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00:30Charlie Chaplin, the screen's most famous clown, was born in London in 1889.
00:35His vaudeville parents battled unemployment and the bottle,
00:38and Charlie experienced poverty and hunger,
00:41experiences that later found their way into his classic films.
00:45Chaplin toured with a stage company as a nine-year-old
00:48and left home to make his own way in show business aged 14.
00:51In 1912, Chaplin joined the Keystone Pictures studio in California
00:56and put his vaudeville talents to good effect as a comic actor
00:59in a series of popular silent films.
01:01His first appearance was in the one real comedy, Making a Living, in 1914.
01:08It was Chaplin's second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice,
01:12that his best-known character, the Tramp, first made an appearance.
01:16An appealing vagrant, both innocent and world-weary,
01:20the Tramp strutted across the screen and into audiences' hearts.
01:25Chaplin himself had no idea of the type of character he would play in the movie
01:29until he donned some ill-fitting clothes.
01:32He said,
01:33The moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was.
01:37I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage, he was fully born.
01:46By 1918, Chaplin was successful enough as an actor and director
01:50to open his own studio, asserting complete creative control.
01:55In 1919, he co-founded the United Artists Film Distribution Company
02:00with fellow actors Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and director D.W. Griffith
02:05in an attempt to claw back power from the rapidly developing Hollywood studio system.
02:10Although he often engaged in the usual Keystone slapstick antics,
02:14Chaplin's little Tramp was also a ladies' man.
02:17And Chaplin, too, had a weakness for women, especially young ones.
02:22His first marriage to 17-year-old Mildred Harris was disastrous.
02:27The couple had a son who lived tragically just two days,
02:30and the marriage lasted barely two years.
02:33But the emotional turmoil had a creative effect,
02:36and Chaplin became inspired by the idea of acting with a little boy as a sidekick.
02:40Fortuitously, he discovered pint-sized Jackie Coogan on stage,
02:44an eight-year-old prodigy whose perfect imitations of Chaplin
02:47produced howls of laughter from audiences.
02:50In 1921, the film The Kid became Chaplin's biggest success to date.
02:55It was the first feature-length film to effectively combine drama and comedy
03:00and set a new standard for motion pictures.
03:03The arrival of sound by the early 1930s was a dilemma
03:06for a performer who made his reputation in pantomime.
03:09Although Chaplin wrote a script for Modern Times,
03:12he decided against adding dialogue to the film,
03:15instead experimenting with sound effects.
03:17The film was notable for the character The Gamine
03:20played by Chaplin's main love of the 1930s, Paulette Goddard.
03:24She also starred in The Great Dictator,
03:26Chaplin's great satire about the rise of Nazism.
03:29But the relationship had ended amicably by then.
03:32Three years later, he married 18-year-old Una O'Neill, 34 years his junior.
03:37The couple had eight children together and remained married until his death.
03:41Chaplin's later years were marred by persecution
03:43from anti-communist government officials and the tabloid press
03:46who hounded him for his left-wing sympathies.
03:49He was forced into exile in Switzerland,
03:51where he was received with open arms.
03:53Charlot, as he was known in Europe, received many honours,
03:56including Holland's Erasmus Prize,
03:58which was presented by Prince Bernhardt in 1965.
04:02Charlie the Tramp.
04:03Charlie, the defender of the right to live of the humble,
04:06the poor, the oppressed.
04:09Charlie with a generous heart,
04:12who's been able to charm millions of people of all intellectual levels.
04:18Charlie, the eternal, sensitive and indestructible nobleman.
04:24Sir Charles Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977.
04:28But the Tramp lives on in celluloid,
04:31an immortal reminder of the funniest and saddest clown of all time.
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