Update: September 03, 2013

Caricature Cartoon of Charlie Chaplin in color.

Click to view.

Painted this caricature 🙂 Check it out here.

Original Post follows:

Everyone knows Charlie Chaplin, so let me come straight to the point. Here’s my rendition of “The Tramp” the character that made Charlie Chaplin famous. I will save myself the trouble of telling you all that you perhaps already know, and end this post with a short biographical note about him.

Charlie Chaplin’s Short and Sweet Biography

Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16th 1889, in London. Both his parents were entertainers so the believers of genetics might say that his genes made him what he was. Yet I believe that how you nurture your talents has a lot to do with how far you go, and so the credit of Charlie Chaplin’s success cannot be given entirely to his genes. Biographies usually are a lot more than a nature-vs.-nurture discussion, so allow me to proceed. Charlie’s dad was an alcoholic. (Why do most celebs have a twisted childhood? Does it mean that people with normal, regular childhoods don’t stand a chance at greatness? Jot these questions down and ruminate upon them when you have nothing better to do.) This must’ve led his mom to a nervous breakdown – so, in a manner of speaking, little Charlie was more or less on his own. At the age of 13, Charlie landed a role as Billy the Page boy in a Stage Play themed upon Sherlock Holmes. The long and short of it is that Charlie had started walking the rickety bridge to stardom, when he stepped into his teens – he just didn’t know it yet. It was in 1910, when CC was 21 that he first arrived in the US. It was in this land of opportunities that CC first found himself working for films and during 1914/15s he was presented to the world as THE TRAMP! Who would think that a Tramp could become so popular – and a tramp that couldn’t talk at all! But it was the tramp wearing a really tight coat over a huge pair of trousers, shod with a gigantic pair of shoes who caught the fancy of people and brought them back the laughter that the First World War had stolen away. In 1919, not long after the success the tramp, Chaplin co-founded the United Artists film production company and made many more silent and talking(?) films.

A Couple of Caricatured Charlie Chaplin Highlights

(You know that I look in awkward places.)

Charlie Chaplin could’ve written books on wooing women…but he was too busy making films. The guy’s ability to charm the…oh well…the sandals off the feet of women has been considered mysterious, even mystical by many. I mean, how a 5 feet 5 inches “tall”, twiggily-built gentleman could do that with women who were half his age, is something that should be investigated thoroughly by the historians.
Charlie Chaplin sired 12 children (that’s if I counted right – I suffer from double-vision at times,) and he made the last one appear when he was a young and healthy 73! I know that a dozen kids is nothing when compared to Osama bin Laden’s 24 and Osama’s dad’s 54, but they weren’t 73 and so what amazes me is that when most playful male septuagenarians of our time include viagra in their staple diet, how did Mr. Chaplin manage this feat in the pre-viagra era.
Charlie Chaplin couldn’t enlist in the military because he was too short and too light – characteristics that endeared him to people the world over.
Charlie Chaplin made a movie called “The Great Dictator”, in which he played the role of a Jew. This movie brought academy nominations but it also ignited the controversy that CC was in part a Jew. (According to this information here, the Jewish people are the highest IQ community on this planet, and so, if he really had Jewish blood, it could have played some part in making him the legend that he was.)

Guess that’s all that I have on Charlie Chaplin 🙂 Coming up…