Chaplin - The Satire King

Above photo courtesy : Jaisim Fountainhead. This is the residence of Kannada actor CR Simha. You can see chaplin sculpted on the pillar as a tribute to the great artiste

"I would prefer walking in the rain

so that no one can see my tears"

Must be sounding odd !!! But, that was the fact of life for Chaplin, who made people laugh all over the world under shadow of satire.

While people know him as king of comedy, Chaplin was actually the king of Satire. He used comedy as a tool to talk about the dark, stark, harsh realities of life. He communicated hunger, anguish, red-tapism, system failures in the society, all these things through comedy and sad part is that still people consider him as a comedian more than a sensitive artiste.

Today is Chaplin's birthday and just thought of putting across some thoughts.

From the wikipedia, I am taking an excerpt about his last days

Chaplin's robust health began to slowly fail in the late 1960s, after the completion of his final film A Countess from Hong Kong, and more rapidly after he received his Academy Award in 1972. By 1977 he could no longer communicate and was confined to a wheelchair. He died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland. He was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Vaud, Switzerland. On 1 March 1978, his corpse was stolen by a small group of Swiss mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under two meters of concrete to prevent further attempts.

He was not allowed to sleep peacefully even below the ground...