The Gold Rush

(2 of 3)

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London in 1889; his mother, part Irish, part Spanish, was playing there in a stock company. His father was a small-time music hall favorite.

Newspaper men have killed his parents in various ways; it is said that the paternal Chaplin died of natural causes and his widow (known to the boards as Lily Harley) went into dressmaking, taught Charles and his brother Sydney to hem flounces; there is still another affecting scene in which Chaplin, a sallow waif in bloomers, is portrayed leading his starved mother to a poorhouse while London gamins revile him for his kindliness. It was owing to this incident, some doters, declare, that his eyes acquired that tragic, haunted cast.

At 13, however, he was taking juvenile parts. A British critic hailed him as a "baby wonder." A year later he was playing with William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes. He got a part in a vaudeville skit, A Night in an English Music Hall, toured the U.S. In 1914 the Keystone Film Corporation enlisted his services for $40 a week.

His first efforts to be funny in celluloid were dismal. Keystone directors feared that he was overpaid, offered to cancel the contract. Chaplin told Roscoe Arbuckle, the now deposed cinema clown, that he needed a pair of shoes. Arbuckle tossed him a pair of his own enormous brogues. "There you are, man," he said. "Perfect fit!" Chaplin put them on, cocked his battered derby over his ear, twisted the ends of his prim mustache. His face was very sad. He attempted a jaunty walk which became, inevitably, a heart-breaking waddle. He put his hand on the seat of his trousers, spun on his heel. Arbuckle told him that he was almost funny. Such was the research that led him to "create a figure that would be a living satire on every human vanity."

In three months, the U. S. raved; in six, England shrieked; in a year his hat, feet, waddle and harrassed, insouciant smirk were familiar to South Sea Islanders who pasted his picture on the walls of their bathhouses; to lamas in Tibet who chucked each other in the ribs at a mention of his name; to bushwackers, coolies, Cossacks, Slavs, Nordics. His salary became $1.000, $2,000 $3,000 a week. One film company after another outbid each other for him; he worked for Essanay, Mutual, First National, United Artists.