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(gentle tinkling music)
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(electricity crackling)
[Narrator] December 1916.
The Society for Psychical Research
whose publications include "Phantasms of The Living"
and "Human Personality and Its Survival Of Bodily Death"
are reporting an extraordinary phenomenon.
Mr. Charles Chaplin, motion picture comedian,
has been cited in hundreds of places,
simultaneously.
(dramatic music)
From the Atlantic to the Pacific,
from the Canadian boundary to the Gulf,
people wait at stations to see Mr. Chaplin.
In the same hour,
crowds are gathering at hotels across the country.
(people chattering) (dramatic music)
"Have you got the Chaplin-oia?" asks one newspaper.
Others report the Chaplin Fever,
the Chaplin Craze,
Charlie-mania.
"Chaplin-itis," runs one headline,
"Has spread across America.
(bright sprightly music)
Bootlegs, counterfeits, and imitators flood the market.
Lookalike contests spring up across the globe.
It's rumored that Chaplin himself entered such a contest
and came 20th.
(bright music)
People demand to know,
"Who is the Real Charlie Chaplin?"
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
(dark dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
(reel clicking) (dramatic music)
(bright playful music)
When we think of Charlie Chaplin,
we picture this man.
(bright playful music)
This is the moment he first steps on to the screen.
And he looks at us.
(bright playful music)
He reappears soon after in other films.
Here he is again.
And here.
(bright playful music)
And he keeps looking at us.
(gentle music)
But this is not Charlie Chaplin.
This man has no name.
He has no fixed address.
No family.
(bright music)
No set point in space or time.
You can't pin him down.
(reel clicking)
(bright music)
The only constants are the hat, the cane,
the boots and the mustache.
Sometimes just the mustache.
(gentle music)
So who is he?
(thoughtful music)
He's been called the little man.
The little fellow.
The Tramp.
He's a character played by Charlie Chaplin.
(bright music)
(crowd cheering)
(upbeat music)
"The Tramp" will make Chaplin more famous
than any king, queen, or emperor.
More famous than any philosopher, artist,
or religious figure.
Famous in a way that no one has been before.
(pensive music)
(audience laughing)
(reel clicking)
(bright music)
Chaplin makes "The Tramp" and "The Tramp" makes Chaplin.
You can't see one without looking at the other.
(thoughtful music) (reel clicking)
They tell each other's stories.
So where do we start?
Here's how Chaplin starts.
(gentle music)
1889 begins with a total eclipse of the sun.
This year, the Eiffel tower opens to the public.
Adolph Hitler is born.
In Kyoto, Nintendo is founded.
They make playing cards.
Electric streetlights are being installed in London
where Jack the Ripper remains at large.
The pizza margarita is invented.
They're still working on the aero plane.
This is how movies look in 1889.
(film crackling)
(indistinct) 89.
[Narrator] These are recordings of the human voice.
(man speaking indistinctly)
(birds chirping)
Of birdsong.
(birds chirping)
Of music.
(woman vocalizing)
(gentle music)
(dramatic music) (bell tolling)
Film grows up alongside Chaplin.
(people chattering) (gentle music)
It captures the London streets he roams as a kid.
(people chattering)
(mysterious music)
The children he plays with.
[Narrator] This is the voice of Effie Wisdom.
(tape whirring)
(engine puttering) (gentle music)
[Narrator] Captured on tape when she was 92 years old.
(birds chirping)
(dog barking)
(interviewer laughs)
(birds chirping)
(audience laughing)
(gentle music)
(tape whirring)
[Narrator] It takes 12 days for the Karno Company
to cross the Atlantic.
(gentle music) (engine rumbling)
12 days in a rat -infested cattle boat.
At first sight of land,
one young man leans over the railing
and screams out.
(bright music)
(birds squawking) (gentle music)
(train whistling)
They embark on a grueling tour of the continent.
Playing three shows a day.
(dramatic music)
(audience applauding)
Fred Karno's brand of knockabout comedy
is intensely physical.
(dramatic music)
He teaches his comics how to trip.
How to tumble, slide and fall.
How to take a punch.
How to fall down a flight of stairs.
(audience applauding) (audience cheering)
They're the best in the business.
(audience cheering) (audience applauding)
And wherever they go, one performer stands out.
(bright music)
But his tour mates can't work him out.
Offstage, he's quiet, moody and reclusive.
He's usually shabby in appearance.
Then, without warning, he'll dress to kill.
He teaches himself the cello, ancient Greek, yoga.
But above all he vows that he will not return poor.
(dramatic music)
(cable car rumbling) (bell clanging)
In California, a fortune teller tells him
he will soon enter a new field
in which he will earn a tremendous fortune.
(dramatic music)
They say that fortunes are there to be made in America.
(pensive music)
The oil boom has created millionaires overnight.
Henry Ford has devised the modern assembly line.
And Nickelodeon's opening in cities across the country,
showing motion picture comedies around the clock.
(audience laughing)
(pensive music)
But Chaplin isn't impressed by the movies.
He thinks they're a passing fad.
(bright music)
(upbeat music)
[Mack] Mr. Chaplin got into motion pictures purely,
in my mind, by accident.
[Narrator] This is the voice of Mack Sennett,
pioneer of movie comedy,
founder of Keystone Studios,
specialists in custard pie warfare and high-speed chases,
the Mack Sennett Bathing Girls, the Keystone Kops.
(upbeat music)
[Mack] I have a comedian working for me at the time.
His name was Ford Sterling.
He was a chief of the Keystone Kops.
[Narrator] One day Sterling quits.
I said, "Oh, shucks".
[Narrator] Suddenly Sennett needs a new lead.
[Mack] Right away, I thought of a comedian
that I'd seen in an English act called,
"A Night in the London Music Hall."
I couldn't remember the name at the time,
but I wired to New York to associates to find this man.
And I said, his name is Champion, Chaprin, or Chambers,
or something like that.
So they traced him in
and they found him in a small town in Pennsylvania.
[Narrator] Sennett offers him $150 a week,
three times the money he's getting now.
He decides he'll stick it out for a year.
(upbeat music)
[Mack] And if Ford Sterling had continued with me,
the chances are that Chaplin would have returned to England
and we'd have probably missed the greatest comedian
we've ever seen.
(reel rattling)
(reel whirring)
[Narrator] This is Chaplin telling the story
in a 1966 interview for "Life Magazine."
[Narrator] It's one of the only times Chaplin has allowed
a tape recorder within these walls.
(bright music)
[Narrator] The million dollar question.
He's been asked this countless times by journalists.
[Narrator] And also by lawyers.
(upbeat music)
This man looks familiar.
The hat, the mustache.
But this is not Charlie Chaplin.
In the 1920s, this man releases a series
of knockoff Chaplin films under the name Charles Aplin.
(dramatic music)
Chaplin sues Aplin and the trial delves
into the origins of the Tramp.
Firstly, Aplin claims he wasn't imitating Chaplin.
He was imitating Billy West,
the famous Chaplin impersonator.
"Aplin's Chaplin isn't Chaplin," says Aplin.
Aplin's Chaplin is an imitation of an imitation of Chaplin.
"Besides, if anyone should be on trial for imitation,"
says Aplin, "It's Chaplin."
Two of Chaplin's Karno colleagues,
Fred Kitchen and Billy Ritchie,
both claim that Chaplin's Tramp is an imitation of theirs.
"I was the first says," Ritchie,
who goes on to make a living
producing knockoff Chaplin films.
(upbeat music)
But Aplin and Chaplin, Ritchie and Kitchen are all following
in the wake of a great wave of tramp comedians
(audience applauding)
who have been touring the vaudeville circuit
since the late 19th century.
(train whining)
These comedians are themselves inspired
by real tramps.
The drifters who crisscross America in search of work.
(gentle music)
The homeless Chaplin grew up with on the streets of London.
(gentle music)
These men are more likely to see the inside
of a police cell than a movie studio.
But in Chapman's telling the creation
of his Tramp is spontaneous.
(camera flash popping)
(upbeat music)
[Narrator] He's just made his screen debut,
a clear knockoff of his predecessor Ford Sterling.
And the reviews aren't good.
(dramatic music)
(bright playful music)
[Narrator] In fact, the shoes were Sterling's,
the trousers, Fatty Arbuckle's
and the hat belonged to somebody's father.
The costume isn't stolen,
but it's assembled, magpie-like,
from bits of other costumes.
(dramatic music)
[Narrator] And so, we're back here, February, 1914.
The moment he first steps onto the screen
and looks at us.
(bright playful music)
And this time the reviews aren't half bad.
(light upbeat music)
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)
(nightstick thudding)
(dramatic music)
(triumphant music)
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)
(audience cheering) (dramatic music)
(people chattering)
(gentle music) (audience laughing)
(bright upbeat music)
[Narrator] And it's not just New York.
(upbeat music)
Why is Chaplin fever spreading across the world?
What is it about this little Tramp?
(gentle pensive music)
Well, he's funny.
He can take any situation
(bright music)
and make it silly.
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
(upbeat music)
But it's more than that.
In a society sharply defined by class,
the Tramp not only stands up to the man.
He gives them a kick up the arse for good measure.
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
To the millions of migrants, dreaming of a new life,
the Tramp is someone without a nation.
(whistle shrilling)
(dramatic music)
Someone who has no language,
but who speaks to everyone.
(dramatic music)
And in a world divided by bitter conflict,
the Tramp can make you laugh,
whichever side you're on.
(dramatic music)
(bright music)
The Tramp defies the boundaries of identity.
He blurs gender and sexuality.
He upends authority and class.
(bright music)
(gentle music)
He's a nobody
and he belongs to everybody.
(gentle music)
(audience cheering)
(dramatic music)
In the work house
Chaplin dreamed of becoming rich,
famous and beloved.
He's now the highest paid actor in the world.
The most famous man alive.
(gentle music)
[Charlie] So all the adulation, it's not for me.
It's for the little man.
(bright pensive music)
First impression was the eyes.
They could be so warm and so cold in a flash of a second.
Because he was a charmer, you know.
[Douglas] Charlie was a great exhibitionist.
(gentle music)
(people chattering)
Very flamboyant.
He put on a great show.
(gentle music)
He loved to talk on any subject,
pretend that he was a rebel and a radical politically.
And he had the means of making people think
that he was a very profound reader,
when actually I think he read the first page
of a number of books
and made people think he read the whole thing.
(gentle music)
[Virginia] Charlie was always acting.
Always on show, always the entertainer.
He didn't want people to know the real Charlie.
(gentle music)
One's bound to be insecure with a childhood like his.
(somber music)
[Lita] He never felt anybody loved him.
(pensive music)
He never believed it.
He said, "Why would anybody love me?"
(pensive music) (birds chirping)
[Eddie] I am no psychiatrist,
but it's easy to see that still has a fear of poverty.
Don't care how much money he has.
He still has fear of poverty.
(gentle music) (camera shutter clicking)
(dramatic music)
[Narrator] Within a few years,
Chaplin has built his own studio,
founded a distribution company,
liberated himself from dependence on financial backers.
(dramatic music)
He follows no schedule.
He doesn't even follow a script.
(reel clicking)
He starts with a vague idea
and replays it again and again and again,
until it becomes funny.
(dramatic music) (reel whirring)
(reel whizzing)
(reel clattering)
(dramatic music)
The actors are instructed to perform each gesture
exactly as he does
as though they are mere extensions of his body.
Every nuance, every glance, he makes first.
His assistant says that if he could have done every job
on set himself, he would have.
As it is, he writes, directs, produces,
edits, scores, and stars.
(dramatic music)
He even tries his hand at hair and makeup.
(bright music)
Finally, when he has total control,
he begins his most ambitious project yet.
(gentle pensive music)
(mournful music)
(gentle pensive music)
It's the story of an abandoned child.
Of a single mother too poor to care for him.
(gentle pensive music)
(mournful music)
(gentle music)
(gentle peaceful music)
In another life, the boy is headed for the workhouse.
(dramatic music)
But in this version, when the authorities arrive
to take him away,
he's not going without a fight.
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
(mournful music)
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
(sweet gentle music)
(wind howling)
(crowd roaring) (crowd cheering)
(pensive music) (crowd cheering)
(gentle thoughtful music)
It's been eight years since he left London.
And when he finally gets back,
he hears a familiar voice.
(somber music)
[Narrator] He finds himself back in the attic room
of No. 3 Pownall Terrace.
Four walls that the Chaplin family called home.
Where Chaplin's mother, Hannah,
delighted him with her costumes and impressions.
Where she struggled to make ends meet after her voice
and then her stage career failed.
(somber music)
She sat at this window
and told Charlie she could see ghosts outside
before she was dragged off to the asylum.
(dramatic music)
And Charlie's mother hasn't left London.
(gentle pensive music)
She's living in a nursing home.
So when Chaplin returns to America,
he brings her with him.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
But she teeters between worlds.
(dramatic music)
Present and past seem to blur.
When she sees her son dressed as a tramp, she says,
"Charlie, I have to get you a new suit.
(pensive music)
(gentle music)
Meanwhile, her son is making a Hollywood epic.
(dramatic music)
One that takes the Tramp to the ends of the earth.
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
But it's themes are closer to home.
(gentle thoughtful music)
(lively upbeat music)
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
(thoughtful music)
(explosion booming) (people chattering)
(sirens wailing)
[Man] This is a test
to see how my voice records on the film.
(Charlie whistling)
You are now listening to a talking, moving picture.
We believe an entirely new art will be created.
The beginning of a new era in motion pictures.
(people humming)
(birds chirping) (reel clicking)
Suddenly the Tramp's strength
becomes his weakness.
(distorted voices chattering)
He can't talk.
What language would he speak?
What dialect?
(distorted voices chattering) (dramatic music)
1928 Warner axes all its silent projects.
1929 Fox follows.
By 1930,
(lion roaring)
all the major studios are talking.
One by one Chaplin's contemporaries start to talk.
First, Laurel and Hardy.
My trunk is packed
and I am leaving for South America, tonight.
[Narrator] Then Harold Lloyd.
I don't know what to say.
Well, that's nothing new, dear.
[Narrator] Then, Buster Keaton.
Well, I got a lot of serious talking to do
and you got a lot of serious listening to do.
[Narrator] The talky revolution is here.
It's alive! It's alive!
[Narrator] The public is going crazy
for anything that talks.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
You ain't heard nothin'.
[Narrator] But Chaplin decides to do the unthinkable.
He'll make a silent film.
(dramatic music)
(silence)
(sweet pensive music)
Like most romantic comedies,
"City Lights" turns on a misunderstanding.
(sweet gentle music)
A blind flower girl mistakes the Tramp for a millionaire.
(gentle music)
Simple enough on paper, but there is no paper.
Chaplin works without a script.
And this scene is to drive Chaplin
and everyone around him
to the edge of madness.
[Interviewer] Can you tell us
about the shooting of that sequence?
[Virginia] Oh dear.
(dramatic music)
He'd take it over and over and over again.
I often thought that if he couldn't think
what he was going to do next,
he simply went on doing the same shot over again
until he thought of it.
[Narrator] Chaplain agonizes
over this mistaken identity scene.
It's the heart of the film.
It has to feel right.
[Virginia] He was a perfectionist.
And to us it often seem to be exactly the same.
When he'd finally say "It's a take,"
we'd breathe a sigh of relief.
And then he'd say, "Well, perhaps just one more time."
[Narrator] It's not working. Why isn't it working?
(dramatic music)
What if the rich man buys a flower first?
Then, no.
Maybe it's Virginia Cherrill.
[Narrator] 270 days into the shoot.
[Virginia] Charlie fired me.
[Narrator] It's Cherrill. She's not right.
He needs a new flower girl and fast.
The whole thing is going to cost a fortune to reshoot.
He hires Georgia Hale,
his leading lady from "The Gold Rush."
[Georgia] He said, "I'm going to redo all
of 'City Lights' with you."
I'm gonna redo the whole thing with you.
[Narrator] But, no. Hale's not right either.
(dramatic music)
He tests other actresses.
They're just not, maybe Cherrill was the one.
He begs Cherrill to come back.
(dramatic music)
It's 534 days into the shoot,
but they still haven't got the flower scene.
He shot an entire film around the fulcrum
of this mistaken identity
and it just isn't working.
(suspenseful music)
Then it comes to him.
A slamming door.
The key to Chaplin's defiantly silent opus
is a sound.
(gentle music)
(sweet gentle music)
(gentle music)
(film whirring) (gentle music)
(pensive music)
(gentle music)
(crowd cheering)
[Narrator] At the premiere, 50,000 people turn out,
hoping to see the Tramp and the flower girl.
And some speculate the romance
may not be confined to the screen.
[Virginia] Many people thought I was his girlfriend,
but I wasn't.
I was much too old. I was 20. (laughs)
[Narrator] All four of Chaplin's wives
were young actresses.
Three were teenagers.
I've asked the author of this book to visit us.
Her name is Lita Grey Chaplin.
The title is "My life With Chaplin."
[Narrator] We only have one of Chaplin's wives on tape.
[Interviewer] Second wife of Charlie Chaplin and-
[Narrator] 1966 she releases her tell-all memoir.
It is a controversial sensational book.
And here is Lita Grey Chaplin.
(audience applauding)
(upbeat music)
I'm curious, Lita,
to find out why you would write this book.
I had a compulsion to write it.
I felt that the story just had to be told
or rather I had to tell the story.
I had lived so many years with the untrue story.
You starred in one of his movies
or you appeared in one of his movies.
[Lita] "The Kid" when I was 12 years old.
(upbeat music)
Can I ask how old you were when you married him
or is that a secret?
Sixteen.
And were you then heading for a motion picture career?
Yes, I had begun in "The Gold Rush," but
(throat clearing) I couldn't finish the picture.
Charlie takes two years to make a picture, you know,
and we became involved in the meantime in such a way
that I couldn't have completed the picture.
[Narrator] A teenage girl pregnant with Chaplin's child.
His first wife, Mildred Harris,
went through something similar.
She divorced Chaplin, citing mental cruelty.
And things don't start any better for Lita.
[Lita] We were married in Mexico
because Charlie didn't want much said about the marriage.
He was pretty bitter in the beginning.
On the way back on the train, he was quite nasty.
We were standing out on the platform between the cars
while the train was traveling.
And he said, we could just end this whole situation
if you'd just jump.
(somber music)
[Narrator] Two years later, Lita sues for divorce
(gentle music)
and full custody of their two children.
It is, up to this point,
the most expensive divorce in Hollywood's history.
The petition is so sensational
that copies of it start selling on the street.
(thoughtful music)
Lita describes him as a serial adulterer
who cheats openly and compulsively.
She claims he's paranoid and jealous.
That he flies into rages,
bugs her room, pulls a gun on her.
She says he tried to pressure her
into getting a backstreet abortion.
Chaplin calls Lita a blackmailer, a gold digger,
a little whore.
The papers label her Chaplin's child bride,
his school girl wife.
And in a letter of support for the genius Chaplin,
30 European intellectuals brand her
an idiot woman, cow,
slut, vermin, parasite.
A part of the public thought that I was wrong
in my divorce case.
That he was the poor little mistreated, pathetic little man
with so much pathos and all.
That me and my family were gold diggers
and all this kind of talk.
And that was, that made me feel bad
because I knew that a portion of the public
believed a lot because they idolized Charlie.
(pensive music)
[Narrator] For many years afterwards,
Lita struggles with depression and alcohol.
(pensive music)
She tries to set the story straight in interviews,
but the topic frequently strays back
to the matter of Chaplin's genius.
(thoughtful music)
Even after her death,
biographies of Chaplin continue to characterize her
as a manipulative and seductive teenage girl.
Chaplin, in his autobiography,
dedicates just three sentences to Lita.
He never mentions her by name.
(gentle music) (reel whirring)
(dramatic music) (camera shutter clicking)
(crowd cheering)
[Narrator] Lita's story is a shocking one.
But for Chaplin it changes nothing.
(lively upbeat music)
(crowd roaring) (lively upbeat music)
(train chugging)
(bright music)
Plenty has changed though.
(bright upbeat music)
The optimism of the Roaring Twenties has come crashing down
and at every stop on Chaplin's world tour,
he sees the ravages of the Great Depression.
Communists and fascists are fighting in the streets.
(upbeat music) (people shouting)
Queues outside screenings of "City Lights,"
are mistaken for bread lines.
(somber music)
(crowd shouting)
In London with Mahatma Gandhi,
he discusses poverty, exploitation
and the misuse of the machine.
(dramatic music)
A film is taking shape in Chaplin's head.
(dramatic music)
(bright frantic music)
(dramatic frantic music)
(bright music)
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
(dramatic suspenseful music)
(dark dramatic music)
It's number one at the British Box Office,
a smash in The States.
Acclaimed in the Soviet Union.
But in one country, the film is banned outright.
(sirens wailing)
(dramatic music)
(bell ringing)
Munich, 15 years earlier.
A little man marches down the street,
swishing at the air with some sort of cane.
His comical appearance attracts attention,
particularly his conspicuous toothbrush mustache.
He looks very familiar.
"Who is this funny little fellow?" someone asks.
He's the leader of some fringe political group.
(dramatic music)
"Just think," remarks Chaplin a few years later,
"He's the madman, I'm the comic."
But it could have been the other way around.
(dramatic music)
Chaplin and Hitler are born within four days of each other.
They both grow up adoring their mothers
and resenting their drunken fathers.
Both have known poverty.
One plays a tramp on screen
while the other is homeless on the streets of Vienna.
(dramatic music)
Both are driven by a passionate intensity and ambition,
laced with self-pity.
Sound threatens Chaplin's art, but is the making of Hitler.
(Hitler speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] They are both mesmeric performers.
They know how to command a crowd
through exaggerated gestures
and heightened emotional appeals.
Both elicit intense, almost physical reactions
from their audiences.
Chaplin makes them laugh.
Hitler drives them into a frenzy.
(crowd cheering)
And then of course there's the mustache.
(suspenseful music)
But when Chaplin and Hitler look at each other,
what do they see?
The Nazis hate Chaplin.
They label him a Jew
and use him in their antisemitic propaganda.
(man speaking in foreign language)
(crowd shouting)
[Narrator] Neither can escape comparisons with the other.
And so, as Hitler celebrates his 50th birthday
with a military parade through Berlin,
Chaplin is working on a script for his latest film.
(dramatic music)
He begins filming the week Britain declares war on Germany.
In it, Chaplin collapses the distinctions
between himself and Hitler
as the dictator Adenoid Hynkel.
(dramatic music) (crowd cheering)
But it's also a story of doppelgangers.
He simultaneously plays the Jewish barber.
Before we take you down, you'll finish this. Here!
(dramatic music) (hand slapping)
Come on. Paint that.
(paint splashing)
Why you!
(blows thudding)
- Ow! - Hey, come here!
Chaplin, who wasn't Jewish,
has finally aligned the Tramp with one identity.
(soldiers shouting)
A persecuted minority facing extermination.
(ominous music)
(quiet tense music)
(crowd cheering)
(sinister music)
(somber music)
[Narrator] At the film's end,
the Tramp is mistaken for the dictator
and forced to address the world.
(somber music)
When the greatest comedy character
of all time finally speaks,
it's not to tell a joke.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone, if possible.
Jew, Gentile, black men, white,
we all want to help one another.
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's happiness,
not by each other's misery.
We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there's room for everyone
and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful,
but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls,
has barricaded the world with hate,
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
You, the people have the power
to make this life free and beautiful,
to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.
Let us all unite!
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world,
that will give men a chance to work,
that will give you the future and old age a security.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power.
But they lie. They do not fulfill that promise.
They never will!
Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.
Now let us fight to fulfill that promise.
Let us fight to free the world,
to do away with national barriers,
to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.
Let us fight for a world of reason,
a world where science and progress will lead
to all men's happiness.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
(crowd cheering)
(dramatic music)
[Narrator] Chaplin knows the Tramp can't survive this.
By breaking his silence,
he's putting his creation on the alter.
But after a quarter of a century in the Tramp costume,
can Chaplin be sure
that he will re-emerge whole?
Can there be one
without the other?
(gentle music)
(wind howling)
It's 1947.
(camera flashes popping)
Charlie Chaplin is holding a press conference
at the Gotham Hotel in New York.
He's about to release his new motion picture.
His first without the Tramp.
But as he knows, no one's here to talk about the film.
Chaplin.
(audience applauding)
(camera bulbs popping) (audience applauding)
(audience laughing)
(camera flash popping)
[Narrator] So, how did we get here?
(crowd cheering)
"The Great Dictator" has been an enormous success
and its closing speech has made such a splash
that Chaplin is invited to repeat it
at the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
[Charlie] You, the people, have the power
to make this life free and beautiful,
to make this life a wonderful adventure
that in the name of democracy, let us use that power.
Let us all unite!
At a fundraiser for the Russian war relief,
he's invited to speak for four minutes.
[Charlie] We must have a unity.
[Narrator] He speaks for 40.
[Charlie] And only by the strength of unity
can we win this war.
[Narrator] He gets carried away, goes off script.
[Charlie] I certainly think if that's communism,
there's a lot of people in the United States
that'll vote for it.
[Narrator] Having waited so long to break his silence,
Chaplin can't stop talking.
[Charlie] I just made a speech in Chicago
and I happened to say that while people are anticommunist,
I am going to be communistic.
(audience applauding)
We must have the full strength
from the capitalist to the communist,
in order that we shall achieve victory.
(audience applauding)
[Narrator] And people are starting to listen.
(suspenseful music)
Under the orders of its notorious director,
J. Edgar Hoover,
the FBI is engaged in wide ranging investigation
into Chaplin's possible ties
to the international communist movement.
(suspenseful music)
The Red Scare is underway,
(dramatic music)
from Capitol hill to Hollywood.
Communism in reality is akin to disease
that's spread like an epidemic.
And like an epidemic,
a quarantine is necessary to keep from infecting the state.
[Narrator] Actors, writers and filmmakers
are dragged in front of the House
un-American Activities Committee.
[Representative] Are you or have you ever been a member
of the communist party?
[Representative] What is your opinion regarding communism?
I feel that they really ought to be smoked out.
If I had my way about it,
they'd all be sent back to Russia
or some other unpleasant place.
(audience applauding)
[Narrator] 10 Are imprisoned for refusing to testify.
Hundreds are blacklisted.
Taking down a big star would be a major coup for Hoover
and they don't come much bigger than Charlie Chaplin.
[Representative] Are you a member of the communist party?
(gavel thudding) (camera flash popping)
[Narrator] But this response doesn't satisfy Hoover.
Through the FBI's lens,
Chaplin becomes not only a communist,
but a foreign subversive,
a homosexual, a Jew.
It tells us a lot more about the FBI
than it does about Chaplin.
(suspenseful music)
They're looking for dirt.
And in this department, they have a powerful ally.
Hello everybody.
This is Hedda Hopper reporting to you from Hollywood.
That fabulous place where everyone wants to live,
but seldom does.
[Narrator] "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood Gossip Column"
is read by 32 million Americans.
Work in Culver City and play.
[Narrator] She has the power
to make or break careers.
Palm Springs, the other day I decided to get away-
[Narrator] and she hates communists.
Saw a little bit of sunshine.
[Narrator] She tells Hoover,
I'd like to run every one of those rats out of the country
and start with Charlie Chaplin.
(bright music)
The file shows that Hopper and Hoover's relationship
is more or less circular.
Hopper fills her columns with gossip about Chaplin
that's been fed to her by the FBI.
[Hedda] Charlie Chaplin dividing
his dancing attention night before last at the Persian Room-
[Narrator] The FBI then quotes those columns
and its file against Chaplin.
[Hedda] In the minds of...
Charlie Chaplin is called the debutante's delight.
[Narrator] The machine feeds itself.
[Hedda] Regarding communists in Hollywood.
I found much (murmuring).
[Narrator] The evidence, however, remains circumstantial.
Until one day-
You know, there's one man in particular-
[Narrator] Hopper finds a young woman called Joan Barry.
(mournful music)
In 1941, Joan arrived in Hollywood
as an aspiring young actress.
Charlie Chaplin took an interest in her.
He said he could make her a star.
Now she's pregnant and she needs help.
Hopper and Hoover sense an opportunity.
(dramatic music)
Chaplin is taken to court to prove that he's the father.
And Hopper ensures the whole case plays out,
week-by-week in the tabloid press.
(dramatic music)
The prosecutor tears into Chaplin.
He reveals that Chaplin forced Barry
to have two backstreet abortions
and accuses him of decades of predatory behavior.
Three grueling trials later,
a blood test suggests he may not be the father.
(somber music)
But it's too late.
The tide has finally turned.
(mournful music)
It's a great victory for the right wing press and the FBI.
(people chattering)
But what about Joan Barry?
Where does this leave her?
(somber music)
A few years later,
she is committed to a psychiatric hospital.
There's no further trace of her.
And now it's open season on Charlie Chaplin.
(presses whirring)
(people chattering)
(somber music)
(camera flashes popping)
Now that it's ended
The romance is over
The passion gone
Like the wind and the rain
Gone are the joys
Of our madness
When I dream of you
[Narrator] In the midst of all these scandals,
he's married again.
Oona O'Neill.
(gentle music) (reel whirring)
[Geraldine] My mother was so young when she met him.
She was 17 and he was 52, I think.
They fell in love
and then as soon as she turned 18, they married.
Everyone thought that she was just a bimbo
and that she'd be gone soon.
(people chattering) (birds chirping)
They were mad about each other.
[Eugene] The only opinion he listened to was my mother's.
Just couldn't do nothing without her approval.
(gentle music)
She was the sunshine.
She gave warmth.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
(leaves rustling)
(audience cheering)
[Narrator] But his next film, "Limelight,"
betrays an underlying anxiety.
(pensive music)
In it, he's an aging comedian.
Once renowned for playing a beloved Tramp character
whose public
has now abandoned him.
(pensive music)
(ship horn blaring)
(people chattering)
On September 17th, 1952,
the Chaplin family depart the United States
to attend the European premiere.
(birds squawking)
Two days into the voyage-
(dramatic music)
[Reporter] The story which makes the most sensational news
is the departure of Charlie Chaplin for London.
Immigration officials are prompt to suggest
that the great comic may have difficulty getting back here
if he wants to come.
[Reporter] The United States Attorney General,
James P. McGranery,
heard that Chaplin had been--
Charged with making statements
that would indicate a leering, sneering attitude
toward a country whose gracious hospitality
has enriched him.
[Reporter] And then at the Justice Department
decided that Chaplin could not re-enter the country,
unless he could prove quote "His moral worth."
(dramatic music)
(bright music)
(birds squawking)
[Narrator] This has been years in the making.
His enemies have tried everything.
But in the end,
they just wait until he leaves.
(dramatic music) (train whistling)
Chaplin sells his Hollywood studio
and retreats to Switzerland.
(dramatic music)
He moves the family into a grand estate
ringed by the Alps.
(mournful music)
(people chattering)
[Geraldine] The sentence I remember most, him saying.
"I'm not bitter about America.
I'm not bitter about America.
Bitter about America? I'm not bitter about America."
He said it so many times one begins to wonder.
(somber music)
[Narrator] And Chaplin is forced to adapt to his new role
as a father.
(film whirring)
[Geraldine] My father wasn't Charlie Chaplin.
I knew they were the same person,
but they looked nothing alike.
Except when he had an audience,
then he would become Charlie Chaplin,
that other man, the man that was on the screen.
(gentle music)
[Narrator] This is the Charlie Chaplin we find
in the family's home movies.
A cheerful clown who appears
the moment the camera starts rolling.
(gentle music)
[Jane] My one wish growing up
was to have one conversation alone with my father.
(gentle music)
Just the two of us.
He was inaccessible in so many ways.
Your father's working.
Don't disturb him.
He'll lose his inspiration.
Our world revolved around my father's well being.
(gentle music)
[Michael] I was kind of frightened of my father.
He was so powerful in a certain way.
You couldn't argue with him because he couldn't be wrong.
Everyone who gets too close to him,
he'll end up suffocating.
He couldn't help it.
That's why I left home at an early age.
And I think my sisters did too, you know.
(pensive music)
[Narrator] Chaplin makes two films in exile.
But neither is the comeback he hopes for.
(somber music)
[Geraldine] He said to me,
"I was very famous.
I used to be very famous."
It did matter to him.
Of course it mattered to him.
He needed an audience.
He was a comedian.
You need an audience.
(somber music)
[Charlie] Correction.
It strikes me that happiness is becoming more difficult.
New paragraph.
To write a book.
A great controversy was going on in the press, comma...
In this day and age we... ...comma.
Paragraph...of unconsciousness.
(gentle music)
[Narrator] In the pages of his memoir,
Chaplin revisits, once more,
the streets he wandered as a boy.
(gentle music)
The streets he haunts as an old man.
(pensive music)
The streets he returned to time and again,
as the Tramp.
His old Lambeth neighborhood,
he rebuilt it in his Hollywood studio.
(pensive music)
(birds squawking)
The gates of Killington Park,
here Chaplin met for a date with his first love.
It's where the Tramp meets the flower girl.
(gentle music)
And the attic of No. 3 Pownall Terrace.
Where young Charlie watched his mother's health ebb away.
(pensive music)
It's the attic room in "The Kid."
(dramatic music)
(crowd cheering)
And if Chaplin isn't finished with the past,
the past certainly isn't finished with him.
(upbeat music) (people faintly singing)
When Hollywood stages a grand reconciliation at the Oscars,
it seems like a bid to turn back the clock.
(crowd cheering) (people singing faintly)
(gentle music)
When he's knighted in 1975,
people are still searching for traces of the little fellow.
[Reporter] Sir Charles left the palace,
not with his famous cane,
but now leaning on a thick walking stick.
He's 86 next month and he sat in a wheelchair
as the queen dubbed him.
[Narrator] Is there anyone left
who can look at one without seeing the other?
(gentle music)
[Narrator] When you ask for the real Charlie Chaplin,
a thousand voices reply.
[Interviewer] Take care.
(Effie laughing)
[Narrator] Some are louder than others.
(camera flashes popping) (people chattering)
[Narrator] Some are hidden.
Some struggle to be heard.
And others
remain silent.
(mournful music)
(gentle music)
[Geraldine] I think if anyone could pin my father down,
could understand him
it was my mother.
My mother's voice doesn't exist.
There's nothing with her.
No recorded interviews.
(gentle music)
Certainly she kept journals. She kept diaries.
Writing was, I think, her way of escaping.
Writing furiously, writing continuously.
In her last years,
she spent a lot of time destroying,
destroying what she had written.
(gentle music)
She was probably very lonely.
I could imagine it would be quite lonely
being the wife of Charlie Chaplin.
(film crackling)
[Jane] That big wish that I had,
to have conversation alone with my father.
(gentle music)
I forgot about it.
I thought, "Oh, you know, this is ridiculous.
It's just never gonna happen."
And when I dropped it, that's when it happened.
Conversation alone with my dad.
I had grown up with the icon.
(birds squawking)
But the man, I had no idea who the man was.
He spoke about having huge amounts of doubt.
He said that he had had doubts all his life.
(gentle music)
He accomplished his life's dream,
but I don't think he ever really got over his doubts.
(gentle music) (engines rumbling)
Does one ever really get over where you come from?
I don't think it ever leaves you.
(dramatic music)
(reel rattling)
(mournful music)
(pensive music)
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
If you only shut your trap
I will tell you about a chap
That was broken up against it and threadbare
He was not the kind that shirked
He was looking hard for work
But he heard the same old story everywhere
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, keep on a-trampin'
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
Nothin' doing here for you
If I catch you round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on tramping
That's the best thing you can do
He walked up and down the street
Til the shoes fell off his feet
In the house he spied a lady cooking stew
And he said, how do you do
May I chop some wood for you
What the lady told him made him feel so blue
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, keep on a-trampin'
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
Nothin' doing here for you
If I catch you round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on trampin'
That's the best thing you can do
Cross the street the sign he read
Work for Jesus, so it said
And he said, here is my chance
I'll surely try
And he kneeled upon the floor
Til his knees got rather sore
But at eating time he heard the preacher cry
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, keep on a-trampin'
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
Nothin' doing here for you
If I catch you round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on trampin'
That's the best thing you can do
Down the street he met a cop
And the copper made him stop
And he asked him, when did you blow into town
Come with me up to the judge
the judge, he said, oh fudge
Bums that have no money needn't come around
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, keep on a-trampin'
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
Nothin' doing here for you
If I catch you round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on trampin'
That's the best thing you can do
Finally came the happy day
When his life did pass away
He was sure he'd go to heaven when he died
When did he reached the pearly gates
Saint Peter, mean old saint
Slammed the gate right in his face and loudly cried
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, keep on a-trampin'
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
Nothin' doing here for you
If I catch you round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on trampin'
That's the best thing you can do
Keep on trampin'
That's the best thing you can do
(dramatic music)
(dark dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
(dark dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)