Gregory Copeland - Who Was Charlie Chaplin?

Music halls hosted live shows with a dazzling variety of acts. Acrobats flew through the air. Ventriloquists spoke through dummies. Singers and dancers performed. There were high-wire walkers, animal trainers, and plate spinners. Most popular of all were the comedy acts.

In the United States, music halls were known as vaudeville (VAUD-vill) theaters. The biggest days for vaudeville were the early 1900s. Once movies became popular, music halls and vaudeville gradually faded into history.

Still, the little household was happy for a while. Hannah taught Charlie to dance almost as soon as he could stand. To entertain her sons, Hannah pulled costumes and wigs from her trunk and acted out plays that she knew by heart.

One night, Hannahs singing career came to a sudden end. Her voice cracked in the middle of a song. The crowd hissed and booed Hannah off the stage. The frantic manager pushed little Charlie onstage in her place! Charlie was just five, but he had been watching from backstage for years. He knew all the numbers by heart.

As the small boy began to sing and dance, the crowd grew silent. Soon they were laughing and cheering. Then they threw pennies onto the stage. Charlie stopped in the middle of the song to scoot around and pick up the money. The crowd laughed even harder.

Charlie was a hit. However, Hannahs career was over. She never sang again. That night was my first appearance on the stage, Charlie later wrote, and Mothers last.

The family began sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. Hannah earned a little money sewing, but not enough to pay the bills. She tore up her old costumes to make clothes for her sons. Often short of rent money, the Chaplins were forced to move again and again. They started out in a three-room apartment. Then they moved into two rooms. Finally, they crowded into one room behind a smelly pickle factory.

In time Hannah was too weak and ill to go on. She led her sons to the workhouse. That was where poor people ended up in London when there was no place else to go.

The little family was split apart. Hannah was put in an infirmary, a place for people too sick to earn their keep in the workhouse. Charlie and Sydney were taken to a school for homeless children, called Hanwell. Charlie clung tightly to his older brother, but Sydney had to stay in a ward with older boys. Charlie later said that his childhood ended right then. He was seven.