On January 11, 1927, Charlie Chaplin's second wife, Lita Gray Chaplin, sued for divorce, and the court receiver froze his $16 million fortune.
When Chaplin married her in 1924 at the age of 35, Rita, 16, was still a promising actress. The painful and lengthy divorce ended the three-year marriage with a $1 million settlement.
Chaplin was one of Hollywood's most economically successful stars of the early years, and was introduced to the stage at the age of five. The son of a London concert hall entertainer, young Chaplin, was watching a show starring his mother when her voice became hoarse. He was quickly dragged onto the stage to finish the performance. Chaplin's father died while Chaplin was a toddler, and when his mother had a nervous breakdown, Chaplin and his half-brother Sydney roamed London, dancing in the streets and collecting pennies in their hats.
They ended up going to an orphanage and joining the children's dance troupe 8 Lancashire Lads. At the age of 17, Chaplin developed his comedic skills with the help of Fred Carnot's company, for which his half-brother became a popular comedian.
Soon, Chaplin's bowler hat, outturned feet, mustache and cane became his hallmarks. He joined Keystone and filmed Making a Living, in which he played a bearded villain with monocle glasses. It wasn't long before he also worked on the other side of the camera, helping direct his 12th and 13th films, in the rain, alone.
Chaplin perfected the character Charlie Vagabond, who soon became his legacy, and in 1915 signed up with the Essanay Company for $1,250 a week, plus a $10,000 bonus — a big leap from the $175 Keystone paid him.
The following year, he signed with Mutual for $10,000 a week, plus a $150,000 bonus, a contract that required him to make 12 films a year but granted him complete creative control over the photos. In 1918, he signed a $1 million contract with First National for eight films.
Chaplin was a superb silent film actor and pantomime actor who could cause laughter and tears in the audience, and Chaplin resisted the arrival of voices in the film. In fact, in his first sound film (City Lights (1931), he used only music. His first true sound film was the Great Dictator of the 1940s, in which he ridiculed fascism.
Chaplin co-founded the United Artists Company in 1919 with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and director DW Griffith. Chaplin was married twice, both times to teenage girls. His fourth wife, Una O'Neill, was married to the 54-year-old actor at the age of 18, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill.
Although he lived in the United States for 42 years, Chaplin never became a U.S. citizen. An outspoken pacifist, Chaplin was accused of having links to communism, but he denied it. In 1952, however, immigration officials prevented Chaplin and his wife from re-entering the United States after traveling abroad. The couple did not return to the United States for 20 years; instead, they settled in Switzerland with eight children.
Chaplin returned to the United States in 1972 to receive a special Academy Award in recognition of his "immeasurable impact in making cinema the art of this century and this century." In 1975 he was named Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin. He died two years later