September 22, 2002

David Robinson’s 800-page biography is a meticulous, academic study of the life and times of “London’s most famous son”. Although it can be hard to describe verbally the comedic genius of Charlie Chaplin’s work, throughout the book, Robinson manages to do this so that you can easily visualize Chaplin as he appears on stage, trips up, and knocks into things.

But his quotes and references from many sources: personal correspondence, interviews (Stan Laurel describes him as “desperately shy”), reviews, other books on Chaplin, and Chaplin’s own My autobiography, help readers understand Chaplin’s personality and character. There are also 127 photographs and numerous line drawings from all stages of Chaplin’s life, which allow the reader to form an image of the man apart from his on-screen persona.

The first several chapters, though methodically researched and written, seem chaotic, but this is only because Chaplin’s early life was exactly that. Robinson chronicles Chaplin’s birth into a show business family living in a South London slum, with all this position’s instability and insecurity. Chaplin’s father left his family when Charlie was very young, and his mother suffered from severe mental illness, so Charlie and his half brother Sydney were shunted from one institution to another, causing him to lose out on a formal education.

The start of his career as a performer in a travelling boys’ troupe is equally chaotic, with Charlie making his way all over the country, then returning to London to play child’s parts in various ill-fated revues. The combination of acclaim and praises — for he was well-received — with the upheaval in his personal life form the roots for the future man whose art was such a mixture of comedy and melancholy. Yet the difficulties in Charlie’s life are explained coolly and unemotionally, because they speak for themselves — any attempt to comment on the tragicomedy of Chaplin’s early years is completely unnecessary.

As the book progresses, the reader is educated not just in Chaplin’s life, but in the world of the theatre, dance halls, and pantomime in early 1900’s London. Robinson shows how Chaplin derived inspiration by watching clowns, pantomime artists, and circus performers, as well as more serious actors. Finally Chaplin graduated to a somewhat higher level of performance when he joined the Karno Troupe, and got his chance to travel to America.

Chaplin made such an impression in America that he received his first film offer to join the Keystone Film Company. The description of Charlie’s work in films is just as much an education in the creation of movies and the life and times of old Hollywood as his work in theatre chronicled the atmospheres and politics of London stage-halls. Robinson faithfully depicts Charlie’s work from his first movie, “Making a living”, all the way up to his most famous film, “The gold rush”.

Through keen description and painstaking detail, we see the development of Chaplin’s work, his film persona, and the eccentricities of his character which marked him as unique from the rest of the film world — the Tramp was born during this time period. Robinson gives generous chapters to each of Chaplin’s big hits — “The gold rush”, “City lights”, “Modern times”, and “The great dictator”, in which the inspiration behind the film, the production, and the conflicts and triumphs of each are described in fascinating detail.

Although much has been written about the personal life of Charlie Chaplin — his many affairs, marriages to underaged actresses, and his four wives and many alliances in between — Robinson handles these episodes neither with fawning defensiveness nor judgmental disapproval, but mere objectivity. He even shows how personal events affected and inspired Chaplin’s work — for example, the death of Chaplin’s infant son with Mildred Harris inspired Chaplin to make the famous “The kid”. Yet Chaplin does seem to have handled his love life with great naivete, a fact which is again neither defended nor justified — merely observed.

Robinson thus follows Chaplin from the heights of acclaim — the making of “Modern times” and “The great dictator”, and the winning of a special Oscar for “The circus” — to the depths of exile, when Chaplin was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer and left the United States for good. These were difficult days spent in London and then Lausanne, balanced only by the domestic happiness he shared with fourth wife Oona O’Neill and their eight children.

It was during this time that Chaplin published his autobiography, which in itself is a treasure trove of personal experience and remembrances of his life.

After making his last film, “A countess from Hong Kong”, Charles Chaplin died in 1977, leaving behind a rich legacy of comedic, theatrical, and movie magic, as well as an enigmatic and mysterious personal life. Robinson’s biography is a great tool in helping to decipher all the facets of this artistic genius’s complex life, a man who had won the hearts of America and then earned its ignominy and ridicule. Atonement came, Robinson says, perhaps too late, in the words of American comedian Bob Hope: “We were fortunate to have lived in his time.”

Chaplin: his life and art
By David Robinson
Penguin Books. Available at Paramount Books, 152/O, Block 2, PECH Society, Karachi-75400
Tel: 021-4310030
Email: paramount@cyber.net.pk
ISBN 0-14-100038-4
892pp. £14.99
Price in Pakistan Rs595

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