Who does Chaplin say is truly happy? Love is blind

Charlie Chaplin was one of the few public figures in the USA, who sincerely and actively advocated for assistance to the USSR and campaigned for the opening of a Second Front during WWII. However, the FBI and government did not appreciate his altruism. This once again allowed them to suspect world star in sympathy with communism. Calls to help the USSR became one of the reasons why they were against Chaplin persecution began in the United States, which included fabricated lawsuits, a campaign of black PR in the media, etc., which ultimately forced him to leave the country.

This is how he describes one of the episodes of the campaign for the opening of the Second Front in his book "My biography":

The Russian War Aid Committee in San Francisco invited me to speak at a rally in place of the ill Joseph E. Davis, former American Ambassador in Russia. I agreed, although I was warned literally a few hours in advance. The meeting was scheduled for the next day, and I immediately boarded the evening train, arriving in San Francisco at eight in the morning.
My whole day was already scheduled by the committee by the hour: here - breakfast, there - lunch - I literally had no time left to think about my speech. And I was supposed to be the main speaker. However, at lunch I had a glass or two of champagne, and this cheered me up.
The hall, which could accommodate ten thousand spectators, was overcrowded. American admirals and generals, led by the mayor of San Francisco Rossi, sat on the stage. The speeches were very restrained and evasive. The mayor, in particular, said:
- We must reckon with the fact that the Russians are our allies.
He tried in every possible way to downplay the difficulties experienced by the Russians, avoided praising their valor and did not mention the fact that they were fighting to the death, turning all the enemy fire on themselves and holding back the onslaught of two hundred Nazi divisions. “Our allies are no more than casual acquaintances,” this is how I felt towards the Russians that evening.
The chairman of the committee asked me, if possible, to speak for at least an hour. I was taken aback. My eloquence lasted for four minutes at most. But after listening to enough stupid, empty chatter, I became indignant. On a card with my name on it, which was lying by my device at dinner, I jotted down four points of my speech and walked back and forth backstage, waiting. Finally they called me.
I was wearing a tuxedo and black tie. There was applause. This allowed me to somehow collect my thoughts. When the noise died down, I said only one word: “Comrades!” - and the hall burst into laughter. After waiting until the laughter stopped, I repeated emphatically: “That’s exactly what I wanted to say - comrades!” And again there was laughter and applause. I continued:
“I hope that there are many Russians in this room today, and, knowing how your compatriots are fighting and dying at this moment, I consider it a great honor for myself to call you comrades.”
The ovation began, many stood up.
And then, remembering the reasoning: “Let both of them bleed,” and getting excited, I wanted to express my indignation about this. But something stopped me.
“I’m not a communist,” I said, “I’m just a person and I think that I can understand the reaction of any other person.” Communists are people just like us. If they lose an arm or a leg, they suffer just like us, and they die just like us. The mother of a communist is a woman like any other mother. When she receives the tragic news of her son's death, she cries like other mothers cry. To understand it, I don't need to be a communist. It's enough to just be human. And these days, many Russian mothers are crying, and many of their sons are dying...
I spoke for forty minutes, every second not knowing what I was going to talk about next. I made my audience laugh and applaud by telling them anecdotes about Roosevelt and my speech on the first war loan. world war- everything worked out as it should.
“And now this war is going on,” I continued. - And I want to talk about helping the Russians in the war. - After a pause, I repeated: - About helping the Russians in the war. They can be helped with money, but they need more than money. I was told that the Allies had two million soldiers languishing idle in the north of Ireland, while the Russians alone faced two hundred Nazi divisions.
There was tense silence in the hall.
“But the Russians,” I emphasized, “are our allies, and they are fighting not only for their country, but also for ours.” Americans, as far as I know them, do not like others to fight for them. Stalin wants this, Roosevelt calls for this - let us also demand: immediately open a second front!
There was a wild noise that lasted about seven minutes. I expressed out loud what the listeners themselves were thinking, what they wanted. They didn’t let me talk anymore, they applauded and stomped their feet. And while they stomped and shouted and threw hats into the air, I began to wonder if I had gone too far, had I gone too far? But I immediately became angry with myself for being so cowardly in the face of those thousands who were now fighting and dying at the front. And when the audience finally calmed down, I said:
- If I understand you correctly, each of you will not refuse to send a telegram to the president? Let's hope that tomorrow he will receive ten thousand demands for the opening of a second front!
After the rally, I felt some kind of wariness and awkwardness in the air. Dudley Field Melon, John Garfield and I decided to have dinner together.
“You are a brave man,” said Garfield, hinting at my speech.

Once upon a time there lived a man who knew how to make everyone laugh. He made adults laugh, he made children laugh, he even made himself laugh. And the clown had several golden rules for his life. The great actor adhered to these rules, did not deviate from them and called on others to implement them.

One of Chaplin's rules was this kind of thing: Only a clown is truly happy.

How did it happen that Chaplin considered this expression so important that he even included it in the rules? What did the clown do in life and in his profession:

made people laugh with various ridiculous situations in which anyone could find themselves more than once
knew how to show a way out of an absurd situation, but with a subtle line of humor, so as not to offend the vulnerable souls of society
in life he behaved like a loon, since he already knew how to professionally get out of ridiculous situations beautifully, with a dose of irony and with a smile on his lips.

All these professional skills help the clown to truly appreciate what is happening around him. How does an ordinary person perceive an absurd situation: He gets upset, cries, becomes gloomy for many hours, does not see friends cheering him up due to grief. Some even become depressed.

What does a clown do? Having found himself in an absurd situation not on stage, but in life, the clown laughs out of it, forgets about it instantly and moves on joyfully through life! This is the true skill of a clown - to be able to discard absurdity, not to let it overshadow one’s life with a dark cloud.

This is what Chaplin said in his rule: only a clown is truly happy.

What did the artist do? He looked at his comrade in misfortune for about five minutes with a sad clown look, and then he took the bottle and smashed it on a stone. When the driver asked why he did this, the clown replied: how many times have I shown comics about drunkenness, and now you are inviting me to become like that? Are you offering to be the one I make fun of?

The clown was outraged beyond measure, and the driver never again thought of washing down his grief with a bottle of alcohol. He remembered the clown's lesson for a long time.

Is it possible to draw any conclusion from this story? Yes. Can. clowns so often show the wrong side of life, ridiculing shortcomings, that they themselves will never want to be such a center of attention in society. Clowns also know: they make people laugh not only for the sake of money, but because people lack joy, so the clown smiles in life even in a difficult situation, because he believes that a smile works wonders.

Here it is quite appropriate to remember not only clowns, but also children's cartoon about smile and famous phrase“A smile will make everyone brighter!” Yes, it really will, and the clown knows about it. Use a smile as a weapon against evil and it will retreat, since a smile brings light to the souls of people, that light that has life-giving power for every living soul.

It is possible that some of the film industry considered such a contract to be madness. But they were wrong. The twelve films produced in eighteen months by Chaplin for Mutual turned out to be not only masterpieces of cinematic art, but also an unusually profitable financial operation. Even before the end of the war, the capital invested by the company in Chaplin gave a profit of 700–800%. This was just the beginning: within five years another five million dollars had been earned. Suffice it to say that many years later, in 1945, the Charlie Chaplin Gala Performance was assembled from six old Mutual films. Shown in newly liberated France, it brought the company several tens of millions.

Certain chapters from Chaplin's life and his films did not always coincide with the terms of new contracts.

The end of 1916 was marked by a sharp change in Chaplin's style and entire work. The business side ceases to dominate the art. In perfect classic painting“Quiet Street” (also called “Charlie Cheers Up” and “Charlie the Policeman” in France) the image of Charlie appeared for the first time in all its meaning. The artist refused to pander to the tastes of the public and cheap effects. He felt like the master of the image he created. He crossed the line separating talent from genius.

To reach such heights at twenty-seven years old, he had to free himself from vanity, which still made itself felt in his name new studio Mutual Company - Lone Star. The icy shower that he was given shortly after entering the studio forced Chaplin to be self-critical.

“I had only one desire,” he writes on this occasion in 1916, “to please the public, which was so supportive of me. To do this, it was enough to give them everything that, as I knew, worked flawlessly - all those effects , which inevitably caused uncontrollable laughter, even if they were not related to the course of action...

During this period of intoxication with success, the day after the premiere of the film “Fireman,” I was doused with a real ice shower; some kind of completely stranger, whom I had never met in my life, wrote to me:

“I am very afraid that you are becoming a slave to your audience, whereas in many of your previous films the audience was your slave... And the audience, Charlie, loves to be a slave...”

After this letter I tried to avoid what the public demanded. I prefer to follow my own taste. It more accurately expresses what the public really expects from me..."

We must understand this confession correctly. Charles Chaplin is not at all an extreme individualist who believes that the public is only a slave for him. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced (and this is eloquently evidenced by his methods of work) that the only meaning of an actor’s creativity is the retelling of the feelings inherent in the public in the language of art.

But humanity consists of individual people, sometimes good, sometimes evil, whose feelings, like their language, are both good and bad... Therefore, the point is not to pander to the tastes of the public, but to serve it with your art , tirelessly separating the good wheat from the chaff. The point is not to become for the public something like a mirror, endlessly reproducing the same image. An artist who imitates others or repeats himself in his work undergoes the same changes as an old film after countless reprints - from negative to positive, from positive to negative, and so on ad infinitum. At the same time, sharpness decreases, contrasts are smoothed out, white and black gradually merge into an inexpressive gray tone. In the end, the once bright picture becomes a pale image of itself.

Yes, an artist, if he is a creator in the highest sense of the word, must be an interpreter. Distinctive feature genius is the ability to understand people's desires and needs before they themselves are fully aware of them. When such a connection arises between the individual and the masses, then only one can speak of the birth of a genius. Each century produces only a few outstanding people in both art and politics. Having understood this law and, on the basis of it, making a strict reassessment of the techniques of his art, Chaplin crossed the line that separated him from genius.

Let's leave it for a while little man on his the hard way to "Quiet Street". Let's return to that Charlie, full of gaiety, which was sometimes mixed with slight sadness, to the Charlie of 1915–1916, which brought him unprecedented fame. In those years, Louis Delluc, who had just discovered him, wrote: “To this day, there is no figure in history equal to him in glory - he eclipses the glory of Joan of Arc, Louis XIV and Clemenceau. I don’t see who else could compete with him in fame except Christ and Napoleon."

The mocking journalist noted historical fact. All countries, both peaceful and at war (with the exception of states Central Europe), were fascinated by Charlie, his waddle, his cane. Masks, dolls, confectionery, and illustrated magazines with his image were sold everywhere. The example of the arrogant plagiarist Billy Ricci was quickly followed by dozens of fake Charlies who flooded music halls and screens all over the world.

The general public bestowed fame on the little English actor. The intelligentsia also appreciated him. Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Appolinaire, Max Jacob, Fernand Leger, Elie Faure, and the very young Louis Aragon did not miss a single film with Charlie. Charlie's first admirers were those who were most interested in the life of the people. They told all their friends about their discovery, they made Chaplin a character in their paintings, poems, and articles. Admiration for the emerging genius united the “crowd” and the “chosen ones.”

Chaplin began 1915 by telling in the film "His new job"his own story. Charlie - no longer a tramp, but an unemployed man - comes to the Essenay studio, having heard that a worker is needed in the prop shop. But he is not the only one coveting this place. The cross-eyed Ben Turpin is also wooing him. Things begin to rage between the rivals acrobatic struggle for a piece of bread. The more cunning and cruel Charlie gains the upper hand, stepping on the stomach of the defeated enemy and incapacitating him, he gets the job of a carpenter's assistant. The brave one is asked to replace the first lover who was late for the shooting. Now he is already stomping, waddling from foot to foot, film set in a hussar dolman with stripes and a shaggy hat. Among the scenery, which depicted a "luxurious" palace, he had to court an arrogant noble lady with an ostrich fan and a high hairstyle, dressed in a dress with a long train.

Charlie breaks the conventions of high society dramas. He steps on the hem of his partner's dress and tears it off. A noble lady goes up the stairs without noticing it. He leans against fake marble columns - and they fall and roll like empty barrels. It all ends with the usual brawl and Charlie's expulsion from the studio.

Not all Essenay films had the merits of this first film. An Evening of Fun with Ben Turpin or In the Park with Edna Purviance are not much different from Keystone productions.

However, it is noteworthy that in the film "Champion" little man no longer as confident in his strength as in old times. Here he is unemployed: he sadly shares with his dog the sausage he bought with his last cent; out of nowhere, the owner of the ring appears and hires him as a whipping boy for the boxing champion. To develop muscles, Charlie does exercises with batons and on gymnastic apparatus. An iron horseshoe is usually a saving talisman. Charlie puts it in his boxing glove, thanks to which all opponents are knocked out. He becomes a champion. And the beautiful Edna, in a cap and sweater, looking like a boy, smiles sweetly at him.

This film contains both humanistic and social notes. Chaplin was interested here not only in the shades of Charlie's experiences. He emphasizes social status of his hero and shows that society is to blame for all the absurd situations in which he finds himself. This justified the trick with the horseshoe in the eyes of the viewer. Finding himself face to face with the big man attacking him, the unemployed man had and had the right to defend his life.

In “The Tramp,” Charlie—again unemployed—teaches Edna on the edge of the forest and saves her from robbers. The girl's father, a wealthy farmer, hires Charlie to work on the farm. A novice milks a cow using its tail as a pump handle, waters trees with a tiny watering can, and collects freshly laid eggs from chickens in his jacket pockets. The robbers appear again. Charlie puts them to flight, but in the process he is wounded in the leg.

His courage and devotion won, as he had hoped, the favor of the beautiful Edna. Everyone is caring for the wounded hero. Simpleton Charlie believes that he has won his happiness and Edna's heart has been conquered. Pride, hopes - and suddenly a blow that turned out to be more painful than a rough kick: the girl introduces him to her adored fiancé... Charlie returns to old life unemployed tramp. And so we see him walking away with his back to the viewer along the dusty road - at first dejected, discouraged, then cheerful again.

In another film - "Work" - Charlie is again a "tiny pathetic donkey." He drags his Sisyphean stone along the steep mountainside - a cart with rolls of wallpaper, a ladder and a bucket of glue; at the top sits its owner, a painter, calmly smoking a pipe.

The image of Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp, is familiar even to those who are not film buffs. It is generally accepted that he owes his acting tragedy to early death father and childhood spent in an orphanage. However, research by psychiatrist Steven Weissman sheds light on the true nature of Chaplin's on-screen sadness.

Chaplin himself always claimed that his mother was loving woman and a very glamorous person. But in fact, Hannah, a supporting actress in the music hall, who performed under the pseudonym Lily Harley, worked as a prostitute in her youth, which left an imprint on her entire life. later life. Hannah's fate was so "unprintable" that Chaplin's biographers avoided this topic for a long time. Having fallen ill with syphilis - not the most terrible disease by the standards of our time - Hannah began to gradually go crazy. Her steady descent into madness became Chaplin's nightmare. He became terrified of any infection.

One of his mistresses, actress Louise Brooks, said that Chaplin never had sex with her without first “decorating” his dignity with iodine. Chaplin’s own biography was first published in 1964. His difficult childhood receives a lot of attention, but his mother's illness is bashfully ignored. Even Chaplin's children did not know the whole truth about their grandmother. In the end, when eldest daughter Chaplin, Geraldine, learned about the upcoming publication, which did not show Hannah in the most favorable light; she even tried to prevent the book from being published. Fortunately, she realized that the published information would help explain Chaplin's genius, and gave the go-ahead for publication.

What is her real story? The daughter of a shoemaker, she ran away from home at the age of 16, dreaming of becoming famous actress. She didn’t turn out to be a star, but she met Charlie Chaplin Sr.: they both took part in the same comic opera. He attracted Hannah with his resemblance to Napoleon - by at least, she explained it herself.

Despite all the “Napoleonicism” of her chosen one, Hannah ran away from him three years later to South Africa with her lover, Cockney representative Sidney Hawkes. He posed as an aristocrat with vast estates in the British colonies, but in reality he turned out to be just a pimp. Taking the girl with him to the Witwatersrand gold mine in South Africa, Hawkes made good money from her, selling her to everyone. By 1884, Hannah was tired of everything. Even though she was pregnant by her pimp, she still braved the grueling journey back to England and good old Charlie. In 1885, she gave birth to a son with Hawks, whom she named Sidney after his father.

In 1886, she and Charlie finally got married, and three years later the future world-famous famous comedian. Little Charlie inherited his mother's dreaminess, and therefore tried to romanticize her relationship with his father. Through wishful thinking, he imagined his parents as loving and caring. He simply idolized his mother. He always recalled with affection how she dressed him up in velvet suits and acted out for him pictures from the life of courtesans of the 17th century. Alas, contrary to the image that formed in the boy’s head, in fact Hannah was not an exemplary wife, nor an exemplary mother.

Soon Hannah left her husband again - this time for actor Leo Dryden. From him she gave birth to a third child. Now she had three boys from different fathers - her only wealth. Therefore, when Dryden left her, however, taking his son with him, Hannah had to look for work. Leaving dreams of lights big stage, she began to work part-time in the worst theaters - she needed something to feed the two children left with her, there was no time for ambition. Hannah’s career broke down one day - right in the middle of an inspired song passage, her voice dropped to a whisper. The audience cruelly greeted the actress’s mistake with laughter. For five-year-old Charlie, the anti-triumph of his adored mother was a real blow. True, the kid quickly got his bearings - he went on stage and finished the passage started by his mother.

Living behind the scenes since childhood, he learned all her parts. Then it got worse: due to constant migraines, Hannah started hallucinating. The matter took such a serious turn that the mother could no longer care for the children, and she was sent to a charity home. Until he was seven, Charlie lived in an orphanage, which he hated. When Hannah recovered a little, she was able to return the children, but now her character has changed greatly. In search of salvation from her illness, Hannah became a religious fanatic. Instead of the theater stage, she now performed at home, acting out scenes from the Bible. Charlie, of course, could not understand the reason for such changes.

But the fact was that Hannah was being tormented from within by a “shameful illness”, which was the real reason her migraines. The actress brought this “wealth” from South African mines. Hannah's progressive illness led her to a mental asylum, where she was housed in a padded room. The sons, of course, were sent to their father. Little Charlie had fun as best he could, copying his always drunk dad and his mistress Louise, but his sensitive heart was constantly torn with pity for his mother. His older brother Sidney left home to study, and Charlie spent his days alone.

After some time, Hannah was “released” and reunited with her family. Now she earned her living as a seamstress. I had to borrow a car for the first time - I didn’t have the money to buy my own. True, Chaplin Sr. began to take his paternal responsibilities more seriously, so the family lived, although modestly, but not from hand to mouth. The idyll did not last long: at the age of 37, the father of the family died of cirrhosis of the liver. They buried him in a common grave, where the city authorities took all sorts of rabble. The death of her husband undermined Hannah's already fragile mental health, and she was again taken to the hospital. Charlie, who was already 14 years old, was horrified when he saw what was happening to his beloved mother.

Delirium, hallucinations, unsteady gait - characteristic features advanced syphilis. This time it was on him that all the worries about her fell. Charlie was saved from complete poverty only by the appearance in his life stepbrother Sidney, who became a steward at the age of 19. Having dressed his brother up, Sidney began to place him in theatrical agencies. Soon the boys began to earn enough to send their mother money for treatment. However, a year later, she, “fed up” with hospital life, took up vagrancy. She was again placed in a hospital, but now she had already sunk so much that even devoted Charlie was not particularly eager to visit her. He poured out all his impotent anger at the circumstances in the game. At the same time, he studied acting to achieve his goal - to become famous. He was often booed by the public, just like his mother once was, until one day he met the impresario Fred Karno.

No one questioned his acting abilities, but his masculinity was in question. For a long time he did not know how to treat women, and his companions were exclusively ladies of famous behavior from Piccadilly. Therefore, when in 1908, having met 15-year-old dancer Hattie Kelly, he immediately asked her to marry him, the girl rushed away in horror from the “crazy” 19-year-old actor. For the rest of his life, Chaplin dreamed that one day they would be reunited. Soon one of Fred Karno's productions brought Chaplin enough money to buy a ticket to America. He is 21, only 160 cm tall and barely 50 kg in weight, but this did not stop him from feeling like a conqueror. When his ship approached the Manhattan pier, Chaplin took off his hat and shouted: “America, I have come to conquer you! Soon this name will be on everyone’s lips - Charles Spencer Chaplin!” Much later, when Chaplin’s boast became reality and he had already traveled all over America twice, he boasted that he managed to get at least two thousand women into bed.

The fate of the little comedian took a sharp turn one day in 1912. His performance was highly praised by producer Mac Sennett, head of the famous Keystone Studios in California, and easily lured Chaplin, promising him double the salary of what he received before. On a rainy February day, a skinny newcomer began searching the costume departments for his movie wardrobe. He settled on the huge pantaloons of silent film heavyweight Fatty Arbuckle, a bowler hat, boots six sizes too big, and his director's signature tailcoat. Looking at himself in the mirror, he realized: this is the image that will bring him world fame. The little tramp, Chaplin's hero, was familiar to him like no one else: he simply brought his own image to the grotesque. And thoughts about his mother helped him hold on to the tragic key.

By 1921, she began to suffer from memory lapses. Charlie moved her to Hollywood, where he bought her a house. He constantly visited her and took care of Hannah as best he could, while working on his new film “Gold Rush.” His son’s care did not help the poor woman: in 1928, she died at the age of 65. It was the shock caused by her death that critics explained Chaplin’s phenomenal performance in “Lights.” big city"perhaps the actor's most famous film. Happy family life, as he always dreamed, Chaplin began to live only in 1943, when he was already 54 years old - eighteen-year-old Una, the daughter of the famous playwright Eugene O'Neill, gave birth to eight children to Charlie. This is the story of the formation of Chaplin's genius - a story that he carefully hid from outsiders , protecting the bright image of his mother, which he himself invented in childhood.

Charles Chaplin and Una O'Neill surrounded by children ©Fonds Debraine

In Switzerland, they not only opened a house-museum of the world’s most famous actor, but also built an entire studio, Charlie’s World, a titanic project in collaboration with the Grévin Museum. In the house is the actor’s personal life, and in the studio is the entire history of the great comedian’s work. On opening day, RFI journalist Elena Servettaz visited Chaplin's World and Manoir de Ban, the Swiss estate of the British actor who built a career in Hollywood but never received an American passport.

In old photographs, which feature no shortage of Charles Chaplin's Swiss estate, the actor is almost always surrounded by children. At one point, the family even printed a special photo card for Christmas: in the center, Charles Chaplin with his wife Una O'Neill.

Smiling Oona in a little black dress, Chaplin with a smile on his face in a chic suit with a tie and the obligatory snow-white handkerchief. Behind their parents are eight Chaplin children, four of whom not only grew up, but were also born here, on the family estate in Corzier-sur-Vevey, located inside a huge park. Oona Chaplin was carrying her fifth child when they moved in.

“Mom loved giving birth, and Dad loved seeing her pregnant,” joked Chaplin’s eldest daughter Geraldine.

Manoir de Ban is the last residence of the “most famous man in the world.” Charles Chaplin lived in Switzerland for 25 years after he left the United States, where at that time Senator McCarthy was rampaging and a “witch hunt” was underway. There, Chaplin was pursued by the FBI, and some journalists and associations even called for a boycott of his films.

Chaplin's America and moving

Charles Chaplin lived in America for about 40 years, but never received American citizenship, traveling all his life with a British passport. In the USA, Chaplin realized what is called the “American Dream”, and even became its embodiment. But there Charles Chaplin was condemned for the film “The Great Dictator”. Few people know that he had to film the film himself, with his own money, together with his brother Sidney.

American financiers believed that Germany was at that time a defense against communism. Six days after France and Great Britain entered the war with Nazi Germany, Charles Chaplin began filming.

In the USA, The Great Dictator was released at the end of 1940, and Europe had to wait until the end of the war to see this film...

“I would never have made this film if I had known about the camps at that moment,” Chaplin later said.

Oona and Charles Chaplin signed documents to purchase an estate with a park near Geneva on December 31, 1952. Manoir de Ban is an 1850s building with 14 rooms with fine furnishings. As the Swiss press of that time wrote, “Madame’s room is “Marie Antoinette,” Monsieur’s room is “Empire.”

"Two different stories— Charles and Charlie"

The idea of creating a large museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin and his works was born in 2000 in Switzerland as a result of a meeting between Swiss Philippe Meylan and Canadian Yves Durand. The first is an architect and friend of the Chaplin family, the second is big fan Chaplin's creativity. CEO Chaplin's World Jean-Pierre Pigeon says that the house and the museum were specially separated and that the studio was not built close to the actor's house.

“When you look at the Manoir, Charles Chaplin's home, this place is dedicated only to the family, his personal life, and the studio is dedicated to Charlie's masterpieces, these are two different stories - Charles and Charlie.", he says.

In Chaplin's house there are home videos filmed by his wife Oona O'Neill. If you look only at old films, it will seem that Charles Chaplin joked non-stop.

Jean-Pierre Pigeon: "Yes. He loved to joke, it’s obvious, but at some point he still became a father. He wasn't a jokester 24/7, of course. At least that’s what his children say.”

However British writer Peter Ackroyd does not hide the dark sides of Chaplin's biography in his book. So he wrote that Chaplin had real “bulimia” when it came to women and he did not always treat them elegantly, including his wife Una O’Neill. At work he was also a tyrant, in life he was quite frugal, terrified of losing all his savings.

Difficult childhood

The fear of being left without money was apparently associated with extreme difficult childhood Charles Spencer Chaplin. What we will later see in the film “Baby”, Chaplin himself experienced - hunger, cold, wandering through the streets, nights in flophouses. After their parents' divorce, little Charles and his brother Sidney remained to live with their mother, Hannah Chaplin.

In the Chaplin’s World museum, the first halls also do not look joyful - this, in fact, was Chaplin’s childhood. “The only thing Chaplin remembered in color were the transport tickets that were lying around everywhere in London; all his other memories were in black and white.”, says Jean-Pierre Pigeon, General Director of Chaplin’s World, in an interview with RFI.

However, Chaplin never reproached his parents for their poverty. Mother is a former pop actress, she broke up with her father - no time talented actor- because of his addiction to wine.

Film "The Kid", 1921.

“Every evening, returning from the theater, my mother used to lay out sweets on the table for Sydney (Charles Chaplin’s half-brother - ed.) and for me, in the morning we would find a piece of pie or candy - believing that we should not make noise, because she usually slept late.”

Chaplin's My Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics), which he wrote in the same house in Switzerland while working six to eight hours a day, shows how much Charles loved his mother, even when she couldn't contain them. Life was so difficult that due to hunger, Charles Chaplin's mother temporarily lost her mind and was forced to undergo rehabilitation in psychiatric hospitals. But in his autobiography, Chaplin wrote an entire ode to his mother. “Of course, there were days when I stayed at home; my mother made tea and fried bread in beef fat, I loved it, then for an hour she read with me, because she read beautifully, and I discovered the happiness of being next to her, I realized that I had a place It’s nicer to stay at home than to go to the McCarthy family.”

In Chaplin's world, mother is associated with childhood, and therefore also with gnawing poverty. He said that even the poorest families on weekends could afford a piece of meat baked over a fire - an unprecedented luxury for their family, for this he was angry with his mother for a long time and was ashamed that even on weekends they could not eat normally. One day they managed to save some money to buy a piece of meat, which they cooked over the fire. The meat shrunk to some ridiculous size, but then the boy felt happy and was eternally grateful to his poor mother.

In addition, little Charles owes his first performance on stage to Hannah Chaplin. In the book “My Autobiography,” he recalls that his mother’s voice often broke during stage performances due to colds and weakness, and then the audience laughed at the poor woman. On one of these days, when Hannah Chaplin was once again unable to continue her performance, and the audience booed her, 5-year-old Charles came on stage in her place and sang the then-famous song about Jack Jones...

The audience threw coins at the kid, he then paused for a moment and said: wait a minute, please, I’ll quickly pick up all the money and continue singing again. The spectators were dying of delight and tenderness.

The house where the doors didn't close

Michael Chaplin, the son of Charles Chaplin, who attended the inauguration of the museum on his father’s birthday, April 16, said that he spent his entire childhood in the Manoir de Ban house in Corziers-sur-Vevey.

Michael Chaplin:“I went to a regular school near my house. Sometimes I would bring friends home to play in our beautiful park. I remember how some of them stated with regret that my father was already an elderly, gray-haired man. This is not Charlie, they told me, poorly hiding their disappointment that they did not meet the Tramp in this house. Unfortunately, he was not there. This homeless tramp, this gypsy, who was always on the move, unfortunately, did not live here. But together with (the museum) Chaplin's World, we can say that he will finally find a home here. Now he will be fine.", explains Michael Chaplin, president of the Charlie Chaplin Museum Foundation. After Chaplin's death, pilgrimages from all over the world to the actor's house did not stop, " some even rushed to kiss the walls, they were so grateful to him for his films. That’s how I realized how powerfully my father’s art spoke to people from anywhere in the world.”

“Michael Jackson came here and then invited the whole family to Disneyland. Surrealism!” recalled relatives. “The gypsies became our friends: they returned here several times and gave us huge holidays,” says Michael Chaplin. The house often hosted large afternoon teas for neighboring children from difficult families, and once even for children from Chernobyl, who were brought to Switzerland for rehabilitation...

From project to opening

And so it turned out that during a visit to Chaplin’s World, visitors will plunge headlong into the black and white world of Chaplin mania, and during a visit to the house they will learn about how “the most a famous person in the world".

CEO Chaplin's World Jean-Pierre Pigeon: “A whole epic is connected with the Manoir de Ban estate! Charles Chaplin passed away on December 25, 1977. And his wife Una - in 1991. After which the two Chaplin children settled in this house along with their families - Michael and Eugene. In 2000 they decided to sell Manoir. When family friend Philippe Meylan found out about this, he said: “No, what are you talking about!” This is impossible! Something needs to be done! We can't let this kind of legacy just go away." This is how their first conversation took place, during which they discussed the possibility of turning Charlie Chaplin's house into a museum. Michael and Eugene Chaplin then said that they really didn’t want the house to turn into a mausoleum, this was one of their main demands. They wanted the place to continue to be a place of laughter and emotion. As a result of several months of work, Philippe Meylan wrote a hundred-page draft and showed it to Chaplin's family. They loved it and decided to sell the house through the Charles Chaplin Museum Foundation.”

A full 16 years passed from idea to opening. The opening of the museum was initially planned for 2005. The project developers - Yves Durand and Philippe Meylan - began to settle formalities with the construction plan, and in Switzerland these are often very long processes. Moreover, according to Swiss law, local residents can challenge any project. What happened at some point: one of the people living in the neighborhood wanted the Chaplin’s World project to be closed, fearing a large influx of tourists to the quiet town of Corzier-sur-Vevey. The proceedings with the neighbor lasted five years. Further construction was delayed due to financial issues. In total, about 60 million Swiss francs were spent on the creation of the museum.

After a visit to the Chaplin's World studio, visitors will learn how the film "Baby" and "Modern Times" was filmed, and will also see how Charles Chaplin wrote not only the scripts and director's notes, but also the music. Chaplin was self-taught and did not know musical notation, but almost everything musical accompaniment I wrote for my films myself.

Hitler and the "Great Dictator"

At the very beginning of filming The Great Dictator, Chaplin wondered how to shoot this picture, because his character, Charlie, does not speak. “And then suddenly I found a solution. It was even obvious. Even when playing Hitler, I could rant through my body language and be as talkative as I needed to be. And vice versa, when I played Charlie, I could remain silent a little."- said Chaplin.

Chaplin's World has an entire room dedicated to "The Great Dictator." "Hitler was one of the greatest actors“I have ever seen,” said Charles Chaplin. Later, when one of the employees of the Ministry of Culture Nazi Germany managed to escape, he met with Charles Chaplin and told him that Hitler watched The Great Dictator alone.

“I would give anything to know what he thinks of him,” Chaplin answered him. It is believed that it is from final scene“The Great Dictator” Chaplin was unable to renew his American visa and was forced to leave for Switzerland to escape McCarthyism.

Last days at Manoir de Ban

In Switzerland, Charles Chaplin never learned French and got angry when one of the children switched to French at dinner. It may seem that in Manoir de Ban Charlie Chaplin from the incarnation American dream turned into " ordinary person" However, it was there that he wrote the scripts for his two latest films"A King in New York" and "A Countess from Hong Kong" with Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. “The King of New York” was banned from showing in the United States until 1973: due to the king’s connection with the boy Rupert, who read Karl Marx in one of the schools in New York, the king himself was accused of having connections with communists. So Chaplin ridiculed McCarthyism, which drove him out of the country.

Charles Chaplin did not stop writing and composing music in Switzerland until his death. “Working means living. And I want to live,” he said. Charles Chaplin passed away at his home, Manoir de Ban, on Christmas Day 1977. Next to him last moment Una O'Neill and his children remained.