Charlie Chaplin

flashback

Vanity Fair March 1928

In 1928, when this picture was snapped for a review of The _ Circus in Vanity Fair, Charlie Chaplin, the actor, writer, producer, and director, was, at 39, the avatar of world cinema. Richard Attenborough, the actor, writer, producer, and director, who this month releases Chaplin, an account of the early auteur's salad days, notes that "Charlie was the most famous man in the world at 25, a millionaire at 28, and took over Hollywood, in a way, by the time he was 30." He was also the first of a now thriving breed endemic to the breezy. sage-studded foothills of Southern California: the limousine liberal.

Yet fanatical moralists imagined sins of greater magnitude, accusing him of heinous crimes such as pacifism, atheism, Communism, and pedophilia (two of his four brides were 16-yearolds). In reality, this early nemesis of "family values" held himself to a strict personal work ethic. "I don't believe I deserve dinner unless I've done a day's work," he would tell his friends. Even Samuel Goldwyn, the right-of-center mogul, knew the real score. His wry encomium: "The only true capitalist I know is Charlie Chaplin."