Charlie Chaplin made an amazing seventy-one films by the time he was only thirty-three years old. He was known not only as the world's first international movie star, but as a comedian, a film director, and a man ripe with scandal, accused of plagiarism, communism, pacifism, liberalism, and anti-Americanism. He seduced young women, marrying four different times, each time to a woman younger than the last. In this animated biography of Chaplin, Joyce Milton reveals to us a life riddled with gossip and a struggle to rise from an impoverished London childhood to the life of a successful American film star. Milton shows us how the creation of his famous character - the Tramp, the Little Fellow - was both rewarding and then devastating as he became obsolete with the changes of time. Tramp is a perceptive, clever, and captivating biography of a talented and complicated man whose life was filled with scandal, politics, and art.
"Tramp is the best Hollywood biography I have ever read; beautifully written, painstakingly researched, unblinkingly shrewd in pursuit of Chaplin's labyrinthine personality, and an analysis of the comedic art that is itself funny - a literary accomplishment even rarer than sexy sex scenes."
Washington Times
"Substantial... [A] well-researched, evenhanded portrait of a troubled entertainment genius... Milton's clear rendering of one of the first film superstars, and of the fickle public scrutiny that followed him, doubles... as a sweeping look at the first half of the 20th century."
