Charlie chaplin biography hda

Charlie Chaplin worked with a children's dance troupe before making his mark on the big screen.

Actor Douglas Fairbanks in A number of Fairbank's show-business colleagues visited here--among them Charlie.

His character "The Tramp" relied on pantomime and quirky movements to become an iconic figure of the silent-film era. Chaplin went on to become a director, making films such as City Lights and Modern Times , and co-founded the United Artists Corporation. Famous for his character "The Tramp," the sweet little man with a bowler hat, mustache and cane, Charlie Chaplin was an iconic figure of the silent-film era and was one of film's first superstars, elevating the industry in a way few could have ever imagined.

His father, a notorious drinker, abandoned Chaplin, his mother and his older half-brother, Sydney, not long after Chaplin's birth. That left Chaplin and his brother in the hands of their mother, a vaudevillian and music hall singer who went by the stage name Lily Harley. Chaplin's mother, who would later suffer severe mental issues and have to be committed to an asylum, was able to support her family for a few years.

But in a performance that would introduce her youngest boy to the spotlight, Hannah inexplicably lost her voice in the middle of a show, prompting the production manager to push the five-year-old Chaplin, whom he'd heard sing, onto the stage to replace her. Chaplin lit up the audience, wowing them with his natural presence and comedic angle at one point he imitated his mother's cracking voice.

But the episode meant the end for Hannah. Her singing voice never returned, and she eventually ran out of money. For a time, Chaplin and Sydney had to make a new, temporary home for themselves in London's tough workhouses. Armed with his mother's love of the stage, Chaplin was determined to make it in show business himself, and in , using his mother's contacts, he landed with a clog-dancing troupe named the Eight Lancashire Lads.

It was a short stint, and not a terribly profitable one, forcing the go-getter Chaplin to make ends meet any way he could. Eventually, other stage work did come his way. Chaplin made his acting debut as a pageboy in a production of Sherlock Holmes.