The famous English comedian whose silent movies made the entire world laugh lived for over 25 years in Switzerland. Born in the Kennington district of London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin was raised in poverty by an alcoholic actor father and a singer mother who was in and out of asylums. Chaplin began his career in show business as a singer at the age of 5, and in 1906 he worked as a pantomime in several show troops traveling throughout Europe and America. In 1913, during a tour in the American music halls, the young Chaplin was hired as an actor by the Keystone film production company.
Charlie Chaplin's acting talent and genius for comic miming soon brought him to stardom. He made film after film, some of which have become silent movie classics, such as The Kid, The Great Dictator, Modern Times or The Gold Rush.
But Chaplin's success did not please everyone. Despite his immense popularity with the general public, he was under close watch by the justice for his leftist political activities. The witch hunt climate of postwar America, aggravated by the political putsch organized by Stalin's agents in several Central European countries, rendered any liberal political beliefs suspect and anti-American in the eyes of the Republican government.
In 1952, Chaplin and his family went to London to promote his new film, Limelight. The anti-Communist commission headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy jumped at the opportunity to cancel Chaplin's visa and forbade him from returning to American soil. Protest as he might, the actor's visa was not reissued and the Chaplin family began their search for a land of asylum.
The Chaplin family chose Switzerland and settled into Lausanne's Beau-Rivage hotel in 1953. Then they moved to the Manoir de Ban, a large property in Corsier, north of Vevey, with orchards and a large terrace with magnificent trees framing the view of the mountains and the lake in the distance.
The Chaplin family made friends in the area, particularly Victoria Eugenie, the Queen of Spain in exile. From his Corsier residence, Charlie Chaplin sometimes traveled to London or Paris. He continued to work and made A King in New York, for example,in 1956. The quarter of a century he spent in Switzerland saw the birth of four of his 10 children. They were all born in the Mont-Choisi clinic, in Lausanne. His last child, Christopher, was born when Charlie Chaplin was 73 years old.
It was at his Corsier residence that Chaplin ended his autobiography with these words: I sometimes sit out on our terrace at sunset and look out over a vast green lawn to the lake in the distance, and beyond the lake to the reassuring mountains, and in this mood think of nothing but enjoy their magnificent serenity. Charlie Chaplin passed away in Vevey, and now rests with his wife in the Corsier sur Vevey cemetery. Today there is a square named in his honor and a statue erected to his effigy on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Vevey.
The film Chaplin recounts the life and times of Charlie Chaplin and a box-set reunites all of his greatest films.
