Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy. And something you
Speaker 1: may not know is that Sarah and I are actually
Speaker 1: friends in real life. And we had a class together
Speaker 1: in college with one of our very favorite professors, Dr
Speaker 1: Hubert mc alexander. And that's where I was introduced to
Speaker 1: the poet Heart Crane. And Crane had a fascination with
Speaker 1: a certain cinema star so much that he wrote a
Speaker 1: poem about him and once had the chance to meet
Speaker 1: him where they partied till dawn. And if you're wondering
Speaker 1: who this man was, he is a listener favorite. We've
Speaker 1: gotten so many requests for Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin was
Speaker 1: known to us for his Little Tramp character, which PBS
Speaker 1: is American Masters described as a well meaning man in
Speaker 1: a raggedy suit with hane always found himself wobbling into
Speaker 1: awkward situations and miraculously wobbling away. He was also known
Speaker 1: for being a perfectionist to the point of complete control freak,
Speaker 1: and possibly the greatest actor ever. So let's get to
Speaker 1: know our man Charlie Chaplin was born at Charles Spencer
Speaker 1: Chaplin in London on April six, eighteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: his mother, Hannah, was an actress who was also mentally
Speaker 1: ill um She had some bizarre stories about her her
Speaker 1: life pre Chaplain. She had one about eloping with this
Speaker 1: lord and living on a South African plantation, which is
Speaker 1: how she got Charles's half brother, Sydney. But whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: it's maybe true, maybe not, but either way she ended
Speaker 1: up marrying one Charles Chaplin, who was a singer, shortly
Speaker 1: after Sydney was born, which was a bit of a
Speaker 1: scandal to his family and our Charlie Chaplin didn't think
Speaker 1: this Chaplain was his father for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: and indeed Hannah did have a weakness for affairs with men,
Speaker 1: so who knows. But they separated when he was young,
Speaker 1: and although the couple had been successful for a time,
Speaker 1: both on the stage, they ended up very poor. They
Speaker 1: weren't even sleeping in beds. His mom turned to evangelical
Speaker 1: religion and wasn't very good with money, and his father
Speaker 1: was alcoholic and estranged, and that at giving them money.
Speaker 1: So the boys, little Sydney and Charles end up in
Speaker 1: a workhouse, and Chaplin later said it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 1: He just daydreamed about being in parliament. But from there
Speaker 1: he moves on to an orphanage where they really try
Speaker 1: to crush his spirit. So they ended up in more workhouses,
Speaker 1: and then living with their father, the drunk, and then
Speaker 1: living with their mother in bad circumstances, basically his dirty
Speaker 1: little ragmuffins. So you have to picture him here. You know,
Speaker 1: he's once part of the middle class with a very
Speaker 1: successful father, and then he's poor and ashamed of his
Speaker 1: poverty with a semi famous hollic father who didn't really
Speaker 1: support them and died when he was young. And then
Speaker 1: we also have a mother who loved him but couldn't
Speaker 1: take care of him and spent a lot of her
Speaker 1: time in mental hospitals. So this is where Charlie Chaplin
Speaker 1: came from. And uh, kind of like some of our
Speaker 1: vaudeville stars we mentioned earlier, these the sad kind of
Speaker 1: childhood eventually drives the kids to the stage, and young
Speaker 1: Charlie was a clog dancer with the Eight Lancashire Lads,
Speaker 1: which is a great way to enter show business. I
Speaker 1: think he also learned a lot about pantomime, but his
Speaker 1: break came through his brother's sid He played a role
Speaker 1: in Jim, a romance of Cockaine, and then in a
Speaker 1: touring play Sherlock Holmes. He played a cockney boy in both.
Speaker 1: But by the time he was seventeen, he had hit
Speaker 1: that uh kind of rough period for a child star.
Speaker 1: You know, too old to play kids parts, too young
Speaker 1: to play adults, and we know how that usually turns out.
Speaker 1: But he manages to pull through, and he ends up
Speaker 1: in a production called Casey's Were to Circus, and that's
Speaker 1: where he accidentally discovered how to be funny. He came
Speaker 1: out on stage very serious and had this serious rendition
Speaker 1: planned of the role he wanted to play, but everything
Speaker 1: went wrong. His hat fell down over his face and
Speaker 1: he dropped things, and he realized that you laugh because
Speaker 1: it's unexpected. Those little nervous shocks make you laugh. And
Speaker 1: soon enough he's on the vaudeville stage and he makes
Speaker 1: his way to the United States where he becomes a star,
Speaker 1: and famous words from the head of his touring company,
Speaker 1: Fred Carnot, where keep it wistful, gentleman, Keep it wistful.
Speaker 1: And that's something that when he he does forget that,
Speaker 1: his career kind of goes astray, right, but that later
Speaker 1: becomes such a part of the Tramp character, making it
Speaker 1: funny but but sweet. And he gained this reputation for
Speaker 1: being eccentric, but that didn't keep him from being signed
Speaker 1: with Max Sennett and Keystone Studios, which is where he
Speaker 1: would start making film. And he never thought that he'd
Speaker 1: stay in film. He thought it was a bit of
Speaker 1: a fad that would go out of style. But he
Speaker 1: starts acting and his first film experience isn't what he expected.
Speaker 1: He thought movies would be like a stage blow. You
Speaker 1: would act it out in front of a camera, you know,
Speaker 1: film the whole thing and then start to finish. That
Speaker 1: would be it. But of course that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: You film things out of order, some of it's done
Speaker 1: very quickly, and he was really disconcerted by the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So in this film, he basically just fell off a ladder.
Speaker 1: No one thought he was very good, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to quit, but of course he doesn't. And he thinks
Speaker 1: of the character the Tramp. And remember that Chaplin had
Speaker 1: a lot of experience with a shift in class, you know,
Speaker 1: going from respectable middle class to living in the workhouse,
Speaker 1: and he tries to to keep some dignity in his
Speaker 1: portrayal of being poor. So the Tramp from years in
Speaker 1: Mabel's Strange Predicament, which is actually a pretty risque film,
Speaker 1: and his early work is Super two said you wouldn't
Speaker 1: he it's not the tramp that you would think of
Speaker 1: it entirely unlikable character in those early ones. But to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of what his workpace was like,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen alone, he made thirty five short films,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty crazy. And again he wasn't used
Speaker 1: to how this whole system worked, which is part of
Speaker 1: the reason that made him so hard to work with.
Speaker 1: He was very resistant to direction, incredibly picky about how
Speaker 1: shots were set up, and he wanted constant reshoots, which
Speaker 1: was really expensive and just not the way that things
Speaker 1: were done. But he does work on developing his comedy,
Speaker 1: bringing more empathy to it, and in nineteen fifteen he
Speaker 1: leaves Keystone for a higher salary with a company called
Speaker 1: sen A, and he leaves them for way more money
Speaker 1: at the mutual company Film Corporation. His annual salary is
Speaker 1: six hundred and seventy thousand dollars. But we want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about what he was like
Speaker 1: to work with. As we mentioned for he was very demanding,
Speaker 1: obsessed with every tiny detail and every actor's performance. He
Speaker 1: wanted to walk through every scene and criticize what you
Speaker 1: were doing. He took hundreds of takes and fired actors
Speaker 1: right in the middle of things. But of course it
Speaker 1: paid off because his films were great. He also did
Speaker 1: a lot of improvisation on a bare bones script, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool, and according to Time, he was the
Speaker 1: first and to date the last person to control every
Speaker 1: aspect of the filmmaking process, founding his own studio united
Speaker 1: Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and d W Griffith
Speaker 1: in producing, casting, directing, writing, scoring, and editing the movies
Speaker 1: he started. So that's that's Those are some big shoes
Speaker 1: to the One Man Band. He was described as very
Speaker 1: intense and self absorbed by most of the people who
Speaker 1: knew him. That he was also very sweet and his
Speaker 1: comedy was smart. Again. According to PBS's American Masters, for Chaplin,
Speaker 1: the best way to locate the humor or pathos of
Speaker 1: a stuation was to create an environment and walk around
Speaker 1: it until something natural happened. And that's a really good
Speaker 1: way of summing up a lot of his films, and
Speaker 1: we should talk about some of his most famous pictures.
Speaker 1: Chaplain's first feature film was The Kid from nineteen one,
Speaker 1: where most of us know that plot. A woman abandons
Speaker 1: her baby plans to kill herself, but she ends up
Speaker 1: becoming an opera star and always looking for her son
Speaker 1: and the Tramp has been raising the baby all along, surprise,
Speaker 1: and it's a huge hit and really kicks off his
Speaker 1: film career. Another biggie is The gold Rush n and
Speaker 1: this was the film that he said he wanted to
Speaker 1: be remembered for. It's often considered his masterpiece. He made
Speaker 1: it with United Artists, and the plot is that he's
Speaker 1: the Tramp again, this time during the gold rush in Alaska.
Speaker 1: He falls in love and there's a famous scene where
Speaker 1: he eats his own boot for Thanksgiving dinner, which he
Speaker 1: carves and shares with the Big Jim Carrot Her. You
Speaker 1: can see this clip on TCM dot com if you
Speaker 1: search for it. I was thinking hot ham Water might
Speaker 1: be better, but nobody asks. This is actually the film
Speaker 1: that I watched for a third grade class project, I'm
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, which I also made a clay sculpture that
Speaker 1: my dad still has. And you discovered that the movie
Speaker 1: Chaplin was perhaps not properly good for like an eight
Speaker 1: year old kid, but the gold rushes. And his next
Speaker 1: big film was City Lights in nineteen thirty and in
Speaker 1: this one, the tramp helps cure a blind girl of
Speaker 1: her blindness and he's in love, but once she sees
Speaker 1: who he is, she isn't. And this is called by
Speaker 1: some the most romantic seen in film history. And this
Speaker 1: one was a compromise between the silent movies and the talkies.
Speaker 1: He held out for a long time in the silent
Speaker 1: film and did well. It was a good bet. And
Speaker 1: in this one he didn't talk, but there was music
Speaker 1: and sound effects, so it was kind of easing into
Speaker 1: the idea. Yeah, he finally spoke in The Great Dictator
Speaker 1: from nineteen forty and he played two roles, a tramp
Speaker 1: like Jewish barber and a Hitler figure named Adnoid Hinkel.
Speaker 1: And to give a little context, this is when a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought that maybe we should try to
Speaker 1: work with Hitler, and according to Roger Ebert, it prophesied
Speaker 1: the persecution of the Jews and the scenes of stormtroopers
Speaker 1: terrorizing the ghetto or thought at the time to go
Speaker 1: too far. What a sad joke that seems today. And
Speaker 1: in one scene, the Hankel character tries to rip up
Speaker 1: a bunch of spaghetti, saying that's how he'll destroy his enemies,
Speaker 1: but he can't actually do it. It is a very
Speaker 1: cruel satire and very spot on. He's a wholly unlikable character,
Speaker 1: and the film starts off with this quote. This is
Speaker 1: the story of the period between two world wars and interim,
Speaker 1: during which insanity cut loose, liberty took a nose dive,
Speaker 1: and humanity was kicked around somewhat. And Chaplin was very political,
Speaker 1: as we'll learn a little bit later in the podcast.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty seven he changed characters dramatically and Monsieur
Speaker 1: verdou he didn't play the tramp and instead he played
Speaker 1: a serial killer, actually one who marries women and kills
Speaker 1: them for their insurance money to support his own family,
Speaker 1: so basically a total blue beard. The concept was actually
Speaker 1: orson Wells's idea and based on a real French serial
Speaker 1: killer on real and Drew, but the film did not
Speaker 1: go over well. And around this time Chaplain was embroiled
Speaker 1: in a paternity suit and considered a communist, and there
Speaker 1: was all this controversy and people didn't like him playing
Speaker 1: somebody who wasn't the Tramp. No. My favorite contemporary review
Speaker 1: just started with Chaplin generates little sympathy. It's very dry
Speaker 1: and cracked me up. It is a very dark film.
Speaker 1: One line from Al river Do in the film says,
Speaker 1: wars conflict. It's all business. One murder makes a villain,
Speaker 1: millions a hero, numbers sanctify my good fellow. So it
Speaker 1: was anti war and it's also known as being an
Speaker 1: anti capitalist film, which seven not a good time for
Speaker 1: the ihole. And as far as his personal life goes,
Speaker 1: it was a bit messy, to say the least. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen he married a sixteen year old Mildred Harris.
Speaker 1: That didn't last, and in nineteen twenty four he married
Speaker 1: another teenager, Lida Gray, with whom he had a very
Speaker 1: bitter divorce. It's possible that their story inspired Lolita. According
Speaker 1: to the biographer who wrote Tramp, The Life of Charlie Chaplin,
Speaker 1: Joyce Milton, and I got some very good details from
Speaker 1: her book. He has another marriage to Paulett Goddard, and
Speaker 1: she describes him as being difficult but charming and that
Speaker 1: genius can be rather difficult to live with. And he
Speaker 1: has several affairs, including one with Poland Negri, who Katie's
Speaker 1: interested in. I really like her, and she wrote about
Speaker 1: it in Memoirs of a Star. And you might remember
Speaker 1: a mention from our William Hurst podcast about him being
Speaker 1: on the yacht with Marian Davies when there was that
Speaker 1: mysterious murder, and that per hops he was having an
Speaker 1: affair with Davy maybe, but he also had a fraternity
Speaker 1: suit with Joan Barry and this is so strange. But
Speaker 1: the child was proven not to actually be his, you know,
Speaker 1: according to blood evidence, but blood evidence wasn't admissible in court,
Speaker 1: so the court makes him pay, and then a second
Speaker 1: trial happens where the exact same thing goes down. You know,
Speaker 1: they find it's not his child, but he still has
Speaker 1: to pay. So paying for someone else's babyest to hurt
Speaker 1: a little bit. But the American public did not approve
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, or his womanizing in general. And
Speaker 1: that's not all they didn't approve of. He had some
Speaker 1: very lefty politics and he was investigated by the House
Speaker 1: an American Activities Committee for being a supposed Communist sympathizer
Speaker 1: for some things he said during World War Two. He
Speaker 1: thought we should help the Soviet Union on a second front,
Speaker 1: and people didn't like that. He hadn't seen service during
Speaker 1: World War two, or at least gone on some sort
Speaker 1: of entertainment tour. A lot of the stars at the
Speaker 1: time did, and j Edgar Hoover kept a two thousand
Speaker 1: page dossier on him and had his name down as
Speaker 1: Israel Fonstein, a Jew, which brings us to a question
Speaker 1: that's been asked many times whether he was Jewish or not.
Speaker 1: During his own time, he wouldn't say yes or no,
Speaker 1: because he said that would be playing into anti Semite hands.
Speaker 1: But his political views were so controversial that after he
Speaker 1: went to London from one of his premiers, he wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed back into the United States. So he became a
Speaker 1: little bitter about this incident, a little disenchanted with the US,
Speaker 1: and he moved to Switzerland. But you know, it's not
Speaker 1: a terribly unhappy ending. In Switzerland, he marries Una O'Neill,
Speaker 1: who is the playwright Eugene O'Neill's daughter when he's in
Speaker 1: his fifties and she's eighteen. He really does have a
Speaker 1: thing for teenagers, but they're quite happy together. They live
Speaker 1: in Switzerland and they have eight children. And he does
Speaker 1: end up returning to the US for an honorary Oscar
Speaker 1: and he gets a twelve minute ovation which is to
Speaker 1: record the longest ovation at the Oscars, and he ended
Speaker 1: up being knighted by the Queen in England. But he
Speaker 1: died Christmas Day in nineteen seventy seven and his body
Speaker 1: was stolen from his Swiss cemetery by thieves. It was
Speaker 1: later returned and reburied, but still exhumation. In our podcast
Speaker 1: Exhamation and Dreams. And to end where we started, we'll
Speaker 1: give you a quote from Hart Crane's chaplain esque. We
Speaker 1: will side step and to the final smirk, dally the
Speaker 1: doom of that inevitable thumb that slowly chafes its puckered
Speaker 1: index toward us facing the dull squint with what innocence
Speaker 1: and what surprise? And that brings us to our listener
Speaker 1: mail today. This is an email from James who was
Speaker 1: on his way to Vienna when he wrote us. He
Speaker 1: did mention that our podcast keeps him from losing his
Speaker 1: mind at work and called us saints. But Sant Katie
Speaker 1: I like that. Yeah, Thank Katie and St. Sarah. But
Speaker 1: um he did write in your podcast on the Book
Speaker 1: of Kells you incorrectly said that the Latin Vulgate Bible
Speaker 1: is the basis for English translations today. Though it was
Speaker 1: a key source for the King James version translated in
Speaker 1: sixteen eleven, most of the King James version, as well
Speaker 1: as all modern Bible translations, used the Greek in Hebrew
Speaker 1: text as primary sources. The first English translation made by
Speaker 1: John Wycliffe was a translation of the Vulgate into English
Speaker 1: in two So a little more background information for those
Speaker 1: monks scribbling away of the Book of Kills, and if
Speaker 1: you like to email us any corrections or comments or suggestions,
Speaker 1: It's history podcast at how stuff works dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also follow us on Twitter at misst in history
Speaker 1: or join our Facebook fan page. But we'd like to
Speaker 1: end with an interesting side note about our buddy Chaplin.
Speaker 1: His films might be good for your health. To completely
Speaker 1: exaggerate the claims of one study in the study, breastfeeding
Speaker 1: mothers watching Chaplin films laughed quite a bit, which upped
Speaker 1: their melotona levels and decreased their babies allergic responses. So
Speaker 1: Reno chaplain and if you're interested in learning a little
Speaker 1: more about that, we have an article called does Breastfeeding
Speaker 1: Make Better Babies? By our own Molly Edmunds of Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You, and you can search for it
Speaker 1: on our homepage at www dot house stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
Speaker 1: out the stuff you missed in History Glass Blog on
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