A Woman Clippings 47/72
Sun, New York, August 22, 1915.
Charles Chaplin, Comedian of Movies, Had Sad Youth
(...) Three photos, Sun, New York, Aug. 22, 1915.
„Creeping off by myself at the poorhouse“
Editorial content. „Charlie Chaplin, Comedian
of Movies, Had Sad Youth
Remarkable Rise to Fame of Film
Character Whose Stork Step and
Falls Amuse Thousands Daily“ (...)
„There have been strange contrasts in the life of this
handsome, rather melancholy and sentimental
looking young man, who is scarcely recognizable under the
grotesque makeups in which he is known to the world.
His family came from England.“ (...)
„They were music hall performers of the kind to be seen
in the smaller provincial theatres of England and in the
Continental variety theatres, which are, as anybody who has
ever seen the programmes in these places can testify,
not of a high degree of fame. But it was reserved for this young
man to be carried to the glory on the fame of the cinema.“ (...)
„It was indeed as a substitute for his mother that the
present Charles Chaplin, then a child of 4, made his first stage appearance. It is a pathetic evidence of the mutual efforts
of the little family that when the mother was taken ill little Charles,
rather than disappoint the audience, was shoved on to sing
a coster ballad, by the name Jack Jones.
Then the dark days for the little family began.
Chaplin‘s father, never strong, exhausted by the travel and
the changes of temperature, fell ill and died. The support
of the little brood of two fell on the mother.
But she was heartbroken and she was ill. So there could
be no more singing of the ballads for a while. But the two
little ones had to live. So there was only one place in which without money or family they could enjoy the privilege of existence
on this earth.
That place was the workhouse. So there they went
to live, appalling as the mere idea of the workhouse is to all English. Whatever else there may have been in the life of Charles
Chaplin there, he could not be robbed of his dreams. So he lived
in the world of his own imagination, and even in the walls
of the workhouse that made him a person of great power and
position. Such he always pictured himself in his dreams.“ (...)
„He was especially fond of thinking himself a musician.“ (...)
Three photos.
The journalist of the Sun is re-writing Charlie Chaplin´s Story,
published in Photoplay July 1915:
„The very first thing I can remember is of being shoved
out on the stage to sing a song. I could not have been
over five or six years old at the time. My mother was taken
suddenly sick and I was sent on to take her place in the
vaudeville bill. I sang an old Coster song called Jack Jones.
It must have been about this time that my father died.
My mother was never very strong and, what with the shock of my
father‘s death and all, she was unable to work for a time.
My brother Syd and I were sent to the poorhouse.
English people have a great horror of the poorhouse; but
I don‘t remember it as a very dreadful place. To tell you
the truth, I don‘t remember much about it. I have just a vague
idea of what it was like.
The strongest recollection I have of this period
of my life is of creeping off by myself at the poorhouse and
pretending I was a very rich and grand person.“ (...)
„Music, even in my poorhouse days, was always a passion
with me.“
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