By Jason Webb
CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) – Jane Chaplin was 17 when
she had her first proper conversation with her aged father, the
screen legend Charlie Chaplin, and now she is writing a book
about growing up with a man she hardly knew but the world still
recognizes as “The Little Tramp.”
Entitled “Seventeen minutes with my father,” it will be the
first book by any of the Chaplin children, she told Reuters in
a street cafe Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. She has
lived a life of leisure in the beautiful old port city for
three years since a brief affair with a Colombian.
“Writing, I’ve discovered that he was a very nice man. I
was brought up to believe he was a son of a bitch,” said
Chaplin, a slender dark-haired woman in her late 40s who had
previously tried her hand unsuccessfully at screen-writing.
“He comes out fantastic in the book, yeah. My mother, on
the other hand …”
British-born Charlie Chaplin had eight children with Jane’s
mother Oona, who was the daughter of American playwright Eugene
O’Neil and was 37 years younger than her husband.
“She was always, I guess because of the age difference,
always very protective of him. You know: ‘Don’t disturb your
father, because he’s working. Don’t, he’s busy. Don’t tell him
about that.”‘
Jane said she grew up fearing rather than knowing her
father, and being constantly told by her mother and by servants
that that he was a genius and she would never match him.
Chaplin, who was born in 1889, started his career in
British music halls but made his name in film in the United
States, where he stayed for around 40 years. He abandoned the
country for Switzerland in 1952 after being accused of
“un-American activities.”
A PRIVATE CONVERSATION
Jane’s father was already 68 years old when she was born,
and she was raised in the family home in Switzerland. A
self-doubting adolescent who did poorly at school, she didn’t
get her first proper chance to speak to him alone until one day
when her mother had to go out on an errand in 1974, when she
was 17.
“It had been a wish all my life, and so, she leaves, and
I’m in the library with him, and he’s watching TV, a football
game, but the sound is down.”
“He reached out and touched my hand and said ‘Do you want
to continue watching this?”‘
She didn’t, and so began the only private conversation she
ever had with her father.
He said her mother had told him she was nervous about
taking an exam for acting school.
“In that conversation I discovered he had had a lot of
doubts all his life, that it hadn’t been easy. I discovered the
man, I guess.”
Her father died in 1977 and her mother in 1991.
Jane thinks some of her siblings — who include actress
Geraldine Chaplin — could react poorly to elements of the
book, although she suspects they don’t have any confidence in
her ability to finish it.
“They probably all think, ‘Oh, she probably abandoned the
project.”‘
The book is now more than 400 pages long, although Chaplin
has still to start looking for a publisher.
“Maybe you could put it in your article that I’m looking
for a literary agent,” she said.
Meanwhile, Chaplin, who still draws income from a family
company selling rights associated with their father’s image and
work, is trying to write the final pages while participating in
the hectic social calendar of Cartagena.
“I wanted to finish before the end of the year but, with
all the partying going on, it’s sort of difficult,” she said.
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