With the same gusto, humor, and dazzling description that light up his fiction, Sid Fleischman produced a quartet of books profiling figures whose talents set the world abuzz—including this one of Charlie Chaplin.
There he was, that little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman. A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens. Everyone knew Charlie Chaplin.
Abandoned by his alcoholic father, neglected by a mother fighting insanity, Charlie Chaplin had escaped the London slums of his tragic childhood and gone on to take Hollywood like a conquistador with a Cockney accent. With his gift for pantomime in films that had not yet acquired vocal cords, he was soon rubbing elbows with royalty and dining on gold plates in his own Beverly Hills mansion. He was the most famous man on earth—and he was regarded as the funniest.
Yet Chaplin rose from the slums to the heights only to be driven from the country that had brought him worldwide fame. Never were tragedy and comedy so inextricably mixed as in his too-outlandish-for-fiction life, told with Sid Fleischman's trademark wit and verve.
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“With a
straightforward chronology, the chapters follow the famous comedian from his
impoverished childhood in London slums through Hollywood stardom and his final
years, when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. As in his previous books
about famous lives, Fleischman infuses the narrative with energetic charm, and
although the book is thoroughly documented with exemplary source notes, playful
metaphors lend an almost tall-tale tone that echoes the humor of Chaplin’s work…The
author also deftly integrates details of early moviemaking into the colorful
accounts of Chaplin’s tumultuous personal and professional lives, and he writes
with unabashed enthusiasm for Chaplin’s work…Young people with a noncurricular
interest in Chaplin may be few, but once led to this fascinating, well-shaped,
and entertaining title, they may well discover a curiosity about and
appreciation for the films that made the great comedian famous…[A] standout
portrait.”
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Booklist (starred review)