Sydney Chaplin

Not to be confused with writer Sid Chaplin. For Sydney Chaplin's nephew, son of Charlie Chaplin, see Sydney Chaplin (actor).
Sydney Chaplin
Born Sydney John Hill
(1885-03-16)16 March 1885
London, England
Died 16 April 1965(1965-04-16) (aged 80)
Nice, France
Occupation Actor
Years active 1905–1929
Spouse(s) Minnie (d.1936)
Henriette (Gypsy)
Relatives Charlie Chaplin (half-brother)
Wheeler Dryden (half-brother)

Sydney John "Syd" Chaplin (16 March 1885 – 16 April 1965) was an English actor. He was the elder half-brother of Sir Charlie Chaplin and served as his business manager, and a half-uncle of the actor Sydney Chaplin (1926–2009), who was named after him.

Early life

Chaplin was born as Sydney John Hill, to 19-year-old Hannah Hill in London. Hannah claimed Sydney's father was a man named Sydney Hawkes, but his father's identity was never verified. He began using the Chaplin surname following his mother's marriage to Charles Chaplin, Sr., a year after his birth. While Syd and brother Charlie were in the Cuckoo Schools in Hanwell following his mother's mental collapse, Syd was placed in the programme designed to train young boys to become seamen, on the Exmouth training ship docked at Grays, Essex. He followed this training period with several years working on ships, receiving high marks from all of his employers. But his ambition was to get into the entertainment business and he left his final voyage with that in mind.

In 1905 Charlie and Sydney worked briefly together in one of their first stage appearances, Sherlock Holmes. Syd was briefly cast as a villain in that play. In 1906 however, he landed a contract with Fred Karno, of Karno's London Comedians and was to fight hard to bring Charlie into the company two years later. Charlie never achieved the sort of fame Syd did as a principal comedian for that company, but that was to be the only time that Syd was able to outdo his brother—at least in front of an audience.

After Charlie achieved world-wide fame in the 1910s, the brothers discovered they had another half-brother through their mother, Wheeler Dryden, who had been removed from his mother's care as an infant and brought up abroad by his father. Wheeler was also an actor, and the brothers reunited in Hollywood in 1918, occasionally working together at Chaplin's studio through to the 1950s.

Syd Chaplin at the periscope in a scene still from "A Submarine Pirate" (Keystone 1915).

Career

As Charlie was negotiating his Keystone contract, he suggested Sydney be asked to join the company, and Syd and his wife Minnie Chaplin arrived in California in October 1914. Syd made a few comedies there, including the "Gussle" comedies, and the feature-length A Submarine Pirate in 1915, which, second to Tillie's Punctured Romance, was the most financially successful comedy Keystone ever made.

Following this success, Sydney decided to leave the screen to negotiate Charlie a better contract. After getting him a $500,000 contract with Mutual on 27 February 1916, he got him his first million dollar ($1.25 million) contract on 17 June 1917 with First National.[1] Soon he was handling the majority of Charlie's business affairs, including a failed sheet music business and a successful merchandising one, in addition to further contract negotiation. He also appeared in a few films during the First National era, such as Pay Day and The Pilgrim. Sydney achieved his own million-dollar contract from Famous Players-Lasky in 1919, but a series of problems resulted in only one failed film, King, Queen, Joker (1921), disappearing from the screen once again. Later films include The Perfect Flapper (1924) with Colleen Moore, A Christie Comedy, Charley's Aunt (1925) and five features for Warner Bros. Pictures, including The Man on the Box (1925), Oh, What a Nurse! (1926), The Missing Link (1927), The Fortune Hunter (1927), and The Better 'Ole (1926). The last is perhaps his best-known film today because of his characterisation of cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather's famous World War I character, Old Bill, and the fact that it was the second Warner Bros. film to have a Vitaphone soundtrack. It is also believed by many to have the first spoken word of dialog, "coffee", although there are those who disagree.[2]

Sydney's first film for British International Pictures (BIP), A Little Bit of Fluff (1928), proved to be his final film. In 1929, just as he was to begin work on a second film for the studio, Mumming Birds, he was accused of biting off the nipple of actress Molly Wright in a sexual assault.[3] BIP settled out of court, conceding the truth of Wright's claims.[3] Following the scandal, he left England, leaving a string of unpaid tax demands.[3] By 1930 he was declared bankrupt.[3]

Personal life

Gravestone of Sydney Chaplin

In addition to his importance in launching and promoting brother Charlie's career over the years, perhaps Chaplin's most important contribution to history is in the field of aviation. In May 1919, he, along with pilot Emery Rogers, formulated the first privately owned domestic American airline, the Syd Chaplin Airline Company, based in Santa Monica, California. Even though the corporation lasted only a year, in that time it accumulated many "firsts." Syd and partners had the first ever aeroplane showroom for their Curtiss aeroplanes. Emery Rogers conducted the first roundtrip Los Angeles to San Francisco flight in one 24-hour period. Charlie Chaplin took his first-ever aeroplane flight in one of Syd's planes, as did many other notable personages of the period. Chaplin got out of the aviation business right after legislation began to pass regarding pilot licensing and the taxation of planes and flights.

Chaplin married twice and had no children. His first wife, Minnie, died in France in September 1936 following surgery for breast cancer.[3] After World War II, Sydney lived most of his final years in Europe. His second wife, Henriette (called Gypsy) survived him. After a long illness, he died childless one month after his 80th birthday, on Good Friday, 16 April 1965, in Nice, France, on his brother Charlie's 76th birthday. Chaplin is buried beside his wife Gypsy in Clarens-Montreux Cemetery, near Vevey.

Sydney was portrayed both as a teenager by actor Nicholas Gatt and as an adult by actor Paul Rhys in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, depicting his personal and professional relationship with Charlie.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Cobbles.com
  2. ↑ Eyman, Scott. The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Sweet, Matthew. "A Life In Full:The Other Chaplin". The Independent. Retrieved 31 July 2008.

Further reading

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