You are hereFamous Folks and Me / Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
HAVE I OFFENDED YOU?
By Tom Soter
I don't remember much about my meeting with Charlie Chaplin except that he seemed to be an awfully nice guy. Here's how it happened: it was the summer of '65 and I was just eight (going on nine in October). My father had packed the family – my mom and my two brothers – off to Jamaica for a holiday. (Usually we went to Greece, although I was such a fan of TV's Daniel Boone that I once complained about going to such exotic locales insisting instead that we visit Boone's hunting ground, Kentucky. Ah! Innocent youth!) We were staying in a little bungalow on the beach and our neighbor happened to be Charlie Chaplin.
Yes, the Little Tramp himself was next door, working on the screenplay for what would be his last film, A Countess from Hong Kong(1966). My father felt very respectful of Chaplin's privacy and so, whenever the great man and his family (his wife and two young children) came out on the beach, my dad would quickly hustle us off to our bungalow, so that Charlie could be alone. After two or three days of taking these speedy exits, Chaplin sent a man over to our bungalow with a message: "Mr. Chaplin would like to know if he has done anything to offend you. You don't seem to want to share the beach with him." My father sent a message back explaining, and the next thing we knew, Chaplin had invited us over to have some tea.
He was white-haired and much heavier than the man I had seen in the movies, but he still had a twinkle in his eye and was very attentive to the children. I remember him talking with me in a quite grown-up way about my hand-drawn comics, as he quite seriously discussed plot points with me as though I were a great author and not just a nine-year-old boy.
We may have seen him once or twice after that, but the only other thing I still remember about that time was the night the resort showed a documentary on silent movie stars. I couldn't quite relate the man I had recently met with the energetic man I saw glidng effortlessly on the screen, taking pratfalls with operatic grace. It seemed like a different world. And it was – as different to me then as Jamaica in 1966 and meeting Charlie Chaplin is to me now. July 2008
