My Autobiography

PENGUIN BOOKSMy Autobiography
Charles Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 in East Street, Walworth,London. His parents, both music hall performers, separated before he was three. Hisfather was to die of alcoholism at 37, while his mother suffered permanent mentalbreakdown; and Charles and his older half-brother Sydney experienced periods ininstitutions for destitute children. At 10 he began his professional life as amember of a juvenile clog-dance troupe, went on to act on the legitimate stage intouring productions of Sherlock Holmes, and finally became a star of FredKarno’s music hall sketch companies. Touring the USA with Karno, in 1913he was recruited by the Keystone Film Company, and in his second one-reel comedycreated the character of the Little Tramp which was to become universally recognizedand loved. He soon began to direct as well as perform in his own films. In search ofgreater independence and bigger salaries he passed in turn to the Essanay, Mutualand First National companies. Among his most notable films from this period are Easy Street, The Immigrant, Shoulder Arms and The Kid. In1919, with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith, he establishedUnited 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 suspectedradical, in the late 1940s he fell victim to America’s McCarthyistwitchhunts, 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 ascompleting his autobiography. Following a chequered marital and romantic life, in1943 he married Oona O’Neill (daughter of the playwright EugeneO’Neill), by whom he had eight children. In 1972 he briefly re-visited theUnited States to receive an honorary Academy Award; and in January 1975 he wasappointed KBE. He died on Christmas Day 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland.
CHARLES CHAPLIN
My Autobiography
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by the Bodley Head 1964
Published in PenguinBooks 1966
Published as a Modern Classic 2003
6
Copyright © Charles Chaplin, 1964
Introductioncopyright © David Robinson, 2003
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is soldsubject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, belent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without thepublisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other thanthat in
which it is published and without a similar condition includingthis
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-191249-3
illustrations
All photographs unless otherwise specifically acknowledged arethe copyright of the Roy Export Company Establishment
1. Charles Chaplin
2. Charles Chaplin Sr
3. Hannah Chaplin
4. Hannah Chaplin in her house inCalifornia
5. Chaplin (circled) atthe Hanwell Schools, 1897 (National Film and Television Archive)
6. Sydney Chaplin
7. Chaplin as the Inebriate– one of the roles he played for Karno
8. Chaplin with Alf Reeves
9. On the ship to the USA
10. Keystone – withMabel Normand in Mabel at the Wheel
11. Chaplin Studios – onthe building site in 1917
12. United Artists –Douglas Fairbanks, Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and Mary Pickford
13. Washington – LibertyBond Tour, 1918 (AKG)
14. Mildred Harris
15. Chaplin c. 1918
16. Visiting London, 1921
17. With Lord and LadyMountbatten, 1921
18. With Jackie Coogan in The Kid, 1921
19. Jackie Coogan visiting Chaplinon the set of Modern Times, 1935
20. Clare Sheridan working on herbust of Chaplin
21. Chaplin with Anna Pavlova
22. Edna Purviance (centre) in A Woman of Paris, 1923
23. City Lights with Virginia Cherrill, 1931
24. Winston Churchill with Chaplinon the set of City Lights, 1929
25. Chaplin with Professor and MrsEinstein at the premiere of City Lights
26. Chaplin with ArnoldSchoenberg
27. Modern Times,1936
28. Chaplin with Paulette Goddardin Modern Times
29. The Great Dictator,1940
30. Chaplin with Oona, Geraldineand Michael
31. Chaplin with his sons Charlesand Sydney on the set of Monsieur Verdoux, 1947
32. With Claire Bloom in Limelight, 1952
33. With Dawn Addams in A King in New York, 1957
34. With Oona in Switzerland
35. With Michael, Josephine andEugene
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgements are due to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. forpermission to reprint an extract from Government by Assassination by HughByas; to the authors and William Heinemann Ltd for the passage from A Writer’s Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham, and for lines from‘The Widow in the Bye Street’ from The Collected Poems of John Masefield; to Liveright Publishing Corporation for ‘WhiteBuildings’ from The Collected Poems of Hart Crane.
The publisher would like to thank the Association Chaplin for itshelp in preparing this edition.
To Oona


introduction
by David Robinson
CHAPTER One begins in forthright Victorian biographical style: ‘I was born on 16 April 1889, at eight O’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth.’ When My Autobiography appeared in 1964, this was itself a revelation. The hundreds (quite literally) of books that had been devoted to Chaplin had vaguely placed his birth here, there and everywhere (even Fontainebleau), and no birth certificate exists to settle the question. But here for the first time we had Chaplin’s word for it, and into the bargain his credentials as a true South Londoner, since only a local would name East Street (its official name) as ‘East Lane’ – the style ‘lane’ being popularly applied to any metropolitan thoroughfare that boasts a market. And thereafter the revelations, particularly about the privations of his early life and the precocious discovery of his gifts as a performer, were prodigal.