travel the border from south to north, the communities are so diverse. Each was affected in different ways by partition. Some of the people we met in Gujarat told us how communities were able to rehouse themselves to get back on their feet. There was also an agreement that some money was put aside for the housing of the Sindh community in Gujarat, and they knew that every little bit would help.
If you go further north, into Punjab and Kashmir, the story is very different. I don’t think that anyone involved in the decision envisaged what 12 million people trying to move from one side to the other would look like. There was a massive influx of people from both sides. It boiled down to community and it was what people were willing to do for one another.
The people of Punjab really struggled, and it’s a struggle that is even still apparent today. There is a massive drug and alcohol problem in Punjab that is affecting old and young. We went to a rehab clinic, where a doctor told us that partition has contributed to the problem, because people don’t want to talk about what they saw or experienced. They look for a form of escape, and drugs and alcohol is an easy way out.
Simply because families moved to Britain or elsewhere, like my family, doesn’t mean they escaped the memories of partition. Often, families that emigrated might have achieved economic success and set up families abroad but, as the doctor told me, there is still an emotional wound. This struck a chord with me and it seemed that the stories I had heard came full circle.
For my family, moving to Delhi might have been seen as a lifeline, but the house that my father moved into was left empty by a Muslim family fleeing to Pakistan. It’s unimaginable for us to comprehend what that meant, to be living among friends and neighbours and suddenly moved. That’s why the trauma is so engraved in people’s hearts and minds.
Babita Sharma with Border control officer, India. (Image credit: BBC/October Films)
Q: What did you discover about the legacy of partition?
A: The biggest thing that fascinated me about this programme is the difference between people’s experiences. Looking at many of the other stories that have come out of this BBC series of programmes on partition, you realise that for many, this is the first time they are talking about it because somehow after 70 years, people feel they can.
For me, Kashmir was the saddest place to visit, because the people are living the reality of partition every single day. On Fridays, after prayers at a mosque in Srinagar [the summer capital of Kashmir], there is often a standoff between the Indian army and the young Kashmiri boys. Everybody knows that it’s going to happen, and it’s become almost a show of might between the two sides. It’s very sad because violence can escalate, and you see tear gas on the streets. Businesses know that after midday on Friday, they will have to pull down their shutters. We heard of stories of young Kashmiri boys being kidnapped or murdered, or killings of soldiers in the Indian Army.
This is today’s partition. If you think the rest of the partition process was a mess, Kashmir is where the biggest mess is. Further north there is a ‘line of control’ (LoC) which isn’t a border you can see, but an imaginary border created by the Indian and Pakistani army. If you go back to Kashmir in the 1920s and 30s, it was one of the most vibrant and exciting places, alive with music, art and culture. It has the most incredible landscape of stunning mountains and ravines, but it’s sad to think that many don’t see it because war and the legacy of partition mean that tourists stay away.
When we travelled further north into the very remote region called Ladakh, we came across more untold stories of people who are called the ‘divided families’. Separated from their brothers and sisters by just a few miles, tensions between India and Pakistan and the history of partition have created separated lives. Many families have been split for four or five decades and they live in a state of limbo. With no recognised identities, they live on the LoC. Their existence in ‘no man’s land’ means they have to endure a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process to even apply for access to cross the border and visit their loved ones. For the lucky few, a journey that may take a day could take a month, but at least they may get to cast their eyes on their parents or siblings. It’s heart-breaking and it’s these voices that need to be heard.
The first episode of Dangerous Borders: A Journey across India & Pakistan is available on the BBC iPlayer and the second episode will air on Monday 21 August. The programme is part of 70 Years On: The Partition Story, a major season across BBC One and Two which brings to life some of the forgotten voices of partition and reveals the legacy partition leaves us with today.
Yasmin Kahn explores partition in pictures in the August 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine, on sale now.
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA["Welcome home, Charlie": Chaplin’s postwar return to London]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/welcome-home-charlie-chaplins-postwar-return-to-london/ 2025-02-14T15:33:30.000Z 2016-08-11T08:56:08.000Z Actor and director Charlie Chaplin acting with the young Jackie Coogan in the movie 'The kid’, 1921. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
In Beautiful Idiots And Brilliant Lunatics; A Sideways Look At Twentieth-Century London, Baker explores fascinating stories from the capital in the 20th century.
Among the curious stories featured is the nostalgic tale of Charlie Chaplin’s London homecoming in 1921, which Baker explores here…
On the morning of 17 September 1921, Charlie Chaplin woke up in his bed at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. He could hear children in the street below singing a song over and over again:
“When the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin
His boots are cracking, for want of blacking
And his little baggy trousers need mending
Before we send him to the Dardanelles”.
The song, sung to the tune of Red Wing, a popular song of the early 20th century, was not one of Charlie’s favourites, as it had been written in protest at Chaplin not enlisting during the First World War. In March 1916 The Mutual Film Corporation had signed Chaplin at an enormous fee of $10,000 per week with a bonus on signing of $150,000 and the initial publicity boasted that: “Next to the war in Europe Chaplin is the most expensive item in contemporaneous history”. This may have gone down well in America, but in most of Europe, of course, it was a different matter. The Daily Mail soon let its readers know that there was a clause in the Mutual contract that forbade Chaplin to return to Britain during hostilities so as not to risk him being conscripted into the British armed forces. A year later, in June 1917, Lord Northcliffe wrote in an editorial of the Weekly Dispatch:
“Charles Chaplin, although slightly built, is very firm on his feet, as is evidenced by his screen acrobatics. The way he is able to mount stairs suggest the alacrity with which he would go over the top when the whistle blew.”
It was eventually reported that Chaplin had gone to a recruiting office, but at 5 feet 4 inches tall and not more than 126 pounds he was turned down by the doctors for being underweight.
The comedian had returned to London from America in September 1921, mainly to promote his new and first full-length (six-reeler) film called The Kid, which was already a huge success in America and eventually become the second-highest grossing movie of 1921. Much of the success of the film was due to child actor Jackie Coogan’s extraordinary performance as ‘the Kid’. Chaplin, wasn’t alone in realising that the overwhelming response to Jackie was that he symbolised the countless fatherless children left after the recent world war.
A difficult childhood
Chaplin was now an incredibly rich man, but this was in stark contrast to his childhood in Walworth, which had been a desperately poor one. Both his parents, Charles and Hannah Chaplin, were music hall performers, but of no particular talent or fame. In 1891, about 18 months after Charlie was born, Charles Snr left the family home after his wife gave birth to a boy whose father was Leo Dryden – another music hall performer and who would become known as the ‘Kipling of the Halls’ for his patriotic songs. Struggling financially, Hannah Chaplin had a breakdown soon after Charles’s departure, and the following year, along with Charlie and his brother Sydney, entered the Lambeth Workhouse. Within a few weeks, the two boys were sent to Central London District Poor Law School.
Sydney Chaplin, also known as Syd Chaplin, half-brother of Charlie Chaplin, June 1927. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images)
In 1903, after further breakdowns, Hannah was placed in the Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum in Surrey. Chaplin later wrote in an autobiography about a visit to see her in 1912, just before he left to live in America: “It was a depressing day, for she was not well. She had just got over an obstreperous phase of singing hymns, and had been confined to a padded room. The nurse had warned us of this beforehand. Sydney saw her, but I had not the courage, so I waited. He came back upset, and said that she had been given shock treatment of icy cold showers and that her face was quite blue. That made us decide to put her into a private institution – we could afford it now.” The brothers took their mother from Cane Hill and placed her at Peckham House – a private asylum in south London that cost 30 shillings a week – not an inconsiderable sum in 1912.
Charlie, along with his brother Sydney, brought their mother to California a few months before his trip to England (in 1921). After a particularly harsh and tragic life, Hannah Chaplin was at last being properly looked after in a bungalow near the sea in Los Angeles. She was relatively normal for long periods and would talk to guests about her old music hall days but also the Zeppelin raids on London.
Hannah, who had probably been suffering from the symptoms of Syphilis for more than 20 years, fell seriously ill with an infected gall bladder and was taken to the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Hospital in Glendale in August 1928. Chaplin had always found visiting his mother difficult but in the last week of her life he visited her every day. During her final hours, not long after nurses had heard them both laughing, Chaplin tried to reassure her she was getting better. Hannah quietly said “perhaps” and then fell unconscious.
A young star
Chaplin had been performing to audiences from the age of five. It was said that he was literally pushed on to a stage during one of his mother’s performances: a tough Aldershot crowd composed mostly of soldiers started jeering when, half way through a song, Charlie’s mother suddenly lost her voice. The young boy started to sing a song made famous the year before by the Coster performer Gus Elen called ’E Dunno Where ’E Are about a Costerman called Jack Jones who had “come into a little bit of splosh” and developed unpleasant airs and graces in front of his old friends.
"Jack Jones is well known to everybody,
Round about the market, don't yer see
I've no fault to find wiv Jack at all
When ’e’s as ’e used to be
But somehow, since ’e’s ’ad the bullion
Left ’e ’as altered for the wust
When I see the way ’e treats old pals
I am filled wiv nothing but disgust
’E sez as ’ow we isn’t class enuf
'E sez we ain't upon a par
Wiv ’im just because ’e ’s better off
Won’t smoke a pipe, must take on a cigar".
Right from the start audiences loved Charlie Chaplin, and the appreciative Aldershot crowd started to throw coins up on the stage. After the five-year-old Charlie declared that the performance would only continue after he had retrieved all the coins, they laughed and threw even more.
Some 26 years later, the train that brought Chaplin back to London from Southampton started to slow down as it approached Waterloo station. He was pleased to spot his Uncle Spencer’s old pub The Queen’s Head on Broad Street (the pub is still there, although the street is now called the Black Prince Road), just past Vauxhall station. When he alighted onto platform 14 at Waterloo Station, just a mile or so away from where he had grown up as a child, he was visibly shocked at the thousands and thousands of people waiting ready to greet him. The Times wrote: “At Waterloo the stage might have been set for the homecoming of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Lord Haig rolled into one”.
Old haunts
Chaplin was almost pushed and lifted into a waiting car that then drove to the Ritz on Piccadilly where another adoring crowd was waiting. A tanned smiling Chaplin with dishevelled hair but dressed immaculately in a grey overcoat told the waiting reporters desperate for an interview that he was tired and needed to rest. Not long after, however, he slipped out of the Arlington service entrance at the back of the hotel and on his own took a taxi across Westminster Bridge and directed the driver past Christ Church on Westminster Bridge Road. He was reminded of working as a lather boy at a barbers in Chester Street where the vicar ran a magic lantern ‘gaff’ at Baxter’s Hall next door.
Charlie Chaplin arrives at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly and is greeted by a horde of ardent admirers, September 1921. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Chaplin once told a friend that the place had special memories for him; “it meant warmth and companionship; it meant adventure and novelty; it meant food… you could get a cup of coffee and a piece of cake there, and see the Crucifixion of Christ all that the same time, and for the modest charge of one penny”.
The taxi then passed the Kennington Baths, the “reason for many a day’s hookey”, where Chaplin had once gone swimming, second class, for three pence (but only if you brought your own swimming trunks).
Soon Chaplin got out of the taxi and walked to Lambeth Walk, an old haunt of his childhood. The fish and chip smell blending with the odour from spluttering naphtha lamps brought back to him many childhood memories. Chaplin noticed by now that his smart, expensive clothing had made him conspicuous. Some people had noticed him and although at a respectful distance of five yards or so, a growing crowd had begun to follow. He asked a policeman for help, who reassured him, “That’s alright, Charlie. These people won’t hurt you. They are the best people in the world”. While the policeman was hailing a cab the crowd started to surround him; “Hello Charlie!”; “God bless you, Charlie!”; “Good luck to you, lad!”
The hailed taxi took him away past Kennington Gate towards Brixton Road where he saw Glenshore Mansions, where he had lived at the beginning of his prosperity. He asked the taxi to pull up at the Horns Tavern, where he drank a ginger beer for old times’ sake. But Chaplin was soon recognised again and he rushed back into his taxi. On the way back to the Ritz it took him past Kennington Cross where, as a young lad, he remembered hearing a harmonica and clarinet play The Honeysuckle and the Bee, which introduced to him for the first time “what melody really was. My first awakening to music”. He had learned the words to the song the very next day, so in love was he with the tune.
“You are my honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee,
I’d like to sip the honey sweet, from those red lips, you see
I love you dearly, dearly, And I want you to love me,
You are my honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee.”
A few days after his taxi tour, following a meal at the Embassy Club on Old Bond Street, Chaplin, in the company of a few friends, decided to take another trip to south London. Although it was after 10pm he decided to visit 3 Pownall Terrace in Kennington (the street was demolished in 1968) where he had lived in a little room at the top of the house.
The house was now occupied by a Mrs Reynolds. “Were you asleep?” Chaplin asked. The old war widow replied that she’d been awake listening to the newsboys out in street shouting the result of the British Heavyweight boxing contest that evening (Noel ‘Boy’ McCormick lost to Joseph ‘Joe’ Beckett at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden). “Many’s the time I’ve banged my head on that sloping ceiling,” Chaplin said to her after she had taken him to see his old room, “and got thrashed for it”. Carlyle Robinson, described as Chaplin’s manager by the Daily Mirror, told the newspaper in an interview in 1921 that the attic scenes in The Kid were based on a replica of that room in Charlie’s old ‘diggings’ in Kennington.
A poster for Charlie Chaplin's 1921 comedy 'The Kid’. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)
Back at the Ritz, on the morning of 17 September 1921, Chaplin got dressed and walked into the sitting room of his suite to meet some young visitors from Hoxton School. By 1921 the song they had been singing (The Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin) had lost its original connotations, or at least it had to the group of 50 excited children that had walked across London to see him. One boy, called Charles Loughton, stepped forward and handed him a box of cigars and a letter. It read: “You were one of us. You are now famous over the world. But we like to think you were once a poor boy in London as we are. You are now a gentleman, and all gentlemen smoke cigars. So we have chosen a box as a little gift to ‘Our Charlie’”. Then a young girl, Lettie Westbrook, aged 13, gave Charlie a bouquet with a note saying, “with our thanks for all the fun you give to us”.
After Chaplin had given each child a packet of sweets he impersonated an old man in a picture gallery. By a skillful use of his overcoat, hat and stick he appeared to grow gradually to a height of some nine feet in order to look at the highest pictures, and the children screamed with laughter.
Three weeks after Chaplin met the boys and girls from Hoxton School, and after a weekend spent with HG Wells and his family, Charlie left London, via Waterloo, for New York on the RMS Olympic.
Rob Baker is the author of Beautiful Idiots And Brilliant Lunatics; A Sideways Look At Twentieth-Century London (Amberley Publishing, 2015).
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Famous people in profile: Charlie Chaplin]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/famous-people-in-profile-charlie-chaplin/ 2022-08-30T14:49:21.000Z 2014-05-10T05:00:00.000Z On the 125th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's birth, Peter Ackroyd has written a new biography exploring the life of the cinema legend. Here, in an interview with History Extra, Ackroyd reveals the man behind the moustache, and explains why he continues to fascinate…
Q: What was Chaplin’s early life like?
A: He was born in London, and spent most of his childhood in Kennington. He was consigned to the workhouse, the poor house, and even the orphanage, because his mother – who suffered bouts of madness – could not cope with him.
As he grew older he went around the streets of England, taking up ‘odd jobs’. He had very little education, and effectively because a vagrant.
Q: How did he rise to fame?
A: He was employed by a group of clog dancers, ‘the eight Lancashire lads’. He toured with them at the age of 10, and soon became proficient. That was the beginning of his interest in theatre.
He went on to become a child actor, which proved to be a great chance for him to display his skills as a mimic and an entertainer.
He was then taken on by the Fred Karno travelling company as a juvenile act, and he became their key performer. With Karno he went to America, and while on his second tour was spotted by studio manager Mack Sennett [of the Keystone Film Company].
Chaplin was asked to join Keystone, and from there he went on to invent ‘the Tramp’. It’s not quite clear how he managed to create the costume. Some say he modeled it on the English poor, but others say he copied acts he had seen in music halls in 19th-century London.
It was a character to which he stuck, and which proved to be very popular. But he later decided to become a more ‘serious’ actor, which only made him more popular.
Q: While researching your book, have you discovered anything surprising about Chaplin?
A: He had a very bad temper, and was domineering. He was not a very nice person to be around – he was a moody individual.
Q: What inspired you to write a biography of Chaplin?
A: I was inspired because he is from London, and I have always written about London. I found his story to be in many respects inspiring – his energy, enthusiasm, indomitable will and refusal to give up on anything.
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