Moments with Chaplin

Long before he made "The Gold Rush," "City Lights," and his other remarkable feature-length movies, Charlie Chaplin, on the strength of his one-reel and two-reel silent comedies, became the most famous person on earth. No statesman, president, king, general, athlete, or other artist was known to as many of the world's people as Chaplin. Not only his fame but also his popularity was without precedent and beyond comparison. Yet it was not really Chaplin who was known, it was the character he created and played, and into whom he poured everything he was, including his comic genius: the vagabond with the big shoes, the baggy pants, the short, pinched coat, the cane, the derby, the little moustache, the funny, flat-footed walk. This person, in fact, became the most widely-known imaginary character in all history. The Chaplin character had such overwhelming reality for us that it was difficult to think of him as having originated in another man's mind, as having been called forth by a man who, except in his art, was a man like other men: the "real" Charlie Chaplin, who had a wife and children, who was to spend his last twenty-five years living peacefully in an elegant old villa in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, who took pleasure in family occasions and in quiet times with friends. The private Chaplin was unknown to the public. In a sense, he wasn't believed to exist. The character he created had no name of his own, but he had an identity so vivid and powerful that he was able to take his creator's name and become, to the world, Charlie Chaplin. It's the real Chaplin whom Lillian Ross knew. With her uncanny ability to bring people to life on the printed page, she has fashioned a delicate, charming, illuminating, unforgettable portrait of Charlie Chaplin unlike anything else that has been written about this great and beloved man.