Posted on 03/06/2009 1:34:08 PM PST by nickcarraway
Sydney Chaplin, the oldest surviving son of film legend Charlie Chaplin and a Tony-award winning actor in his own right, has died at the age of 82, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.
Chaplin, who starred opposite Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl" on Broadway, died on Tuesday at his home in the California desert community of Rancho Mirage, due to complications from a stroke, the Times reported.
The second son of Charlie Chaplin and his second wife, Lita Grey, Sydney Chaplin was born in Beverly Hills in 1926 and recalled in interviews that he didn't know his father very well as a child.
After serving in World War Two he turned to acting, co-founding the Circle Theater in Los Angeles and taking a number of stage and screen roles.
He won a Tony award for the 1950s musical "Bells are Ringing" and appeared in the last film his father directed, 1967's "A Countess From Hong Kong."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Syd, I hardly knew ye!
Saw an interview recently with one of Chaplin’s younger daughters. They were raised in Switzerland. To day Chaplin was cold and distant, is to severely understate the case. She said she had approximately one serious conversation with her father in her life. And she wasn’t like some Mommie Dearest character out to tarnish the reputation of someone - just stating the facts. The mother’s job was to keep the kids from bothering the great man. Very strange household.
What a tramp!
It was a very silent ceremony
I thought he was a little kid?!
Charlie was a commie, wasn’t he?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was the case. But ironically also pals with Churchill I think.
That’s Modern Times, for ya.
Didn’t know he had a son. I remember Chaplin mostly for his role of Hitler in “The Great Dictator”.
Ahh. My mom knew him, from when he was in Funny Girl. He was a great guy, I’m told, though his mother wrote one of the most notorious tell-all books in Hollywood history.
I am 30 and she says I am too young to be told in more detail.
RIP, Mr. C.
It would be safe to say that Charles (Sr.) was a lib.
Someone once told Robert Benchly (or someone similar) that Chaplin was sick with a 105 temperature, and Benchley said, "Common or preferred?"
Yes, Michael Medved indicates he was a commie in his book “Hollywood Party” — a very interesting read, BTW.
How little could he be? Chaplin died in the 70s.
This and that:
Chaplin didn’t get along with his kids, but maybe it was a generation-and-a-half gap. He was around 54 when he married his 4th wife, Oona (a stunner in her day, and daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill). Their eldest wrote a tell-all called “I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn.”
(I’m just writing what I’m hearing, folks!)
Geraldine was a more sensible sort. You can get a glimpse of early Geraldine from an interview in one of Oriana Fallaci’s early works, “Gli Antipatici.”
Sydney played Nick Arnstein in the Bway version of Funny Girl, so you can hear him in duet with Streisand on the LP. Chaplin married his mom around the time he was filming “The Gold Rush.” It was a very messy divorce...in its time.
His father used women without too much consideration. It is likely he offended the laws regarding juvenile females more than once. His recourse was to marry them. Lita Grey,Sydney's mother, likely 15 years at his conception was well into her eighties when she died and was a survivor. A good looker too.
A word on Charlie Chaplin the famous one. He knew hard times in Victorian London and never forgot. It did not endear him to lowly persons on the same level. Like all liberals though, he loved causes, he loved human rights. All for the common man, he never wanted to mix with them. He treated certain individuals like dirt, when it suited him .
Typical Lefty, who "made it big".
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