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The Circus Clippings 340/376

New York Times, New York, August 30, 1928.

Charlie Chaplin‘s One Great Love

      With His Mother, the Most Splendid Comedian in the

      World Buried His Heart

      By Dorothy Donnell

      The other day a little man with black hair, thickly streaked

with grey, stood beside a grave. He was as lonely in his

sorrow as he was lonely in his struggles and his success.

(...) Motion Picture, Dec. 1928

„He thought she was a miracle“

Editorial content. „OLD LONDON FRIENDS

      MOURN MRS. CHAPLIN

      „Charlie Worshiped Her,“ Former Lambeth Actor Declares,

      Recalling Early Days.

      LIVED FOR HER VISITS HOME

      Family Friend Tells How

      Comedian as a Boy Showed Genius for Burlesque.“ (...)

      LONDON, Aug. 29. – The mother of Charles

Chaplin will nowhere be more sincerely mourned than

in Lambeth, that London district across the Thames

in the alleys of which the great comedian used to play

as a schoolboy.

      ,Poor lad, he worshiped her. Charlie will be a mournful

man today,‘ was the comment of Dan Lipton, who

now keeps a barber shop in Lambeth, but who once was

a music hall singer and knew the Chaplin family well.

      ,We never saw much of Mrs. Chaplin,‘ he said today,

,but heard a lot about her from Charlie. She was

a music hall singer known as Lily Harley, a serio-comic,

and she had married Charlie Chaplin, a clever

comedian who never did as well as he deserved. Their

son Syd took to the stage as soon as he was

old enough to work, and then there was Charlie, a slip

of a dark-haired, dark-eyed lad, who had to fend

for himself while his parents were away on tour in the

country.

      ,In those days I had a room in Walcot Gardens.

In the evenings when we were trying to work,

the kids in the court below used to make such a hubbub

that we could not get on. When I looked out, there

was that lad as un-self-conscious as when he did the ocean

roll in The Gold Rush with an audience around him.

I used to jump down flights of stairs furious, and then I would

listen. The boy was the most marvelous mimic

I ever saw.

      ,Mother Was Charlie‘s Ideal.‘

      ,When he saw me he would say, ,Ladies and gentlemen,

a slight impression of the bloke upstairs who comes

down to chase us,‘ and as I listened my face grew red and

I knew the Kid was a genius.

      ,When Syd was home from touring they lived together

in some room or other in Lambeth. Their parents

worked a combination act and when they were home

together Charlie was alway with his mother, and

we would see neither of them for a while. He thought no one

who ever lived was like his mother. The lad thought

she was the cleverest player in the world, a great lady and

his ideal.

      ,When he became the famous Charlie Chaplin and

not the little boy of Lambeth, it was still the same.

As soon as he was a success, with money such as he had

never dreamed of in Lambeth, he sent for his mother.

      ,There never was a creature less essentially a jester

than Charlie. He is a comedian in spite of himself.

He was a tragedian even when he was making Casey‘s Court

roll in the gutter with laughing, and it was always ,Fagan

in the condemned cell‘ that he liked doing best.

      Agent Missed His Chance.

      ,His mother was away in the halls one night, when an agent

came to see me who wanted a funny man. I showed

him Charlie. The kid Chaplin, with a gallery of urchins around

him, was doing Macbeth, the World‘s Greatest Magician,

Bransby Williams and David Copperfield one after another in the

courtyard, and each was the funniest and most penetrating

burlesque I ever saw.

      ,The agent laughed, but said: ,That‘s all right for the

alleys, but the child would be frightened to death in a full-sized

theatre.‘

      ,Well, friend,‘ I replied, ,some day you will wonder if you

were blind tonight.‘

      ,Later I got Charlie a job in a burlesque act in a circus.

When I saw his film The Circus, they said it was full

of new tricks. It was not. All the tricks, the tragi-comedy shades,

the touches of genius – I had seen them years ago.

      ,He used to spend every halfpenny he had on gallery

seats, and his mother got him into the theatre to watch her. He

thought she was a miracle.

      ,The roving player‘s life meant that after Syd was making

his own way, Charlie was left here in rooms. It was not

an easy life for the boy and Charlie was at heart a melancholy

lad. His mother‘s visits to the home were the events

the child lived for and cherished.“

      Syd is Charles Chaplin‘s half-brother.

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