Happy birthday to Charlie Chaplin!

"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl." - 

Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best-known for his work during the silent film era. He became one of the most famous film stars in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and othervisual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. 

His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. 

From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.

 

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. Since the 1960s, Chaplin's films have been compared to those of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd (the other two great silent film comedians of the time), especially among the loyal fans of each comic.The three had different styles: Chaplin had a strong affinity for sentimentality and pathos (which was popular in the 1920s), Lloyd was renowned for his everyman persona and 1920s optimism, and Keaton adhered to on screen stoicism with a cynical tone more suited to modern audiences.

(Source: Wikipedia & brainyquote.com; Photo credit: Chaplin & policeman, thereflectedlife.com &  Still from City Lights, 1931 Charlie Chaplinwith the blind flower girl, Virginia Cherril, seraphicpress.com; Gloria Swanson, Charles Chaplin and Marion Davies at the premiere of City Lights in Los Angeles on 30 January 1931. The police found it hard to control the huge crowds, All images from Chaplin films made from 1918 onwards, Copyright © Roy Export Company Establishment, chaplin.bfi.org.uk; A scene from Charlie Chaplin's 1914 movie "Kid Auto Races in Venice", Chaplin's second film and the debut of his "tramp" costume, Wikipedia; Chaplin 1920, Wikipedia; Buster Keaton seated, in costume, wearing his signature pork pie hat, 1939, Wikipedia;Harold Lloyd in 1928, Wikipedia;  Chaplin quote, comedy king charlie.blogspot.com)