Sir Charles Spencer " Charlie " Chaplin, KBE ( 16 April 188925 December 1977 ) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era.

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era.

Chaplin was identified with left-wing politics during the McCarthy era and he was ultimately forced to resettle in Europe from 1952.

In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, wrote: " Chaplin was not just ' big ', he was gigantic.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Hannah Chaplin ( née Hill, 1865 – 1928 ) and Charles Chaplin Sr. ( 1863 – 1901 ).

There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London.

Because of this poverty, Chaplin was sent to a workhouse at seven years old.

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.

" For the two months she was there, Chaplin and his brother were sent to live with their father, whom the young boy scarcely knew.

Charles Chaplin Sr. was by then a severe alcoholic, and life with the man was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

" There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate ", Chaplin later wrote, and she remained in care until her death in 1928.

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

It was an isolated performance, but at nine years old Chaplin became interested in the theatre.

Chaplin worked hard and the act was popular with audiences, but dancing did not satisfy the child and he dreamt of forming a comedy act.

The manager sensed potential in Chaplin and he was soon on the stage.

" It was like tidings from heaven ", Chaplin recalled.

Chaplin quickly began work in another role, touring with his brother — who was also pursuing an acting career — in a comedy sketch called Repairs.

It was popular with audiences and Chaplin became the star of the show.

Shops were stocked with Chaplin merchandise, he was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about the star.

Chaplin was away for five weeks, and later wrote a book about the trip.

Chaplin was cynical about this new medium and the technical shortcomings it presented, believing that " talkies " lacked the artistry of silent films.

Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion.

* Early films by, about or starring Charlie Chaplin at the Internet Archive

During the filming of Monsieur Beaucaire, both Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks approached Valentino privately, due to his contract with Ritz Carlton, about joining with United Artists.

Chaplin's half-brother Sydney Chaplin directed and starred in a 1921 film called King, Queen, Joker in which, like Charlie, he played the dual role of a barber and ruler of a country who is about to be overthrown.

However, Annette Insdorf, in her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, writes that " There was something curiously appropriate about the little tramp impersonating the dictator, for by 1939 Hitler and Chaplin were perhaps the two most famous men in the world.

In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin stated that he would not have been able to make such jokes about the Nazi regime had the extent of the Nazi horrors been known, particularly the death camps and the Holocaust.

Chaplin was first contacted by inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste in 1918 about making a sound film, but never ended up meeting with Lauste.

Chaplin was dismissive about " talkies " and told a reporter that he'd " give the talkies three years, that's all.

After the success of The Circus, Chaplin had originally wanted to make a film about a circus clown who goes blind and has to conceal his handicap from his young daughter by pretending that his inability to see were pratfalls.

The scene tooks weeks to shoot and Chaplin first began to have second thoughts about casting Cherrill.

This plot was abandoned almost immediately, before Chaplin's character was introduced, the documentary states, and Chaplin began again, with a story, still set in a cafe, about a man who has never been in a restaurant before displaying terrible table manners before meeting a lovely girl ( Purviance ) and shaping up.

Charles Cros, played by Christopher Chaplin, appears in the film Total Eclipse, about the lives of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

Chaplin first began discussing his ideas for a film about a circus as early as 1920.

No wonder Kaprow called Grooms " a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire ".

The movie was critically acclaimed and Charlie Chaplin called it " the greatest movie made about America.

Chaplin is a 1992 American biographical film about the life of British comedian Charlie Chaplin.

There are a lot of references that are hard to miss, such as the fact that the little boy winds up being Charlie Chaplin, the detective is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who goes on to writing the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Roy talks about Zeppelins " taking off " and being a successful invention despite what will happen to the Hindenburg in 1937.

* Toothbrush – thick, but shaved except for about an inch ( 2. 5 cm ) in the center ; associated with Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy and Michael Jordan in his commercials for Hanes.

In Hollywood, Waugh enjoyed meeting Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney (" the two artists of the place ") but complained about the accommodations, the quality of food and the lack of wine at meals, the relaxed dress and informal manners, and the small talk of service workers-" the exact opposite of the English custom by which the upper classes are expected to ask personal questions of the lower ".

Following the success of Modern Times, Chaplin planned other projects with Goddard in mind as a co-star, but he worked slowly and Goddard worried that the public might forget about her if she did not continue to make regular film appearances.