Chaplin, Charlie (1889-1977)
Comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director Charlie Chaplin, through the universal language of silent comedy, imprinted one of the twentieth century's most distinctive and lasting cultural images on the collective consciousness of the entire civilized world. In his self-created guise the Tramp, an accident-prone do-gooder, at once innocent and devious, he sported a toothbrush mustache, baggy pants, and tattered tails, tilting his trademark bowler hat and jauntily swinging his trademark cane as he defied the auguries of a hostile world. The Little Tramp made his first brief appearance in Kid Auto Races at Venice for Mack Sennett's Keystone company in 1914, and bowed out 22 years later in the feature-length Modern Times (United Artists, 1936). In between the Tramp films, Chaplin made countless other short-reel silent comedies, which combined a mixture of Victorian melodrama, sentiment, and slapstick, enchanted audiences worldwide, and made him an international celebrity and the world's highestpaid performer. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, 86 years after he first appeared on the flickering silent screen, Chaplin was still regarded as one of the most important entertainers of the twentieth century. He was (and arguably still is) certainly the most universally famous. On screen, he was a beloved figure of fun; off-screen, however, his liberal political views brought accusations of Communism and close official scrutiny, while his notorious private life heaped opprobrium on his head.
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