CHARLIE CHAPLIN

I'm currently reading the autobiography of Charlie Chaplin, a fascinating account by an entertainer who grew up in dire poverty in 1890's England.

His mother was a music hall singer, his estranged father an actor. Chaplin began his career on the stage at the age of 8 and in time, his creative genius was both recognized and rewarded.

He came to America in 1910 at the age of 21 and within five years he had gone from vaudeville to the big screen where he was making $670,000 a year.

If you have any interest in the early days of the movie industry or in the carrer of a rag to riches entertainer, I think you'll enjoy this book.

A man with little or no formal schooling, I am amazed by Chaplin's ability to write about his life with candour and clarity as well as his encyclopedic memory for details. After all, his book is almost 480 pages long. In particular, his interactions with Randolph Hearst, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Ghandi are most fascinating.

Chaplin was not embraced by all Americans and his stance on how the US was fighting Communism  post World War 2 got him on the persona non grata list which led to his decision to trade in his American stardom for a small farm in Switzerland. Chaplin died at the age of 88.

Though not a religious man, let me share one quote in the book that I think captures his spirit well.

"As I grow older I am becoming more preoccupied with faith. We live by it more than we think and achieve by it more than we realize. I believe faith is the precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science and mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces.

My faith is in the unknown, to all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good."