Chaplin - His Life and Art

Same problem here I had with Victoria Wood’s biography: everything is here, in impressively well-researched detail. Everything except the main character. By the time I reached the end of this book I couldn’t deny that I didn’t know what Chaplin had achieved in his life. And the things that happened to him, such as his being hounded out of the USA during the anti-Communist witch hunts in the late 1940s.

But I never felt like I understood the man. Not that the author, David Robinson, would take that as a legitimate complaint, since he goes out of his way in the Preface to say that he’s not going to try to offer an analysis of his subject’s character.

So we get the record. And it’s fascinating. But I would have liked to know more about his interest in young women – no, he wasn’t a paedophile, but he did get himself mixed up in an awful lot of trouble with women far too young for him – about his obsessive work habits, and about what he was really thinking when he was welcomed back to Hollywood for an honorary Oscar in 1972.