Chaplin Charlie - My Autobiography

PENGUIN BOOKS

Charles Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 in East Street, Walworth, London. His parents, both music hall performers, separated before he was three. His father was to die of alcoholism at 37, while his mother suffered permanent mental breakdown; and Charles and his older half-brother Sydney experienced periods in institutions for destitute children. At 10 he began his professional life as a member of a juvenile clog-dance troupe, went on to act on the legitimate stage in touring productions of Sherlock Holmes, and finally became a star of Fred Karnos music hall sketch companies. Touring the USA with Karno, in 1913 he was recruited by the Keystone Film Company, and in his second one-reel comedy created the character of the Little Tramp which was to become universally recognized and loved. He soon began to direct as well as perform in his own films. In search of greater independence and bigger salaries he passed in turn to the Essanay, Mutual and First National companies. Among his most notable films from this period are Easy Street, The Immigrant, Shoulder Arms and The Kid. In 1919, with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith, he established United Artists, through which he distributed such masterworks as A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight. As a foreigner and suspected radical, in the late 1940s he fell victim to Americas McCarthyist witchhunts, and from 1952 made his home in Europe, where he directed two more films, A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong, as well as completing his autobiography. Following a chequered marital and romantic life, in 1943 he married Oona ONeill (daughter of the playwright Eugene ONeill), by whom he had eight children. In 1972 he briefly re-visited the United States to receive an honorary Academy Award; and in January 1975 he was appointed KBE. He died on Christmas Day 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland.

CHARLES CHAPLIN

My Autobiography

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by the Bodley Head 1964
Published in Penguin Books 1966
Published as a Modern Classic 2003
6

Copyright Charles Chaplin, 1964
Introduction copyright David Robinson, 2003
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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ISBN: 978-0-14-191249-3