Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin was an English actor, director, writer and composer who became one of the defining figures of silent cinema. His screen character the Tramp combined physical comedy, sentiment and social observation in films including The Kid, City Lights and Modern Times.

Chaplin co-founded United Artists and retained unusual creative control over his films, later addressing dictatorship directly in The Great Dictator. Political controversy and scrutiny of his private life contributed to his exclusion from the United States in 1952, after which he lived mainly in Switzerland.

John Jakes’s American Dreams brings Charlie Chaplin into Fritzi Crown’s encounter with the rapidly developing motion-picture business. His presence connects the fictional Crown family to the emergence of Hollywood celebrity and to an entertainment industry being transformed by new technology, mass audiences and the cultural upheaval of the early twentieth century.