Saturday, April 16, 2011

Facts About Charlie Chaplin - strangefacts

  • He was born four days before Adolf Hitler, in 1889
  • Charlie Chaplin was so popular during the 1920s and 1930s, he received over 73,00 letters in just 2 days during a visit to London
  • After adopting his trademark Little Tramp costume, consisting of baggy pants, bamboo cane, bowler hat, and over-sized shoes, Chaplin became a Hollywood icon
  • Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest
  • He was the first actor to appear on Time magazine. Chaplin appeared on the July 6, 1925 issue of Time magazine, a U.S.-based news magazine. He was the first actor ever to appear on the magazine known for its influential cover photo
Screenshot From Movie "THE GREAT DICTATOR"
  • His understudy in England was Stan Laurel; they sailed to America together and shared a boarding house when they arrived
  • In 1925, he was the first actor to appear on the cover of Time magazine
  • At the height of his popularity, he failed to win a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest
  • His imprints were removed (and subsequently lost) from the Hollywood walk of fame because of his suspected communist views
  • Although Adolf Hitler despised Chaplin, he was aware of his popularity, and grew the Chaplin mustache to endear himself to the people
  • He had bright blue eyes and He never became a U.S. citizen
  • He composed about 500 melodies, including Smile
  • The last film he saw, in 1976, was Rocky
  • In 1978, his dead body was stolen for over two months. When it was recovered, it was re-buried in a vault encased in cement
  • He won only one non-honorary Oscar, and it was 21 years "late". Chaplin won an honorary Academy Award ("Oscar") in 1929, during the first presentation of awards
  • Chaplin was married 4 times. He was 29 and his first wife was 16 when they married. His second marriage was to 16-year-old Lita Grey, when he was 35. His third and possibly fictional marriage to Paulette Goddard, was rumored to have occurred when he was 47 and she was 28. He married his last wife, Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, shortly after Oona turned 18. Chaplin was 54
  • He was ordered to pay child support for a child that was not his own. In the 1940s, Charlie had a brief relationship with actress Joan Barry. Several months after their breakup, she claimed that Chaplin was the father of the child to which she had just given birth. When blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father of the child, Barry's attorney moved to have the tests ruled inadmissible as evidence. Because there was little historical precedent to admit the test results into the trial, the judge did not allow them to be used as evidence of Chaplin's non-paternity. After a mistrial and a retrial, Chaplin was ordered to pay Barry $75 per week for child support, a respectable amount in those days
  • His corpse was stolen. Three months after Chaplin died on Christmas, 1977, his body was stolen in an effort to extort money from his family. Chaplin's body was recovered 11 weeks later after the grave-robbers were captured. He is now buried under 6 feet of concrete to prevent further theft attempts
  • He has an asteroid named after him. Four years after his death, Ukrainian astronomer, Lyudmila Karachkina, named an asteroid after him. Ms. Karachkina, discoverer of 131 asteroids, named one of them 3623 Chaplin. It resides in the asteroid "belt" between Mars and Jupiter and appears as a magnitude 12.1 object, making it visible in a moderately strong telescope
  • His daughter portrayed his mother in the movie Chaplin. The accomplished actress, Geraldine Chaplin, is Charlie's daughter with his last wife Oona. In the 1992 Hollywood movie adaptation of Charlie Chaplin's life, Chaplin, she portrayed Hannah Chaplin, Charlie's mother
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