Charlie Chaplin

On Thursday, I did a project on Charlie Chaplin, where I dressed up like the famous movie star, and presented a Powerpoint presentation on his life.

On April 16th, 1889, Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on East Street in Walworth, London, England to Hannah and Charles Sr. Both of Chaplin’s parents were singers and actors on the vaudeville stage. Charlie’s Dad, Charles Sr. left the Chaplin home before Charlie was three. Charlie, and his older half-brother Sydney, were raised solely by Hannah. It was very tough for Hannah, Charlie and Syd. Charlie and Sydney were placed in a workhouse, while Hannah suffered from depression in a mental institution. The Chaplin family was very, very poor, but Sydney and Charlie were very talented!
Charlie and Sydney were found by Fred Karno, a well known vaudevillian performer, and were asked to join his troupe and tour America. At first, Sydney was the star for Karno – he was older and not as much of a gamble. But Charlie emerged as a comedian early into the tour. Charlie and Sydney were apart of the Karno Troupe until 1913, when Charlie was asked to star in his first feature film, Making a Living, produced by Mack Sennett and the Keystone Film Company. Chaplin had a very difficult time converting from the stage to the screen, and Sennett was convinced that he had made a huge mistake in hiring him.
Luckily, another director disagreed. Charlie was placed in the hands of Mable Normand, a female director, who directed Charlie in the first of his “Tramp” films. Charlie’s first “Tramp” film was the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice, in which Charlie made the Little Tramp character famous.
Charlie said, “I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small, and the shoes large….I added a small moustache, which I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was.”
Charlie not only made the little tramp character famous, he also gained creative control of his movies. He acted in, composed, wrote and directed most of his subsequent films. Some films where he played the Little Tramp were The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), and City Lights (1931).
But as Charlie was perfecting his roles both on and off the screen, the film industry moved to a new platform: talkies. To audiences, it didn’t seem like Chaplin had difficulty switching genres. Two of Chaplin’s most important works were talkies, although talking in these films were limited. The films that brought Chaplin’s talkie era to success were Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator(1940).
After The Great Dictator, Chaplin wanted to move away from comedy, and into more serious roles. He produced Monsieur Verdox (1947), and Limelight (1952), the former being a black comedy about a serial killer, and the latter being a tale of an older actor no longer in his prime. Neither reached critical nor commercial success.
Chaplin died in 1977 in Switzerland of old age. But he will forever be remembered as the most famous silent film actor of all time.

Vocabulary
Genre (noun) - a theme or type of movie
Vaudville (noun) - a theatre type from the early 20th Century, with lots of singing and dancing.
Comedian (noun) - someone who makes people laugh as their job.
Director (noun) - a person who tells the actors in a film what to do
Compose (verb) - to write music
Talkies (noun) - after silent films, talkies included the characters speaking


Fill in the blanks!
1. My favorite ______________ of movie are horror movies!
2. Jerry Seinfeld was a famous _____________ who created the TV show, Seinfeld.
3. The _____________ of Avatar was James Cameron.
4. The first ____________ movie that Chaplin produced was Modern Times.
5. My grandfather was performed in _________________; he was great at entertaining others!
6. I'm trying to ____________ my first symphony!


Grammar Point
In the above paragraph, I used the structure "Neither___________ nor ___________." "Nor" can only be used with "neither," (so you can't write "Neither _________ or _______"). This structure is used to say not one thing, or not another thing.


Now, you try!
If you could do a biography on a famous person, who would it be! Why don't you write a short essay on a biography on someone you're interested in!



PS: That's me as Chaplin in the picture!