A Life of HEARTBREAK & LAUGHTER

HE OVERCAME POVERTY TO BECOME THE KING OF HOLLYWOOD - BUT HIS TROUBLES WERE JUST BEGINNING

- Louise A. Barile, Reporting by Katie Bruno

In 1952, Charlie Chaplin, his wife and their children boarded an ocean liner in New York bound for a vacation in Europe. They had no way of knowing that once they left, they would not be allowed back to America. Exile from the U.S., where the British comedian had lived for nearly 40 years, must have stung, but it wasn’t the hardest obstacle Charlie, a pioneer of early cinema, had to overcome in his long life. A child born into poverty and raised without a father, he spent his early years in orphanages after his mother was institutionalized. “Charlie’s life raft was show business,” says Scott Eyman, author of Charlie Chaplin vs. America. But even as Charlie honed his comedy antics in vaudeville, he grew into a “lone wolf” socially. “He learned he couldn’t depend on anybody but himself.”