Real life influences on Charlie's 'Kid'

[stuart.uk]

How much of Chaplin's past influenced his making of The Kid.

It's been supposed that for example the death of his first son at 3 days old just before he began filming The Kid in positive way inspired a creative burst of genuis and was a way of coping with his grief.

Again Charlie as a youth was taken away forcibly by his mother and put along with half brother Syd into the workhouse. In the film the work house employees take little Jackie Coogan away from the Tramp, setting up IMO the greatest ever scene on film.

However, today I thought of another possible influence. I'm almost ashamed that I never thought of it before. Charlie's mother Hannah had an affair with music hall performer Leo Dryden, producing son Wheeler. The relationship was short lived and Leo abtucted Wheeler and took him out of the country. This horric event in Hannah's live might explain in part her loss of sanity.

I don't know if Charlie had welcomed Leo back to the fold by the time he filmed The Kid, as he for a long time refused to recognize him when his brother tried to get in touch with him again. This might have been because Charlie might have thought him an imposter trying to take advantage of his fame. That however, might not be important as far as influencing The Kid, because Hannah, like Edna Purviance in The Kid was trumatised by the loss of a child, still alive, goodness knows where.

I do know Wheeler wrote a very moving letter to Edna, after his fruitless attempts at his brother's and it's thought that she might have spoken to
Charlie about it. The big break through appears to have been when Wheeler approached Hannah herself and asked if she knew who he was. Despite her mental health problems she recognized him instantly. Wheeler played the Doctor in Charlie's last Hollywood film Limelight, but if anything suffered even more than Charlie during the Communist Witch Hunt, dying relatively young.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think undoubtedly that Charlie was shaped by his childhood. His childhood sounds Dickensian. Poverty, the workhouse and watching your mother's mental health decline, what must that do to a child. I think many of his films contain references from his childhood.

I must reread David Robinson's book on Charlie. Don't you find it strange that he completely accepted Sydney but not Wheeler. Did he feel usurped in his mother's affection by a younger brother? Did he blame Leo Dryden for removing Wheeler from the country and hastening her decline?

A question that interests me is how much is his genius and his gift for comedy because of his childhood? Certainly the themes would have been different.

[stuart.uk]

Alison

I always thought Charlie's films, particulary The Kid had a touch of Dicken's about them

[charliechaplinfan]

The Kid does have a touch of Dickens about it, so does A Dog's Life and Easy Street. The set for Easy Street was meant to have been modelled on the area he lived in in London.