Curious: Most surprising thing you learned about CC?

That he cut his own hair throughout his life. His hair is so perfect
that it looks as if it was fussed over by a stylist for hours. The
tousled look is usually the product of hours of tedious work.

Another surprising thing is that he was so cheap and avoided picking up
checks in restaurants. This negative quality doesn't fit in with his
emotional extravigance.
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For me, the surprise was that he was so distant with his children.
Charlie Jr.'s book tells about this to an extent, but in far more
understanding and forgiving terms than the average person might have
described it. Somehow I expected that a guy who'd had a very rough
childhood himself would relate better to his own children, and
empathize more with their feelings. But then Chaplin was a very complex
person... and that much I *did* know.




--Shush--
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"Candace" (ulysses@mscomm.com) writes:
> That he cut his own hair throughout his life. His hair is so perfect
> that it looks as if it was fussed over by a stylist for hours. The
> tousled look is usually the product of hours of tedious work.
>
> Another surprising thing is that he was so cheap and avoided picking up
> checks in restaurants. This negative quality doesn't fit in with his
> emotional extravigance.

I'm not sure the latter is true, except maybe in his Keystone days.

According to Harry Crocker's manuscript in the Herrick Library, Chaplin
always picked up the check in resraurants. Crocker's observation was that
Chaplin didn't mind writing checks, but disliked paying for anything, even
small amounts, in cash. Crocker ascribed this to his early emotional
associations with money--or the lack of it.

I actually don't think I've learned anything about Chaplin that surprised
me, but then I'm used to dealing with authors and artists, and they're an
eccentric lot. It would have surprised me if Chaplin had settled down with
one woman in his twenties and remained faithful to her for the rest of his
life.

It did surprise me somewhat to realize the depth of Chaplin's understanding
of music, and the subtlety of his insights has sometimes taken me by surprise.

Connie K.
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Connie wrote:
>It did surprise me somewhat to realize the depth of Chaplin's understanding
>of music, and the subtlety of his insights has sometimes taken me by surprise.


My greatest surprise came along these lines. I didn't know at first
that Chaplin wrote those lovely scores that accompany his films. I
think the first one I was aware of was THE KID. I admired the
sweetness of the music, and then when I found he had written it, I had
a deeper understanding of the gentleness of the man's soul.
Technically, "subtely of his insights" sounds right.

Deborah
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I've got a better answer for this question than the one I posted
last week.

In MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY, there's a photo of a bunch of schoolkids (or
workhouse kids, I guess), and one of them is the young Chaplin. When I
first read that book in the mid-'70s, somehow I thought that Charlie's
was the face in the middle of the page: the kid with the bangs and the
sober expression. Years later, another book had the same photo, with a
circle around Charlie's face... and it was a different kid! Charlie's
actually the kid in the next row up and just to the right.

So now I've spent the last 20 years wondering who that first kid
was, and whatever happened to him... and I'll never know.




--Shush--
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Shush wrote:
> I've got a better answer for this question than the one I posted
> last week.
>
> In MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY, there's a photo of a bunch of schoolkids (or
> workhouse kids, I guess), and one of them is the young Chaplin. When I
> first read that book in the mid-'70s, somehow I thought that Charlie's
> was the face in the middle of the page: the kid with the bangs and the
> sober expression. Years later, another book had the same photo, with a
> circle around Charlie's face... and it was a different kid! Charlie's
> actually the kid in the next row up and just to the right.
>
> So now I've spent the last 20 years wondering who that first kid
> was, and whatever happened to him... and I'll never know.

Well, actually you might, especially if you mean the kid just in front
to Charlie's left (as printed in the 1st edition paperback). Here's a
wild stab for ya (that isn't altogether impossible given what looks to
be an age range represented in the photo), It might be Syd.
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