Charlie Chaplin is perhaps the only actor who can be recognized by their silhouette.
He created The Little Tramp persona with only a mustache, bowler hat, and walking stick.
He also brought plenty of memorable scenes to the world of film.
There’s the blind flower girl seeing him for the first time at the end of City Lights.
There’s the passionate speech at the end of The Great Dictator.
He made a well-made persona, but it was a persona nonetheless.
His family saw a different man when the cameras stopped rolling.
Keep watching as Charlie Chaplin’s son confesses the hard truth about his father.
Being Charlie Chaplin’s Son Charlie had 11 children in total.
Michael is the second of eight children from his fourth and final marriage to Oona O”
Neil.
He admits that his father cast a” huge shadow” over him.
He was forced to slide into the background because of his larger-than-life personality.
There were also times when he was genuinely afraid of him.
One of his first experiences on a film set with Charlie was when he was making Limelight.
He remembers his father barking orders through a loudspeaker.
The intimidating experience stayed with him forever.
Michael was cast in A King in New York when he was 10.
The satire of McCarthyism was Charlie’s final leading role.
He enjoyed working with his father, but he wasn’t encouraged to keep going.
He was instead encouraged to focus on his education, which he struggled to do.
Michael remembers his father entertaining the whole family with mime routines and other
comedy acts, but he doesn’t remember having those skills passed down to him.
That type of attention went to teaching his sisters Geraldine and Victoria to play the
piano.
He didn’t feel unloved but knew his father had a short temper.
He also always knew his father was talented, but it ramped up the expectations others had
of him.
Teachers would say he’d never measure up, and it hurt.
He did reassess his relationship with his father after his death.
He feels that his tough nature may have just been a way to prepare his son for the dangers
of life.
He also regrets any times he hurt or embarrassed him.
Michael has also been willing to defend his father.
He helped Charlie through his struggles with being investigated by the FBI under McCarthy.
He also doesn’t defend his father’s romantic actions in marrying younger women but does
believe he didn’t prey on them.
Being Michael Michael struggled to find his own identity
and decide what he wanted to do for years.
When he was 16, he ran away to London to be with his girlfriend.
His father wouldn’t speak to him for a while when he came back after two years.
He tried to go to Barcelona to marry Patricia John when he was 18.
The problem was that he needed his parent’s permission and they wouldn’t provide it.
It made front-page news when they eventually got married in England and had a baby son.
Michael says that his life moved from one ambition to the next.
He didn’t finish his course at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts.
He felt he had “no talent for acting” and was too deep into the counterculture movement
of the 60’s.
He also tried music and got a record deal.
He released a song called I Am What I Am but admits he hadn't written the song but needed
money.
He doesn’t think he had any musical talent either or that the song deserve to hit the
charts.
At 19, he hired two ghostwriters, Tom Merrin and Charles Hamblet, to write a tell-all book
titled I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn.
It seemed that he was once again unsatisfied because he went to court to stop it from being
published.
The case failed and it went out anyway.
Charlie was furious because it stereotyped him and included potentially libelous material.
It led to another period where he didn’t speak to Michael.
He even got banned from the set of A Countess from Hong Kong, but that production was already
full of issues.
Michael worked on the film in secret when an old family friend who was a producer gave
him a job.
He did grunt work and wasn’t credited but got to meet Marlon Brando.
Michael divorced Patricia when he was 20 and met Betaudier Chaplin the next year.
They’ve had two children, Carmen and Dolores, and have been together ever since.
Their life allowed Michael to try another ambition and get back to nature.
In 1978, they went to a goat farm in the southwest of France.
He was attracted by the landscape and spent 13 years there but, once again, doesn’t
believe he did well.
It was small with only six acres and 30 goats.
They didn’t produce enough milk to live on, and there weren’t many other buildings
around.
After that, he became tired of indecision.
He felt like he was going nowhere and that the struggle to measure up to his father’s
legacy was crushing him.
He needed a change, but how?
Writing A Novel Michael is 77, and his book is set to come
out soon.
Other than his seven children from two marriages, he says it’s the first thing he’s done
that he’s truly proud of.
Progress didn’t come quickly.
Michael is a major procrastinator who has trouble finishing anything.
He says that tried to write when he was younger but would get started and find out he had
“nothing worthwhile to say.”
A friend helped him deal with his writer’s block by telling him that what he’d done
before was too superficial.
He needed to stop being afraid to put himself onto the page and into his characters.
The inspiration for his final product, A Fallen God, came from that goat farm in France.
It tells of the medieval romance between Tristan and Isolde in the 13th century.
It’s an epic fairy tale fit for all ages.
There are bits of everyone in Mark’s life within the pages.
The hero Tristan resembles Charlie’s active and irresistible nature, but Michael says
that he never intended it to be that way.
Instead, he wrote himself into another character.
He modeled King Mark after his early life.
He’s an incredibly passive character who needs to learn how to fight for love.
Michael also had a passive life with no ambition until he learned to grow and change.
He says anyone can overcome the type of malaise he felt and stop drifting through life like
he did if they work at it.
Many of his loved ones doubted that he’d finish such a daunting task.
It was a family joke, but he’s proud of himself for getting it done.
He knows that his book-loving mother would be so proud of him.
He doesn’t want to speak for his father but thinks he would be as well.
As far as a sequel or follow-up, Micahel’s not sure he has it in him.
It took him 20 years to write the book, and he’s not sure if he even has 20 years left.
There is a possibility, but he’s focusing on being proud of his achievements for once.
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famous.
Keep watching as Charlie Chaplin’s other children and wives confess the hard truth
about his father.
Being Charlie’s Other Children or Wife The Real Charlie Chaplin was released in cinemas
and on Amazon Prime.
It uses a combination of home videos, interviews, and other formats.
They show him at his best, being an entertainer, but also at his worst as a man.
This means including words from four of his children and his last wife Oona O’Neil.
It allows them to tell their side of the story.
The documentary provides a deeper dive into his role as a father.
Michael says that you could never argue with him and that he “suffocated” those who
were close to him.
Jane admits that she never truly got to know him as a person.
Her one wish was to have a conversation with him alone.
Geraldine says that he became an entirely different person on stage.
It also doesn’t shy away from talking about his romantic relationships.
He was married four times and allegedly slept with over 2,000 women.
He met Mildred Harris in 1918 when he was 29 and she was 16.
They got married that year after she told him she was pregnant.
She divorced him in 1920, citing cruelty.
He met Lita Gray that year when he was 31 and she was only 12 on the set of The Kid.
He allegedly seduced her in 1924 when she was 15 and he was 35.
She tried to speak of the cruelty she also suffered while married to him, but few would
listen.
They couldn’t separate the man from the icon.
She did get a settlement of $800,000 or $14 million today.
It was the largest divorce settlement ever made at the time.
Charlie married Paulette Goddard in 1936.
She was 22 but claimed to be 17.
His controlling nature became too much, and she left him in 1940.
They officially split in 1942, and she got a settlement in 1942 to keep quiet about the
entire marriage.
He married his final wife, Oona O’Neill, in 1943.
They had eight children, and she stayed with him until he died in 1977.
The documentary acknowledges his talent and rags-to-riches story but does not paint any
of these relationships in a positive light.
It shows him being as cruel and controlling as he’s ever been made out to be.
He’s allegedly said horrible things about the women, especially Lita.
It also suggests that he only married her to avoid jail for statutory rape.
Is any of this true?
There’s always been a bit of mystery behind the larger-than-life actor, and there always
will be.
Charlie Chaplin was an outgoing and vibrant man, but it’s important to remember he put
on a persona for the camera.
He became The Little Tramp, but it was nothing more than a character.
Even his children struggled to know who he truly was, and the world still does too.
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