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Charlie Chaplin was born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England in 1889. His parents were music hall entertainers, but they separated when Charlie was only three, and his mother had mental problems and was in and out of asylums, and his father died when he was 12.

Charlie had an older half-brother Syd, and they pretty much raised themselves, working in music halls from when they were very young. In 1910, Charlie joined a traveling troupe that went to the U.S., and returned in 1912.

In 1913, he was seen by Mack Sennett, who hired him for his Keystone Comedies. His first movie was Making a Living in 1914, and it was not a success, but in his second movie, Kid Auto Races at Venice, he invented his famous character, The Tramp. This was a huge success, and Chaplin started directing and writing many of his movies, most with his Tramp persona.

He became Keystone's greatest star. In 1916, the Mutual Company paid Chaplin $670 to create 12 two-reel comedies, and some of these were among his very best movies, like Easy Street, and One A.M. These movies made him so popular that his older movies were constantly being shown throughout the late 1910s.

In 1918, he signed an 8 movie million dollar contract with First National. He had complete control over these movies. In 1919, he co-founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, but he couldn't make movies for UA until he had satisfied his First National contract, which he did with The Kid, A Dog's Life, and others.

At United Artists, he was finally absolutely in control of his movies, and he started taking longer and longer to make each one, because he had no one to answer to. In 1925, he made The Gold Rush for United Artists, considered by most to be his masterpiece.

When sound came to movies, Chaplin resisted, and he made City Lights in 1931 as a silent movie with a musical soundtrack, and his Modern Times in 1936 had mostly only sound effects and next-to-no dialog.

In 1940, Chaplin made The Great Dictator (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), a black comic attack on Nazism, with Chaplin playing a crazed Hitler-like character. It was quite daring for its day, and is a wonderful movie. His next movie was not until 1947 and it was the ultrablack comedy, Monsieur Verdoux, and while it was not successful on its first release many people (including myself) think it is a wonderful movie.

Chaplin made three more movies, and passed away in 1977. He had many wives, underage girlfriends, and children, and was involved in many scandals. But he was surely the most influential person in the history of the movies, and was a master actor, director and writer, and we will never see his like again! AND Marion Davies was an actress from the 1910s to the 1930s. Some of her movies include: Cain and Mabel, Going Hollywood, Blonde of the Follies, Janice Meredith, When Knighthood was in Flower, Little Old New York, Zander the Great, and Marianne. She is well remembered for being the longtime mistress of William Randolph Hearst, and Orson Welles largely based the Susan Alexander Kane character in Citizen Kane on her, but, unlike that character, she was actually a talented comedienne who would surely have been a success if she had not had Hearst pushing her career! AND Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois in 1899. At 15, she happened to tour a movie studio in Chicago, and asked to appear in a movie, and that gave her the acting "bug". She appeared in minor roles in slapstick movies for Essanay, but in 1916, she was hired by Keystone and then Triangle, and she starred in over 20 movies in 1916 to 1918. In 1919, she signed with Cecil B. DeMille, and starting making elaborate melodramas, rather than the light comedies she had been making. She also began wearing really wild outfits and accessories in her movies (practically costumes!). In 1928, she had one of her best remembered roles, as Sadie Thompson (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), directed by Raoul Walsh from the W. Somerset Maugham (the part would later be played by Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth). In 1929 she had a role in Trespasser (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and she starting filming Queen Kelly directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (the father of the famous Kennedy brothers, with whom she had a long term affair). This was intended to be von Stroheim and Swanson's masterpiece, but they clashed over the way her character was portrayed, and there were massive cost overruns, and von Stroheim was fired, and an alternate ending was filmed, and that altered version had a limited release in Europe only (many years later a reconstructed version of von Stroheim's original vision was created [with still photos in part]). Swanson survived the transition to talking movies, but she could see her career was winding down, and she began acting more on stage, and painting, sculpting, and writing a syndicated column. After 1934, she only made one movie until 1950, when she took the lead role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film; screenwriter Charles Brackett says the role was intended for Swanson from the start, while director Billy Wilder says they first offered it to virtually every other leading silent actress!). The movie has a marvelous script (of a once famous silent actress having an affair with a much younger man, and dreaming of a "comeback" that will never come), and the casting of Swanson and Holden is perfect, and the additional casting of von Stroheim and DeMille add much to the movie. It is a virtually perfect movie! Swanson had six husbands over her life, marrying the first time on her 17th birthday (to Wallace Beery!) and the last time when she was 77, which lasted until she passed away in 1983. In her day she was as big a star as Hollywood has ever known!

Important Added Info: What a wonderful still this is! It shows Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson arriving at a party at Hearst Castle, and having their picture taken with hostess Marion Davies (who was William Randolph Hearst's mistress and frequent party thrower). If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here. Also note that this is a deluxe still printed on double weight paper stock.

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