Charlie Chaplin: The life story you may not know

Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889 in South London to Hannah and Charles Chaplin Sr., who were music hall entertainers. His parents split up, and Chaplin and his half-brother Sydney spent their childhood in workhouses and charity homes after their mother was committed to an asylum in 1903. She lived in the asylum for 18 years, before Chaplin moved her to California in 1921.

[Pictured: Charlie Chaplin is third row from front, third from left.]

At 10 years old, Chaplin joined a troupe of clog dancers called The Eight Lancashire Lads. They toured across England.

Chaplin landed roles in several stage plays and joined a burlesque company called Casey's Circus. With his older brother Sydney, also a performer, he joined The Karno Co., a well-known comedy theater and vaudeville touring group.

[Pictured: Chaplin is center, wearing a bowler hat.]

As a member of The Karno Co. theater group, Chaplin toured the United States, where he caught the eye of the New York Motion Picture Co. In 1913, he landed a contract with the Keystone Film Co. earning $150 per week.

The first movie featuring Charlie Chaplin was "Making a Living" in 1914. Wearing a large mustache, Chaplin played a charming swindler named Edgar English.

Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character first appeared in the 1914 movie "Kid Auto Races At Venice." Chaplin's character was a spectator who disrupted a go-kart race. The movie was shot at a real race, with the actors improvising with actual race spectators.

In his year at Keystone Film Co., Chaplin developed his "Little Tramp" character and made 35 comedy shorts. Chaplin later described how he chose his trademark costume, saying: "I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large."

Among the comedy shorts Chaplin made in 1914, "Twenty Minutes of Love" was his first directing effort. Of another 1914 comedy, "Her Friend the Bandit," no known copy survives. The now-lost film starred Chaplin and Mabel Normand, and they co-directed as well.

In "The Tramp," made in 1915 for Essanay Studios and directed by Chaplin, his iconic creation started to transform into the more familiar character that audiences know well. The "Little Tramp" became less slapstick and grew more poignant and caring.

Signing a $670,000-a-year contract with the Mutual Film Company, Chaplin became the highest-paid film actor in the world. He made a dozen short comedies for Mutual, including "The Floorwalker," the first movie to employ the "running staircase" gag in which actors run down an up escalator—or vice versa—and don't get anywhere.

In October 1918, at age 29, Chaplin married 16-year-old Mildred Harris, a popular child-actress. They had a son in 1919 who lived for just three days, and they separated later that year. When they divorced in 1920, Harris got some property and a $100,000 settlement.

Chaplin made "The Bond" in 1918 at his own expense to promote the sale of U.S. Liberty Bonds to help finance the nation's military effort in World War I. The movie featured a number of comic sketches portraying types of bonds such as friendship and marriage.

In 1919, Chaplin joined with actress Mary Pickford, actor Douglas Fairbanks, and director D.W. Griffiths to create United Artists studio. It was an effort by the stars to exert more control over their work.

In 1924, Chaplin married actress Lita Grey. He was 35 and she was 16, preparing to star in the movie "The Gold Rush." She became pregnant and lost the role. The couple had two sons—Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Earle Chaplin, both of whom became actors.

Chaplin divorced wife Lita Grey in 1927 in acrimonious proceedings. He paid her a record settlement of $825,000, and the legal costs of the divorce came to nearly $1 million. One Chaplin biographer said their marriage served as inspiration for the novel "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov, about a man's obsession with a 12-year-old girl.

In 1925, Chaplin wrote, produced, directed, and starred in one of his most acclaimed works, the silent movie "The Gold Rush." In 1931, when most movies were talking pictures, he made the silent "City Lights," which featured a musical score Chaplin composed.

In his final appearance as the "Little Tramp," Chaplin made the 1936 movie "Modern Times." The movie is considered a commentary on the joblessness and poverty millions of people faced during the Great Depression.

The year 1936 saw Chaplin marrying actress Paulette Goddard, whom he had cast as a street urchin in "Modern Times." She was 22 when they first met. They kept their marriage largely under wraps, and he did not introduce her publicly as his wife until 1940. They split up in 1942. The actor later said they had been secretly married but also said it was a common law marriage.

Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," released in 1940, was his first fully talking picture. In the parody of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, Chaplin plays two roles—a Jewish barber and fascist leader Adenoid Hynkel—and delivers a scathing criticism of the German leader. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Picture.

Chaplin married Oona O'Neill in 1943. He was 54, and she was barely 18. Her father was playwright Eugene O'Neill, who condemned the union and cut off all contact with his daughter for the rest of his life. The couple had eight children, including actress Geraldine Chaplin.

The same year that Chaplin married his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill, he was sued for paternity by actress Joan Barry. The scandal cost him in terms of his popularity and public image. Blood tests showed he was not the father, but the results were not allowed as evidence in a 1944 trial, and Chaplin was ordered to pay $75 a week until Barry's child turned 21.

While traveling in London in 1952, Chaplin learned that U.S. immigration officials would not let him return home to America after he had been openly critical of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and was suspected by government officials of having communist sympathies. He moved to the town of Corsier-sur-Vevey in Switzerland.

Chaplin returned to the United States to receive an honorary Academy Award in 1972. The audience gave him a standing ovation that lasted 12 minutes.

Queen Elizabeth knighted Chaplin when he was 85 years old. The honor had been proposed and rejected in 1931 because Chaplin did not serve in World War I and again in 1956 when the Conservative British government did not want to damage relations with the United States during the Cold War.

Chaplin died in Switzerland on Christmas Day in 1977 after suffering failing health for several years. He was buried in Corsier-sur-Vevey Cemetery in Switzerland, where in 1978 a band of robbers stole his corpse in an extortion attempt. The grave robbers were caught, and the body was recovered after 11 weeks near Lake Geneva. It was reburied in a vault under several feet of concrete.