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 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, IICommunity Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India PenguinBooks (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, NewZealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com 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.
