George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin " the only genius to come out of the movie industry ".

" The Lita Grey affair was soon forgotten, but Chaplin was deeply affected by it: the stress of the ordeal turned his hair white, and both his second wife and The Circus received only a passing mention in his autobiography.

Halfway through filming Chaplin fired his leading lady, Virginia Cherrill, only to ask her back a week later.

He also often employed inanimate objects in his films, often transforming them into other objects in an almost surreal way, such as in The Pawnshop ( 1916 ) and One A. M. ( 1916 ), where Chaplin is the only actor aside Chester Conklin's brief appearance in the very first scene.

Chaplin disliked unconventional camera angles and only used close-ups to highlight an emotional scene, and usually preferred to employ a static, " stage-like " camera setting where the scenes were portrayed as if set on a stage.

This was already noted by Chaplin's contemporaries, such as Sigmund Freud, who thought that Chaplin " always plays only himself as he was in his dismal youth ", and by some of his collaborators, such as actress Claire Bloom, who starred in Limelight.

Chaplin also received his only competitive Oscar for his composition work, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Limelight ( along with Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell ) in 1973.

Although the project started in 1958, Chaplin only received his star in 1970 because of his political views.

In the movie " The Great Dictator " ( 1940 ), Charlie Chaplin satirized not only Adolf Hitler but the institution of dictatorship itself.

Considered to be one of the most important actors in American cinema, Brando was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Persons of the Century in 1999.

Chaplin's film followed only a few months after Hollywood's first parody of Hitler, the short subject You Nazty Spy by the Three Stooges, although Chaplin had been planning it for years before.

Chaplin decided to record the runthrough in case anything was usable, and " by dumb luck we had managed to catch every movement, and that was the first and only ' take ' made of the scene, the one used in the finished picture ".

Chaplin had been shooting the film for a year and was only a little more than half way finished.

When he put a score to ' The Circus ' in 1928, Chaplin scored that sequence with ' Blue Skies ,' the song Jolson had made famous, only Chaplin played it slowly and sorrowfully, like a funeral dirge.

The literary world only sees him as having been born in this world to provide a source for gossip, but he is like Chaplin producing seeds of humour in their rumours ...

Beckett ’ s original choice for the lead – referred to only as “ O ” – was Charlie Chaplin, but his script never reached him.

Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally.

Chaplin's stock company at Essanay included Ben Turpin, who disliked working with the meticulous Chaplin and only appeared with him in a couple of films ; ingenue Edna Purviance, who became his off-screen sweetheart as well ; Leo White, almost always playing a fussy continental villain ; and all-purpose authority figures Bud Jamison and John Rand.

Chaplin disliked the unpredictable weather of Chicago, and left after only one year for more money and more creative control elsewhere.

According to Woody Allen ( in a New York Times interview from January 30, 2000 ), W. C. Fields is one of only six " genuine comic geniuses " he recognized as such in movie history, along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers.

In the early years of film, David Raksin worked as music ghostwriter and orchestrator for Charlie Chaplin ; even though Chaplin was credited as the score writer, he was considered to be a " hummer " ( pejorative film industry slang for a person who purports to be a film score composer but who in fact only gives a general idea of the melodies to a ghostwriter ).

Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions ( in only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp ).

His mother and father had married four years previously, at which time Chaplin Sr. became the legal carer of Hannah's illegitimate son, Sydney John ( 1885 – 1965 ).

" His early years were spent with his mother and brother in the London district of Kennington ; Hannah had no means of income, other than occasional nursing and dressmaking, and Chaplin Sr. provided no support for his sons.

In September 1898, Hannah Chaplin was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum — she had developed a psychosis seemingly brought on by malnutrition and an infection of syphilis.

Chaplin recalled his anguish at the news: " Why had she done this?

Chaplin, then 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary.

Hannah had been booed off stage, and the manager chose Chaplin, who was standing in the wings, to go on as her replacement.

By age 13 Chaplin had fully abandoned education.

By 1908, Sydney Chaplin had become a star of Fred Karno's prestigious comedy company.

Chaplin recalled: " I had a disquieting feeling of sinking back into a depressing commonplaceness ", and was therefore " elated " when a new tour began in October.

A member of NYMPC had seen Chaplin perform ( accounts of whom and where vary ) and felt that he would make a good replacement for Fred Mace, outgoing star of their Keystone Studios.

The court dismissed this claim since he had failed to fulfil his contract requirements, but Chaplin subsequently ensured that every contract he signed prohibited the alteration of his finished products.

The Mutual contract stipulated that Chaplin release a two-reel film every four weeks, which he had managed to meet.

Shortly before this, Chaplin and his wife had separated after 18 months of marriage — they were " irreconcilably mismated ", he remembered.

During production of the film Chaplin had been involved with the actress Pola Negri, a romantic pairing that received vast media interest.

At a cost of almost $ 1, 000, 000, Chaplin felt it was the best film he had made to that point.

Unwilling to allow his film to be drawn into the divorce proceedings, Chaplin announced that production on The Circus had been temporarily suspended.

When filming began at the end of 1928, Chaplin had been working on the story for almost a year.

It was a challenging production that lasted 21 months, with Chaplin later confessing that he " had worked himself into a neurotic state of wanting perfection ".

City Lights had been a success, but Chaplin was unsure if he could make another picture without dialogue.

The trip had been a stimulating experience for Chaplin, including meetings with several prominent thinkers, and he became increasingly interested in world affairs.

In 1942, Chaplin had a brief affair with Joan Barry, whom he was considering for a starring role in a proposed film.

Chaplin's second wife, Lita Grey, later asserted that Chaplin had paid corrupt government officials to tamper with the blood test results.

In February 2012 an MI5 file on Chaplin was opened to the public which revealed that the FBI had contacted the British secret service to provide them with information which would enable them to ban Chaplin from the US.