And quite rightly: he was the first authentic world genius produced by the film industry, a superstar whose career started in the tough world of London music hall in the 1890s and only finally ended in 1967 when he directed his last film (starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren).
As the child of an alcoholic father and an insane mother, who was brought up in acute poverty and who was at one stage dumped in the Lambeth workhouse, Chaplin through his career reminded us of the serial humiliations visited on those at the bottom of the human heap.
Some of his work in silent movies was sentimental, but at his best he could perform that amazing trick of making you laugh and cry at one and the same time.
Yet much of his long working life was bedevilled by controversy and nastiness. Establishment figures disliked his satirical edge; there was often a component of political satire in his work. He was always a man of the left and some never forgave him for that. In Britain, the Tory government of 1956 prevented him receiving a knighthood and, even when he was at last knighted in 1975, thanks to the intervention of Harold Wilson, it was not a universally acclaimed honour.
Dilys Powell, in her account of his career in the British Dictionary of National Biography, put it well: “The miseries of his childhood, combined with the triumph of his maturity, gave him the confidence to attack the society which had fostered him, and inevitably he was attacked as a result”.
He was also attacked for his treatment of women. His first three marriages ended in rancour, and he was accused of preying on young women.
Charlie Chaplin is in the news again this week. It has been decided that the international museum that will celebrate his vast contribution to global entertainment will be sited in Switzerland.
It’s sad that this important museum will not be in Britain, but then Chaplin’s childhood in London was rotten and he was never really at ease in the UK, though he did enjoy holidaying in Scotland – particularly at Nairn – in the evening of his life.
He and his fourth wife, Oona (daughter of the great American playwright Eugene O’Neill), eventually found happiness and repose in Switzerland, although after he died a gang of Swiss hooligans dug up his corpse and tried to sell it.
Chaplin was blessed with an amazing variety of skills. He not only acted in films, he directed them, wrote them, choreographed them and composed the music. His autobiography, published in 1964, is exceptionally well written. The account of his early years in south London is unbearably moving and this wonderful book should be better known.
Also underestimated was his musical talent. His first stage appearance, when he was five, was as a singer. Petula Clark’s interpretation of his composition This Is My Song topped the charts in 1967.
His early days in the music hall took him all over Britain, sometimes working with Stan Laurel, before they left for the US to work with Fred Karno. Chaplin played the Tivoli in Aberdeen in 1906, and this later proved useful for my former Herald colleague Jack Webster. When Jack was working for the Scottish Daily Express, an Aberdeenshire contact tipped him that Charlie and Oona had booked into a hotel on Deeside. The hotel refused to verify this but Jack booked himself in, and then sure enough the Chaplins arrived.
Charlie, scarred by unfortunate experiences with world’s press, was not disposed to give Jack an interview until Jack produced his copy of Chaplin’s autobiography and asked him to sign it. That broke the ice, and the atmosphere really thawed when Jack reminded him of his appearance at the Tivoli. Chaplin indicated that he wanted to revisit it, and off they went. At least Scotland had good memories for this king of entertainers.
