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Charlie Chaplin lived a tumultuous life – much of it in the public eye. I have chosen him for this research paper because, not only did he undergo discernable evolution as an individual, but also he was influenced by, and in turn influenced the co-evolution of society. Given the nature of this course in its quest to explore the connections between cultural and individual evolution, Charlie Chaplin seems like an ideal candidate for exemplifying this connection. Here is the research I have compiled thus far:

Chaplin was born the son of vaudeville actors in 1889 London, England (Huff 10). He is reported to have performed since a very early age, encouraged by his thespian parents (Huff 11). It might be deduced that performing was the only sort of encouragement that Chaplin received by his parents: his father was an alcoholic, rarely present, and died from the disease when Chaplin was still a young boy (Huff 11). At age five, Chaplin’s mother, Hannah, fell ill (Huff 11). We know that four years later she was diagnosed with syphilis (Weissman 440). At that time she lived in a poorhouse in Lambeth, just outside of London and was moved to an infirmary (Weissman 440). At that time, Chaplin’s schooling had been sporadic, and he had already performed for a year in a touring troupe. At age nine, with his mother in an asylum, Chaplin was homeless; he remained that way until his brother, Sydney, returned from a sailing job in Africa (Huff 12; Weissman 440).

In his early teens, Chaplin and his brother Sydney found work on the stage in England, until getting a gig with an American touring group, “The Karno Company,” from 1910-1913 (Huff 12-15; Hayes 125). In all of my research that dealt with Chaplin’s early career, he is described as desiring a dramatic repertoire, but having such a penchant for and success with comedy, that he ended up focusing on the latter. In 1913, Chaplin moved to California to honor a contract he had signed with Keystone films for $150 per week (Huff 21). A year later, after enormous success on the big screen, Chaplin moved to the Mutual Company for a weekly paycheck of $10,000 (Hayes 125). This marked the beginning of the icon Chaplin who set the tone for modern filmmaking.

 One very basic and obvious individual evolution for Chaplin is his transition from extreme poverty to extreme wealth. It would be possible at this point to detail his various films and mark how each one, or at least a few particularly significant ones, affected society, however, in terms of Chaplin’s evolution, I am more interested in explaining his use of “The Tramp” character, investigating his portrayal of women, and describing his expulsion from the United States.

Charlie Chaplin is most known for his character the Tramp, from his silent black-and-white films in the early half of the twentieth century. The Tramp was in many ways a vaudeville and pantomime character, which is not surprising, given Chaplin’s background. However, the Tramp was not only an entertaining and comedic character, but also, in many ways a social commentator. As Evan A. Lieberman states in his article “Charlie the Trickster,” the Tramp “fulfills the all-important societal role of the disrupter of order and instigator of change” (Lieberman 22).  Lieberman goes on to say that from the chaos instigated comes creativity and a new order (Lieberman 22). In other words, the Tramp (and Chaplin as his creator) disrupts, and influences the same society from which he evolved. Naturally, parodies have been made between Chaplin’s own experiences in society and the comments that he makes about it through his films.

Another parody that has been drawn between Chaplin’s earlier and later lives has been his portrayal of women and how that might have derived from his experiences with his mother. It has been noted that in many of Chaplain’s films the lead female role was a woman of disrepute who somehow needs saving (Weissman 441-442). This chivalrous role contrasts with Chaplain’s early reputation of being a womanizer (Weissman 441). Yet three of his four marriages were with women who were in their teens. Mildred Harris is quoted as saying that Chaplain was “fatherly” and “acted to [her] as though [she] had been a mere child,” indicating that he did desire to protect and nurture women as he had protected and nurtured his mother (Huff 88).

Despite the clear anti-Nazism that he displayed in The Dictator, Charlie Chaplain was exiled from the United States of America in 1952, under suspicion of being a Communist. There was little evidence that Chaplain was, himself, a Communist, but he refused to deny friendships with people who were, essentially declaring that he did not base friendships upon political beliefs (Sbardellati 502-503).

Works Cited

Hayes, Kevin J., ed. Charlie Chaplin: Interviews. The University Press of Mississippi. 2005.

Huff, Theodore. Charlie Chaplin. Henry Schuman, Inc & H. Wolff. New York. 1951.

Lieberman, Evan A. Charlie the Trickster. Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 46, No. 3. Fall 1994. pp. 16-28

Sbardellati, John and Tony Shaw. Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplain, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America. Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4. November 2003. pp. 495-530

Weissman, Stephen M. Charlie Chaplin’s Film Heroines. Film History, Vol 8, No. 4, International Trends in Film Studies. 1996. pp. 439-445.