February 7, 1914: The film Kid Auto Races at Venice premieres. Like all films of the era, it is silent, and in black and white. Like nearly all films of the era, it is short: 6 minutes and 22 seconds. It is not the 1st film to star Charlie Chaplin. But it is the debut appearance of the character Chaplin played in most of his films: "The Tramp," a.k.a. "The Little Tramp."
Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was born on April 16, 1889 in Walworth, South London. His childhood was one of deprivation: His father was out of the picture, he was sent to a workhouse twice before his 9th birthday, and his mother was committed to a psychiatric institution when he was 14.
He turned to performing, and by the age of 19, he had had enough success in London's music halls that Fred Karno, an English stage comedian who is credited with popularizing a pie thrown in someone's face as a comedy staple, made Chaplin part of his company, and took him on an American tour. While there, he began appearing in films for Keystone Studios, including once for producer Mack Sennett's "Keystone Kops."
Kid Auto Races at Venice, directed by Henry Lehrman, who directed some of the Kops' films, premiered on February 7, 1914, so it was the 1st film released with the character -- but not the 1st one made with him. Released 2 days later, on February 9, but filmed earlier, was Mabel's Strange Predicament, starring the biggest film actress of the era, Mabel Normand, who also directed -- and a woman directing a film then was, as it would be for decades to come, rare. Both films were produced by Sennett for Keystone.
In a 1933 interview, Chaplin told of the character's origin:
A hotel set was built for Mable Normand's picture "Mabel's Strange Predicament," and I was hurriedly told to put on a funny make-up. This time, I went to the wardrobe, and got a pair of baggy pants, a tight coat, a small derby hat, and a large pair of shoes. I wanted the clothes to be a mass of contradictions, knowing pictorially the figure would be vividly outlined on the screen.
To add a comic touch, I wore a small mustache which would not hide my expression. My appearance got an enthusiastic response from everyone, including Mr. Sennett. The clothes seemed to imbue me with the spirit of the character. He actually became a man with a soul, a point of view. I defined to Mr. Sennett the type of person he was. He wears an air of romantic hunger, forever seeking romance, but his feet won't let him.
Chaplin made 26 short film starring The Tramp in 1914 alone. He was enough of a hit that, in 1915, a film titled The Tramp and starring Chaplin could be released, and be one of the biggest hits of the year. By 1918, he was one of the world's best-known figures.
In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the film distribution company United Artists, along with D.W. Griffith, famous for directing Birth of a Nation and Intolerance; and the husband & wife actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Having an ownership share of UA, and the okay from Griffith, Fairbanks and Pickford to pretty much do whatever he wanted, gave him complete control over his films.
Indeed, the studio was premised on allowing actors to control their own interests, rather than being dependent upon commercial studios. This, of course, did not last long. As the historian Hannah Arendt would later put it, "The most ardent revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."
In 1921, he made his 1st feature-length film: The Kid, coming in at 1 hours and 8 minutes, and co-starring 6-year-old Jackie Coogan, who became one of the earliest child stars. As an older man, TV audiences would know him as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. Perhaps Chaplin's best-known film came in 1925, The Gold Rush, the Tramp's struggle to survive while searching for gold in Alaska typical of his mixture of slapstick and pathos.
Talking pictures came in 1927, but Chaplin refused to make the switch, making City Lights in 1931 and Modern Times in 1936. Both were considered immediate classics, and film historians still think of them as such.
But with the occasional exception like Mel Brooks' 1976 spoof Silent Movie and the 2011 French film The Artist, the age of silent films was over, a fact parodied in a 1966 episode of Batman, where villain the Riddler uses them as a theme for his scheme, and the famous silent film star Francis X. Bushman made his last acting appearance before his death a few months later.
Finally, in 1940, Chaplin gave in, but made a point, anyway. His 1st sound film was The Great Dictator. Because of his similar mustache, people seeing Adolf Hitler for the first time said he looked like Chaplin. But there was nothing funny about the repression of the Nazi regime. So The Great Dictator, a "Prince and the Pauper" story where a peasant ends up impersonating the dictator and reversing his policies, is only a semi-comedy. Millions of people who had seen Chaplin heard his voice for the first time, and they heard him give one of the greatest speeches in movie history.
But he had issues in real life. His career would not have survived in the #MeToo era, as he preyed on underage women. He married 4 times:
* In 1918, to Mildred Harris, a 16-year-old actress, who told him she was pregnant. They married, and she soon found out she wasn't. She soon got pregnant anyway. They were divorced in 1920. She married and divorced twice more, and died in 1944, only 43, from pneumonia following abdominal surgery, at a time before antibiotics were common.
* In 1924, to Lillita "Lita" Grey, also a 16-year-old actress, who, at 13, had played "the flirting angel" in The Kid. She, too, forced him into marriage because she was pregnant. The marriage lasted until 1927, and she also married 4 times. She lived until 1995, at 87.
* In 1936, to Paulette Goddard, another actress. This time, it was different: She was 26 and it was her 2nd marriage. She was his leading lady in Modern Times and The Great Dictator. He tried to talk producer David O. Selznick into casting her as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, without success. They divorced in 1942, but remained friends. She later married and divorced actor Burgess Meredith, and married writer Erich Maria Remarque, a marriage that lasted until his death. She lived until 1990, at 79.
* And in 1943, to Oona O'Neill, 18, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. She became an actress, and they stayed married for the rest of Chaplin's life. She died in 1991, at 66.
Between his 4 marriages, Chaplin had 11 children. Charles III, a.k.a. Charlie Chaplin, Jr., went into acting. So did Sydney, whom Charlie named for his brother. So did Geraldine, who is not only still alive as of February 7, 2022, but recently played a friend of her father's, Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, in the TV series The Crown. Michael, Josephine, Victoria and Christopher also went into acting. Son Eugene became a renowned recording engineer for rock music. Sadly, Charlie Jr. predeceased his father.
The FBI accused Charlie of Communist sympathies, and in 1952, he went back to London to promote his semi-autobiographical film Limelight, the most serious film he had ever made. He was banned from re-entering the U.S., and did not return until 1972, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an honorary Oscar. He was given a 12-minute standing ovation. In the interim, he had made just 2 films, A King in New York in 1957, and A Countess from Hong Kong in 1967.
In 1975, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him a knighthood: Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin. But his health had been failing for years, through strokes. on December 25, 1977, Christmas Day of a year that had seen the deaths of early talking-pictures star Groucho Marx, crooner Bing Crosby, actress Joan Crawford, Broadway legend Zero Mostel, King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley and comedian Freddie Prinze Jr. -- at ages 86, 74, 73, 62, 42 and 22, respectively -- Charlie Chaplin died of another stroke, at the age of 88, at his home in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. He was buried there.
By that point, it had been 50 and 60 years since the Tramp's heyday. Chaplin could, had his health and his desire allowed it, have seen The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars, and was increasingly seen as an icon of a long-ago era. More so than his contemporaries, damsel-in-distress Pauline (Pearl White) and the Keystone Kops, the Tramp had become the symbol of the Silent Film Era.
Chaplin was played by Clyde Revill in the 1980 film The Scarlett O'Hara War, Robert Downey Jr. in the 1992 film Chaplin, and Eddie Izzard in the 2001 film The Cat's Meow. French mime Marcel Marceau and Indian actor Raj Kapoor both cited Chaplin as a tremendous influence.
Federico Fellini called him "a sort of Adam, from whom we are all descended." Jacques Tati: "Without him, I never would have made a film." François Truffaut: "My religion is cinema. I believe in Charlie Chaplin." Satyajit Ray: "If there is any name which can be said to symbolize cinema, it is Charlie Chaplin... I am sure Chaplin's name will survive even if the cinema ceases to exist as a medium of artistic expression. Chaplin is truly immortal."
He was right: Starting in 1981, IBM, having bought the rights to use the character, used him for a series of commercials, showing him doing what he couldn't do in Modern Times in 1936: Adjust to what the ads called "a tool for modern times." It's been called the most successful ad campaign ever, speaking to the character's lasting fame.
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February 7, 1914 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. Basketball was still all-amateur. But there was action in the 1st professional hockey league, the National Hockey Association:
* The Toronto Blue shirts beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0 at the Westmount Arena in Montreal.
* The Montreal Wanderers beat the Ottawa Senators, 4-2 at Dey's Arena in Ottawa.
* And the Quebec Bulldogs beat the Toronto Ontarios, 6-4 at the Arena Gardens (later named the Mutual Street Arena) in Toronto.
