Charlie Chaplin
A childhood in London workhouses, a mother in an asylum, the music-hall stage from the age of five. He came to America on tour and stayed; in 1914 he invented the Tramp — bowler, cane, broken shoes — and two years later was the highest-paid man in the world. “The Kid”, “The Gold Rush”, “City Lights”, “Modern Times”: he wrote, directed, acted and composed the music himself, and took to sound ten years late because the Tramp was mute. “The Great Dictator” (1940) mocked Hitler while America was still out of the war. In 1952 the United States refused him re-entry from a trip to Europe, and he spent his last twenty-five years in Switzerland.
He was born in London on 16 April 1889 at about 20:00 Greenwich time. The hour is his own: no record of the birth was ever found, neither in a parish register nor in the state one.