Charlie Chaplin and His Times

March 3, 1997
The life of the movies' first superstar receives comprehensive treatment in this big-shouldered bio from Lynn (Hemingway, etc.). Although it's based largely on secondary sources (earlier Chaplin bios, the published memoirs of people who knew him, press accounts), the book provides a vivid portrait of Chaplin's intensely energetic working habits, his vaguely left-wing politics and his restless (to say the least) personal life, especially his huge appetite for young women. As every Chaplin biographer must, Lynn makes a stab at sorting out Chaplin's early life in Britain, all accounts of which are colored by Chaplin's own self-mythologizing and inconsistent versions. The text picks up momentum and authority with Chaplin's arrival in Hollywood. The book's chief claim to originality is summed up by the second half of its title: in nearly every chapter, Lynn provides quick and evocative sketches of important people or events that affected, or were affected by, Chaplin. These virtual sidebars include passages on the British music halls, Douglas Fairbanks and even Hitler (whom Chaplin parodied in The Great Dictator). Lynn is especially good on the controversies of Chaplin's later career, when problems with the Hays Office (the film industry's semi-official censor) and Communist-hunters in the federal government helped to destroy his career and drive him into exile. Although it lacks the scholarly authority of David Robinson's Chaplin: His Life and Art (1985) and comes rather hard on the heels of Joyce Milton's fine Tramp (1996), Lynn's book is a splendid popular biography, witty, engaging and informative. Photos.