How did Charlie Chaplin become a star of silent films?

Fookem and Bug have investigated the history of the silent movies and the Deaf Community. Our findings about the deaf actors in the silent movie are important to the Deaf History. There were a small group of deaf actors who performed in the silent movies. Through this research, we identified deaf person who was a well known of a comparatively small group of deaf actors who performed in the silent movies. His name was Granville Redmond, a graduate of the California School for the Deaf. Granville was a landscape painter. You can find his arts at this site: http://www.irvinemuseum.org/artist4_redmond.html .

Charlie Chaplin the world’s famous actor met Granville because he was interested in collecting his arts. They became friends. Granville taught Charlie sign language and fingerspelling. Granville played some parts in Charlie’s first film of “The Dog’s Life”. Also Granville played some minor roles in seven films of Chaplin between 1918 and 1929.

Through this research, we identified some more deaf actors who were active in the film industry during the silent movies. We can’t be able to find many more which we would like to but we found a few actors’ names. They were Redmond, Emerson Romero, Louis Weinberg, Carmen de Arcos and Albert Ballin. Also, the children of deaf parents (CODA) and many unknown deaf people were in the part of the film story. This research was completed without the benefit of actually seeing the films themselves.

Here’s a detail we found for you:

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) English Film actor, director, producer and composer. The clown from Lambeth was influenced by many Deaf actors he worked with in his silent films. In this era Deaf and hearing audiences enjoyed the same level of participation and Chaplin would enthrall his entire audience with his facial expression, posture, touch and movement. Granville Redmond who became a successful landscape artist was born on March 9, 1871 in Philadelphia. Granville was totally deaf from infancy. Some people said that he became deaf at the age of two and a half years from scarlet fever. He never learned to speak. Granville attended the California School for the Deaf at Berkeley where he was a pupil of deaf art instructor. In 1894 Charlie Chaplin met Granville and became a collector of Granville’s artwork. They became friends. Charlie learned sign language and fingerspelling. Albert Ballins, the director of silent films, gave Granville credit for influencing Chaplin’s acting. Chaplin did not move his lips in his silent films. He used gestures and expressions resembling those used by deaf persons. Granville took some minor roles in a few of Chaplin’s films, according to Ballin. “The Gold Rush” and “The Dog’s Life” were two of these.

Granville Redmond teaching Charlie Chaplin sign language.

This was Chaplin’s first film for First National Films.

Charlie Chaplin’s final speech from “The Great Dictator” (1940), reenacted in sign language. The aesthetics of the work are borrowed from Jorgen Leth’s (1967) 16-mm film ”The Perfect Human”, and the title of the work is composed of Chaplin’s entire speech. documentation video I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor—that’s not my business—I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls—has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish.… Soldiers—don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you—who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate—only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers—don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written “the kingdom of God is within man”—not one man, nor a group of men—but in all men—in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power—let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers—in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting—the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings—and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow—into the light of hope—into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.“The Great Dictator” (1940), 2005 16mm film, black-and-white, silent; 2:37 min.