About a year ago, a woman who lived just a few miles from
me here in Ohio was reported to have died after living
114 years. 114 years! She would have been only one year
younger than Charlie Chaplin and it seems impossible to imagine
him alive today. I wonder what sort of commentary Chaplin
would have offered about our world today. . .
How must it feel to have your birthday reported
about in the daily newspaper? While we don’t know
much about Chaplin’s birth, except what he offered
at the start of My Autobiography (“I
was born on April 16th, 1889, at eight o’clock
at night in East Lane, Walworth”), we do have
some information about his subsequent birthdays.
Not all of them, of course, but enough of them
to make me wonder about how it felt for all the
world to know you were turning 50 or 75 or 80
and how you were spending the day.
One of the first accounts of Charlie Chaplin’s birthday
by the press is found in the Augusta
(Georgia) Chronicle on Tuesday, April
16, 1918. Charlie Chaplin had volunteered to tour the
southern states to promote the Liberty Loan Drive
and ended up in Augusta on his big day. While
he spent his day talking about bonds at Wells
Theatre and then chatting with patients at the
base hospital, at 5:30 in the evening Judge Henry
Hammond sponsored a birthday dinner for him at
the Country Club:
Red azaleas and mountain laurel were
arranged in most artistic fashion on a beautiful
table where covers were laid for eight.
The feature of the dinner was the presentation
of the birthday cake, which was a work of art
and upon which blazed merrily twenty-nine candles,
each of which seemed to be vying with the guest
of honor in brightness and sparkle. The cake
was made by Mrs. Harry Cabannis and was tremendously
admired and enjoyed by Mr. Chaplin and all present.
Clever toasts were offered by the genial host
and equally clever responses made by the guests.
Charlie Chaplin writes very
fondly of the Judge in My Autobiography,
whom he names Judge Henshaw. Although
over-tired from the tour and determined
not to celebrate his birthday, the judge
won him over with “ ‘What I like about
your comedy is your knowledge of fundamentals—you
know that the most dignified part of a
man’s anatomy is his arse, and your comedies
prove it. When you kick a portly gentleman
there, you strip him of all dignity. Even
the impressiveness of a Presidential inauguration
would collapse if you came up behind the
President and kicked him in the rear’”
(217).
Charlie’s 50th was a big event and
made all the papers. It’s probably no
coincidence that The Great Dictator
was about to be finished and such publicity
could only help the film. We can see
this strategy used even for Modern
Times. Cartoonist Feg Murray, famous
for the “Seeing Stars” cartoons that
appeared in newspapers, seems to have
commemorated Charlie Chaplin’s birthday almost
every year. In the one printed on his
birthday in 1935, showing Chaplin walking
away from us (from Sunnyside),
the caption is “Chaplin’s Back! Charlie’s
new picture “Production No. 5” will
be released next fall and is his first
effort in 4 ½ years. (Today is
Charlie’s Birthday.)” The cartoon for
his birthday in 1944 shows Charlie Chaplin slugging
boxer Benny Leonard.
Regardless of whether or not he had a picture
coming out, Charlie always taunted the
reporters hounding him on his birthday
with “plans” for another film. On his
60th, the New York Times reported
that “Charlie Chaplin plans to recreate
his famous bowler-hatted, cane-wielding
‘little man’ as the hero of his first
color film.” This is also the year he
posed for a publicity still in the shower,
to demonstrate that his daily cold shower
was his trick for staying so young and
fit. In 1954, he reported that his next
film would be a comparison of European
and American lifestyles, which turned out to be not far from the truth,
since A King in New York was
released in 1957.
Perhaps one of his most poignant birthday
parties took place at Pinewood Studios
in 1966 when Charlie was filming A
Countess from Hong Kong with Sophia
Loren, Marlon Brando, Tippi Hedren and
his son Sydney. The cast and crew presented
him with a five-foot birthday cake adorned
with the figure of the Little Tramp
on top of it. Chaplin told reporters,
“It’s a beautiful job. I’m tearful”
(New York Times).
It’s interesting to note just how many
of Charlie’s films premiered within
three or four days of his birthday and
several on the day itself. The Cure
was released on April 16, 1917 and Gold
Rush reissue on that day in 1942.
A Dog’s Life premiered on April
14, 1918, Sunnyside on April
15, 1919 and Monsieur Verdoux
on April 11, 1947. Can this be a coincidence?
Except for The Cure, I would
have to say that most of these films
may have given Charlie a few sleepless
nights before their release. A Dog’s
Life was his first film at the
new studio, Sunnyside came
out of one of the darkest periods of
Charlie’s career, the reissue of The
Gold Rush (a silent film with voice-over
narration) was risky at best, and Monsieur
Verdoux marked Charlie’s first
film without the Little Tramp. Perhaps
he was hoping that a bit of birthday
luck might make all the difference for
these films, but then again, when did
he ever shy away from a challenge? |
