Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles "Charlie" Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977) was the most famous actor in early Hollywood cinema, and later also a notable director. His principal character was "The Tramp": a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman who wears a tight coat, oversized pants and shoes, a derby or bowler hat, a bamboo cane, and his signature square mustache. Chaplin was one of the most creative personalities in the silent film era; he acted, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually scored his own films.

Charlie first took to the stage when, aged 5, he performed in Music Hall in 1894, standing in for his mother, who taught him to sing and act. As a child, he was confined to a bed for weeks due to a serious illness, and, at night, his mother would sit at the window and act out what was going on outside. In 1900, aged 11, his brother helped get him the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella at the London Hippodrome. In 1903 he appeared in Jim, A Romance of Cockayne, followed by his first regular job, as the newspaper boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes, a part he played into 1906. This was followed by Casey's Court Circus variety show, and, the following year, he became a clown in Fred Karno's Fun Factory slapstick comedy company. According to immigration records, he arrived in America with the Karno troupe on October 2, 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who would become known and loved as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel wound up sharing a room in a boarding house. Chaplin's act was eventually seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company.

While Chaplin initially had difficulty adjusting to the Keystone style of film acting, he soon adapted and flourished in the medium. This was made possible in part by Chaplin developing his signature Tramp persona, and by eventually earning directorship and creative control over his films, which enabled him to become Keystone's top star and talent.

On March 4, 1975, after many years of self-imposed exile from his native country, he was knighted a KBE by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1956, but vetoed by the British Foreign Office on the grounds that he sympathized with the left and that it would damage British relations with the United States, at the height of the Cold War and with planning for the ill-fated invasion of Suez underway.

Charlie Chaplin passed away on Christmas Day, 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland and was interred in the Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery in Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. Two months later, on March 3, 1978, his body was stolen from the cemetery, in an attempt to extort money from his relatives. The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva. There is a famous statue of Chaplin in front of the alimentarium in Vevey to commemorate the last part of his life.

Amongst his many honors, Charles Chaplin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1985 he was honored with his image on a postage stamp of the United Kingdom and in 1994 he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.