Chaplin: A Life in Film by Stephen Weissman

From the Publisher

An Authoritative new biography of the greatest cinematic comedian of all time

Born in London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin grew up in dire poverty. Both his parents were in show business, but his father's flourishing career was cut short by severe alcoholism, and his beloved mother first lost her voice, then lost her mind to syphilis. Even when both his parents were alive, Charlie at age seven was committed to the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. It was, he remembered, the most unhappy period of his life. How then did this poor, lonely, and utterly miserable child become such an extraordinary comedian, known and celebrated worldwide?

Chaplin cut his teeth as a youngster in British music halls, where he honed his art both as a slapstick comic and in serious theater. But it was America that made him. At the age of twenty-five, he was touring here with a vaudeville troupe when his talents caught the eye of entertainment entrepreneur Mack Sennett of the Keystone Film Studio, who spirited him off to California and signed him to a film contract. Chaplin rapidly because Sennett's star comedian, and as the burgeoning film industry prospered, his fame grew with it. By the age of twenty-eight, Chaplin had become a millionaire and arguably the world's greatest celebrity.

Stephen Weissmann traces Chaplin's life and the sources of his genius in fascinating detail, demonstrating how his tragic childhood shaped his personality and his art. Infamous for his politics and his scandalous sex life -- both of which Weissman contextualizes and analyzes -- Chaplin was a much more complex and contradictory character than has hitherto been known. Weissman brilliantlyilluminates both the screen legend and the turbulent era through which he lived and worked.

Publishers Weekly

Weissman, professor at the Washington School of Psychiatry, examines Charlie Chaplin's life and work from a psychoanalytical perspective. Believing in "using a life to read a film and a film to read a life," Weissman focuses on Chaplin's childhood and early career, giving scant attention to his later adult life. Most telling is the relationship with his mother. Her madness, brought on by starvation and syphilis, Weissman believes, manifests itself in Chaplin's films with a recurring theme: the rescue of a downtrodden female. For example, City Lights is a "childhood rescue fantasy" of saving his parents, while Limelight is filled with references to his alcoholic father. Weissman uncovers the source for the "shabby gentility" of the Little Tramp, as well as the development of that extraordinary character. En route, he paints an engaging if narrowly focused portrait of how a cinema artist is created and how he practices his craft. (Jan.)

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• Table of Contents
• Forewords & Introductions

Table of Contents

Forewords & Introductions

Introduction

A few years ago I received a phone call from an acquaintance I had made at a film festival, resulting in the following conversation:
"You might want to check this out. Some cocky young author has written an article about your father insinuating that your grandmother was a doxy."
"A what?"
"A chippy, a tart, a . . . houri!"
"What?"
"Oh! And that she had syphilis."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah, well, I put it in the post for you. Check it out."
I had dinner with my stepson that night. I told him, "Apparently some jerk has published an article calling my grandmother a syphilitic whore!"
My stepson was non-plussed and practical: "Well, get in touch with whoever wrote it, thank him for the information, then tell him that by the way, your grandmother worked in the same establishment as his grandmother, his mother, his sisters, aunts, and all his female cousins!!!"
The article arrived in the mail a few days later. Its cocky young author turned out to be a notable psychoanalyst, Stephen Weissman, M.D. The article was riveting and perceptive and diligently researched. (It has since been published in Richard Schickel's The Essential Chaplin.) It also rang true. I was duly shocked. I was intrigued.
I phoned a friend who is the "Central Intelligence authority" on who is doing what on Chaplin-the Langley of Chapliniana. I asked him if he had heard of Steve Weissman.
"Weissman? The shrink? Sure have! He's had your father on the couch for years!" A posthumous psychoanalysis of my father? Oh dear! "He's doing a book. Something special. Big-time, if you ask me."
To make a long story short, I contacted Dr. Weissman, who confirmed that he was writing a bookand promised to send it to me when it was finished. He kept his promise and here is the book.
It is unlike anything that has ever been written about my father. Weissman weaves a psychologically astute narrative of Chaplin's life and art, brilliantly exploring the relationships between experience and creativity.
A mixture of gritty social history, romance, and medical science, the book begins with Weissman dissecting Chaplin's parents' tempestuous courtship and disastrous marriage, coming to surprising conclusions. He then takes us into the world of the Victorian music hall. He is an expert, giving wonderful anecdotes about George Leybourne, Alfred Peck Stevens (the Great Vance), Joe Saunders, the male impersonators Vesta Tilly, Nellie Power, Ella Shields. He brings to life the streets of South London, the grim Hanwell orphanage, and finally, with a fresh insight, the Hollywood of the teens and the twenties.
Did Chaplin spin personal tragedy into universal comedy, creating the Little Tramp as a parody and a memorialization of his alcoholic father? Are Chaplin's film heroines sublimated, half-remembered, half-repressed memories of his tragic and adored mother? Weissman probes into the psychological explanation of the closest human bonds. It is uncanny how intuitively correct a trained outside investigator's conclusions can turn out to be.
This book, always provocative and at times heart-wrenching, is an enlightening read, an important addition to an understanding of my father's genius and art, and a unique meditation on the mystery of creativity.

-Geraldine Chaplin