There were Charlie Chaplin lucky charms and Charle Chaplin coins to be used in slot machines. . . on prominent display in most of the department stores of the country. Soon there were “Chaplin dolls and Chaplin toys, Chaplin hats and Chaplin ties, Chaplin socks and squirt-rings, Chaplin playing cards and Chaplin lapel pins. He is shabby and plaintive, but unbowed he is endlessly resourceful and adaptable he is always being impeded but never defeated he is bowed but not broken.” He can be both coy and malevolent, for example, at the same time. But let Peter Ackroyd, the author of a compact new biography of Chaplin, sum up what made the actor and director so appealing: “an irrepressible optimism and jauntiness in ‘the cruel, cruel world.’ He is infinitely expressive, with almost every conceivable human emotion passing over his face in quicksilver rapidity. The character he played in most of his early films was known as the “Little Fellow” or the “Tramp” - a benign, impish apparition in rags and a too-small bowler hat, his feet turned outward, making balletic use of the cane he clearly does not need, brimming with smirks and sentiment. By the time the year was over, Chaplin had 36 films to his credit, ranging from a few minutes to a little over one hour in duration, and he was well on the way to becoming the most famous and beloved person on the planet. At the beginning of 1914, a young British vaudevillian named Charles Spencer Chaplin joined Mack Sennett’s Keystone Comedy Company to make a series of silent movies.

Charles chaplin my autobiography