There is no legal record of Charles Spenser Chaplin's birthplace. He was born to music hall entertainers in 1889, and when he was two, both became estranged. They never lived together again.

His father did not help care for the children and his mother made due with selling dresses and working as a nurse part time. When his mother went to the sanitarium, he was sent to a workhouse for children. The first time he appeared on stage, he was only five.

By the time Chaplin was 26, he had a contract with Mutual Film Corporation for $10,000 a week. This made Chaplin one of the highest paid people in the entire world. Eventually, he became the biggest box office draw alive. But as rich as he was, he had lived a life that prepared him well for the role of a tramp.

Chaplin mainly played a lovable underdog who struggled to survive in a cruel world, and portrayed the poor in a sympathetic way. He made a series of some of the most popular films of the silent era, and elevated the art of pantomime to its highest level.

When sound came to films in 1929, Chaplin felt that silent films were more artistically pure, and made silent films for years after his competitors were using sound. In time though, even the mighty Chaplin had to adapt.

By the thirties, Chaplin became more politically motivated. The Great Dictator was released in October 1940. It was an obvious parody which mocked Adolf Hitler as a dictator and made some very powerful statements about fascism and the value of human life. The controversial movie was tremendously successful and one of the top money makers of its era. It won five Academy Awards.

At the end of the movie, Chaplin spoke directly to the audience, and pleaded with them to abandon the ideas of fascism, and to fear the horrors of war. It was a highly complex speech, which seemed to present the idea that any sort of government could become autocratic in time. It is probably one of the most powerful monologues ever given.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fMvLbE85E]

It also earned Chaplin powerful enemies. For the moment, he was so popular that he was untouchable, but it was around then that a campaign began to smear Chaplin. This smear campaign was made far more effective by events in the next few years.

When World War II concluded in 1945, Russia divided Germany in half and covered part of Europe in what has been metaphorically called the Iron Curtain. Suddenly many countries were forced into Communist rule, and Americans everywhere began to fear what that meant.

When this happened, the richest created a new message that would change the world. They stated that for a union to collectively bargain for better pay was communist. At the same time, they rushed to smear anyone involved with the Communist party as being the same sort of people who had divided Germany and Europe. They were not merely advocating for better wages for the middle class, they were also against America.

In 1941, only a few years before that message was to be delivered to the public, Chaplin was involved with a woman named Joan Barry. The next year she claimed to be pregnant with Chaplin's child, and he denied it. Barry filed a paternity suit against him.

Two weeks after the paternity suit was filed, Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O'Neil. He remained married with Oona O'Neil until his death, and had eight children over 18 years. Nonetheless, his marriage to such a young woman outraged many people at the time.

The director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, indicted him for violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of women across state boundaries for sexual. Historian Otto Friedrich called it an absurd prosecution of an ancient statute. He won the case, but it didn't make him any more popular in the eyes of the public.

The paternity suit finally went to court in 1945, after the end of World War II and when fear of communism was at its height. Chaplin then went through two trials over the issue of his paternity. A blood test proving that the child was not allowed as evidence in court, and eventually Chaplin was convicted and made to pay child support.

The late forties were not kind to the veteran actor. Chaplin was issued a subpoena to testify for the House on Unamerian Activities. The same year, they issued subpeonas to the Hollywood Ten, a group of scriptwriters and actors who were accused of writing work with Communist sympathies. That shouldn't have been a crime, but they were prepared to treat it as one.

The ten refused to testify and were held in contempt. Eventually they were arrested and jailed, and the Hollywood blacklist began. All the studios agreed to not hire anyone implicated by the Committee. Of the many named in the trials, only about ten percent were able to rebuild their careers after the scare was over.

Chaplin himself was served to appear before the committee, but never testified.

Representative John E. Rankin, who helped establish HUAC, said in June of 1947:

“Chaplin's very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America. If he is deported... his loathsome pictures can be kept from before the eyes of the American youth. He should be deported and gotten rid of at once."

Facing trumped up charges of public decency, Chaplin eventually moved to Switzerland. Though once the best known actor in the world, things changed so much that he had difficulty finding work at various times in his career.

While living in Europe, he made Limelight. Chaplin shared the stage with Buster Keaton for the first time. Buster Keaton was one of the other three geniuses of the silent film era. He had been out of work for longer than Chaplin, not having done anything since the end of silent films.

During the production of the movie, none of the other actors even knew who Buster Keaton was, and they were mystified at the great deference that Chaplin showed to Keaton, insisting that he get his own room and asking his opinion on many matters.

So great was the damage to Chaplin's reputation that Limelight was not seen in America for twenty years.

In 1972, Limelight was finally shown in Los Angeles. The Academy awards only consider films which had been shown in Los Angeles that year for the first time. Limelight received an Academy award. Chaplin attended the awards, and he received a twelve minute standing ovation, which so far as is known is the longest standing ovation anyone has ever received.

To me, Limelight has always represented the temporal nature of fame. Even the greatest among us can find themselves forgotten in a few years.

Sometimes, it happens for the pettiest of reasons.

The final irony in this story would be that Chaplin was not a Communist. He said that he didn't strongly believe in any form of government, but rather called himself a peacemonger.

Today I wrote of how the blacklist began. Next week I will write of how it ended.

I hope everyone has a good morning.