Debby Stevens

Obituary
Jack Wallace Holbrook
Eaton Rapids

Passed away on Thursday, November 19, 2020 at the age of 82. Born July 9, 1938 to Gerald W. and Myrtle (Slayton) Holbrook in Eaton Rapids, Michigan. Jack honorably served in the US Army during the Korean War. After being honorably discharged he became a pilot, owned his own airplane and did aerial photography for ASCS. Jack also purchased land, built his own house from the ground up with his loving wife Gerry, and raised his farm with both animals and agriculture. He specialized in dairy farming for many years and later focused more on produce. His farm had all kinds of animals including Bison where he had up to 21 at one time. Jack taught stain glass classes for Adult Ed in Eaton Rapids for two years and he was also a 4-H Leader. He was the owner/ operator of Jack & Sons Garden Produce that started on the corner of Spicerville Hwy and Royston Rd and more recently on the corner M-99 and Columbia. This produce stand allowed him to showcase his produce, cheeses and his specialty homemade ice cream. Jack was a jack-of-all-trades and the guy that many would go to for help because he was very knowledgeable and wouldn’t turn anyone away. Most of all, Jack loved his family and the time he was able to spend with them all. He enjoyed watching his grandchildren and great grandchildren and passing along his knowledge to all of them. Jack was a beloved man who will be dearly missed by all who remember him. Preceding him in death were his parents; sister, Judy Dowding; grandchildren, Gerald Holbrook II, Nicole Holbrook; great grandchildren, Hunter Abbott, Hunter Holbrook and Cyrus Lea.
Surviving are his wife, Gerry Holbrook; their children, Connie Holbrook, Gerald Holbrook, Bart (Brenda) Holbrook, Stacy Holbrook; 13 grandchildren: Roberta (Scott) Bean, Nichelle Andrews, Autumn (Chris) Holbrook, Kendra (Chris) Holbrook, Matthew (Ashley) Kreis, Jack Holbrook, Dustin (Michelle) Holbrook, Mika Holbrook, William (Julie) Briggs, Leora (Chris) Lea, Megan Briggs, Donald (Naomi) Abbott, Johnathan Briggs; 24 great grandchildren; sisters, Virginia McCarrick, JoAnne Holbrook, June (Buddy) Riley, Don Dowding (brother-in-law) numerous nieces and nephews as well as many extended family and friends.
Visitation service will be held on Monday, November 23rd at Charlotte Seventh-Day Adventist Church on South Cochran Rd: (time-4:00-5:00pm, masks will be required for all safety precautions) A grave side military celebration service for Jack is being planned for in the spring/early summer and will be announced at a later day. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be to the family to help defer costs, care of: Stacy Holbrook. To share memories and condolences please visit www.SkinnerFuneralHomes.com

Mr. Otis Ray Holbrook, age 78, passed away Monday, December 1, 2014 at Forsyth Medical Center. Mr. Holbrook was born January 23, 1936 in Wilkes County to James Patterson and Elsie Holbrook. Mr. Holbrook was a Veteran of the U.S. Army and retired from Chatham Manufacturing. He was a member of Pleasant View Baptist Church where he served as a Sunday School Superintendent, teacher and deacon. Survivors include: his wife, Lucille W. Holbrook of the home; son, Dan R. Holbrook and wife Melissa of Hillsborough, NC; daughter, Janet H. Long and husband Roger of Thurmond; brothers, Travis Holbrook and wife Mary of Jonesville and Garvey Holbrook and wife Cathy of Winston Salem; grandchildren, Brandon R. Cook and Lindsey R. Cook; great-grandchildren, Kain Cook and Levi Cook. Funeral services will be conducted Thursday, December 4, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. at Pleasant View Baptist Church with Rev. Finley McCoury and Rev. Dennis Ball officiating. Burial will follow at Crestwood Memorial Gardens will full military honors provided by VFW post 10346. The family will receive friends Wednesday evening from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at Elkin Funeral Service. Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Pleasant View Baptist Church Youth Fund, 199 Mining School Rd. State Road, NC 28676.

Bob Liljestrand, a documentary filmmaker, photographer and architectural historian, died last month at the Liljestrand House — his historic family home on Tantalus Drive.

Liljestrand died outdoors on the lawn high on a hillside overlooking downtown Honolulu and the sea on Oct. 23, his wife, Vicky Heldreich Durand, said.

“We wheeled his hospital bed underneath the deck of the house, in the shade,” his son, Shan Liljestrand, said. “That’s where he requested us to stop. You could see the view really clearly.”

It was a view Bob Liljestrand had fought to retain.

After his father’s death in 2004, he worked to preserve the airy house with its soaring lines and picture windows, designed by modernist architect Vladimir Ossipoff. Liljestrand’s parents, Howard and Betty Liljestrand, a medical doctor and nurse, bought the hillside site in 1948.

Born in Aiea on Dec. 23, 1941, Bob Liljestrand was 79 years old. The cause of death was liver cancer, Durand said.

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“Bob didn’t want the house to be sold to private owners who would add their own touches to an Ossipoff masterpiece — he wanted to save it for education and the community,” said Durand, a Punahou ’59 classmate who became friends with Liljestrand 40 years later. They married in 2013.

The couple co-founded the nonprofit Liljestrand Foundation, whose mission is to preserve the house, opening it to the public for tours and charitable, cultural, and educational activities.

Liljestrand and his brother Eric Liljestrand, who died in 2016, sold their own homes in order to pay estate taxes for the Liljestrand House, and in 2015 the house was gifted to the foundation with the stipulation it could never be sold for the benefit of an individual.

Foundation board members said Liljestrand would be deeply missed.

“Bob was such a stable and clearsighted person, and a dear friend,” said Dean Sakamoto, principal of Dean Sakamoto Architects/SHADE Group, who first met the Liljestrands while researching a 2007-2008 retrospective exhibition “Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff,” which he curated, and a book of the same title he co-authored.

“He was a sensible guy but also a visionary, and willing to not know all the answers,” Sakamoto said. “He had his own style, very kind and thoughtful, and he was nurtured by great parents and grew up in a great house, all of which produced a great man.”

Bill Chapman, dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said Liljestrand had a gift for bringing people together, including the architects, educators, writers and environmentalists from all over the world who participated in presentations, design seminars and other events hosted by the foundation.

“Bob was generous, always, to everyone in every way, from those starting out in their careers to visitors to the Liljestrand house,” said Chapman, who helped him enter the house, “a distinctive piece of tropical modernism and preeminent example of modernist domestic architecture in Hawaii,” onto the historic registry.


“He was at all times polite, with a terrific sense of humor,” Chapman added, “and he faced his illness with great bravery, philosophical to the end.”

Shan Liljestrand, 31, a Los Angeles director of photography, remembered “doing a lot of hiking on Maui and Oahu” with his father, and taking boat trips to Kaneohe Sand Bar and Rabbit Island on Liljestrand’s 23-foot Seacraft motorboat, “which he was very proud of, a dry boat that handled open water and rough seas well.”

As the youngest member of the Liljestrand Foundation board, “I’m incredibly grateful my dad involved me with the house, and to all the people I’ve been able to work with from different worlds and different generations,” he said.

A 1959 graduate of Punahou School, Liljestrand earned a bachelor of science degree in biology from San Jose State University in California; a master’s degree in public health from the University of Hawaii; and a master’s degree in architecture from the University of New Mexico.

He worked as a hospital administrator at the Leeward Hospital and Clinic, as a designer and draftsman for a Honolulu architect, and in his family’s real estate business.

His photography appeared in “Artists of Hawaii 1982” at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and his documentary films were shown locally and at the Los Angeles International and Chicago film festivals.

At the Chicago festival, he won a Gold Plaque for “Molokai Solo,” which chronicled lone journeys by water and foot along the island’s rugged windward shore. In one of the island’s remote valleys he built a campsite with a stone platform and rainwater catchment system.

Additionally, Liljestrand documented a 14-day raft trip through the Grand Canyon made by a chamber music ensemble that played music throughout; and an 8,000-mile trip by train and river boat through western China with his father and uncle, who grew up in Chengdu, Szechuan, where their parents served as medical missionaries.

But he dedicated the last 17 years of his life to researching the history of his parents and their house, helping establish the foundation and its programs, and co-authoring a forthcoming book, “Architecture: the time, the place and the people,” which tells the story of his family and the Liljestrand House and is being designed by Barbara Pope.

“He’d had a happy childhood growing up in the house, with these parents that wanted to build, not a fancy house but just a plain house, out of plain materials,” said Durand, who recently published “Wave Woman,” a memoir of her own mother.


A board member of the Hawai‘i Architectural Foundation and the Adventurers’ Club of Honolulu, where he served as president five terms, Liljestrand was also a member of the advisory council to the School of Architecture at UH Manoa.

He lectured widely on the Liljestrand House, including at the American Institute of Architecture in New York, and the national museum of architecture in Frankfurt, Germany, where the Ossipoff exhibition had traveled.

IN A letter of application to the Ossipoff designed Pacific Club on Queen Emma Street, Liljestrand said, “…as a lifelong friend and acquaintance of Ossipoff, I simply enjoy being in the building.”

“Bob was a great storyteller; he was terrific at giving extemporaneous presentations about the (Liljestrand) house, and the way his parents consulted with Ossipoff (who also designed the furniture and fixtures and selected the artwork) every time they made a change, long after it was built.”

Liljestrand especially enjoyed the collaborative relationship between his mother and Ossipoff, “which really was a team effort,” Sakamoto said, particularly regarding the kitchen.

“I’ve never seen any other Ossipoff kitchen like that— it’s really a Betty Liljestrand kitchen,” he said, “a larger, but open kitchen with an island, a breakfast nook and dining room nearby — a precursor to nowadays.”

The house is also an early and enduring example of sustainable design, Chapman said.

“It was designed with the environment in mind—it exemplifies indoor/outdoor living,” he said, “working with nature rather than against it (to provide shade beneath decks and eaves, and cooling through windows using prevailing breezes) without air conditioning.”

Shan Liljestrand said his father’s careful research and organization in matters for the house contrasted with an unstructured, open-ended approach to travel, which was “never have too much of a plan, only just enough.”

His father loved road trips, “but I especially remember our first trip to Southeast Asia, when I was 24,” he said. “We walked for two hours in Ho Chi Minh City and somehow ended up on the other side of the river, and then Dad hailed a man on a tiny scooter, who took us back to our hotel.”


Liljestrand worked on his book with the writer Julia Steele, with whom he shared materials from the house’s archive room and notebooks he had filled, Durand said.

During the last weeks of his life, she said, Steele called Liljestrand every morning and read him one or two chapters over the telephone.

After Liljestrand had heard the entire book, a few days before he died, “he told me he’d felt the need to do this book about his parents, but he didn’t expect me to tell his story,” Shan Liljestrand said.

“He said, ‘go and do whatever you want—have fun.”

“Bob was very adventurous, courageous, hardworking and honest, with big dreams,” Durand said, noting her husband had worked up until his last few days. “He was going for the moon.”

In addition to his wife and son, Liljestrand is survived by daughter Briana Liljestrand Lawrence (Andrew) of Denver, Colo.; sisters, Wendla Lei Liljestrand of Honolulu, and Lana Lee Craigo of Fair Oaks, Texas; stepdaughters, Marcie Durand Garner and Rennie Durand Turner; and eight grandchildren.

His previous marriages, to Diane Helbush and Carol Clark, ended in divorce.

Private services are pending; in lieu of flowers the family suggestions donations be made to the Bob Liljestrand Preservation Fund at liljestrandhouse.org.

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Janet Liljestrand Obituary
Janet Roberta Liljestrand, 92, Leesburg, Florida passed away on April 10, 2023 in Clermont, Florida under the care of Compassionate Hospice and family. Janet was born on August 25, 1930 in Queens, New York to her parents Paul Liebers and Kathleen F. (O'Brien) Liebers.
She moved with her late husband Donald to Leesburg from East Northport, Long Island, New York and Queens, New York for over 40 years. She was a former member of Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Queens Village, New York and St. Paul's Lutheran Church in East Northport, L.I., New York. Janet has been an active member of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Leesburg since she moved to Leesburg. She was a member of The Red Hat Ladies Society in Leesburg. Janet and her late husband were the former owners of Morris Stationery and Printing in Queens, New York.
She is survived by her loving children: Lynn Crane of Leesburg, FL and Eric Liljestrand and his wife Gwen of Los Angeles, CA and two loving grandchildren: Oskar and Melissa.
She was preceded in death by her parents, her beloved husband, Donald Theodore Liljestrand and two sisters: Virginia Herrmann and Marilyn Cook.
A Celebration of Life Memorial Service will be held at a later date at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Leesburg, FL.
Online condolences may be shared by visiting www.pagetheusfuneralhome.com.
Arrangements are entrusted to Page-Theus Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Leesburg.

Gordon Flinn Obituary
Gordon Flinn, 87, passed away on June 16, 2022, in Des Moines, IA. A celebration of life will be held at a later date in August.
Gordon was born on January 20, 1935, to Glenn and Florida (Acheson) Flinn in West Des Moines, Iowa. Gordon will be remembered for his love of fishing and catching anything that was in the Raccoon River, sprint car racing, and the Green Bay Packers. Most of all, Gordon will be remembered for how much he loved his family, especially his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Gordon is preceded in death by his parents; granddaughter, Brandy Flinn; siblings; and his parents-in-laws, Jack and Zita Smith.
Gordon is survived by his wife of 64 years, Jean; children, Tina (Lee) Harker, Bill Flinn, and Carla Riley; grandchildren, Danielle McCarville, Devin (Amanda) Harker, Garrett (Alexandra) Harker, Alexander Flinn, Jack Riley, and Shelby Riley; great-grandchildren, Milo, Jackson, Ben, Ember, and one more to come by the end of June; and many extended family members.
Memorial contributions for Gordon Flinn can be addressed to family for later distribution.

olores Marie Flinn
June 23, 1935 - September 16, 2022
Dolores Marie Flinn passed away peacefully and comfortably in her home in Santa Rosa, CA on Friday, September 16, 2022 at age 87. Born June 23, 1935, Dolores was the second daughter of Frieda and Percy Cahill. She grew up in San Francisco and attended the School of the Epiphany and graduated from Presentation High School in 1953. She was married to her beloved Harold Paul Flinn for 56 years until his passing in 2013. They were quite a pair and are together again. They raised a family, traveled, spent many happy years in their Tahoe home, and enjoyed the lives of their grandchildren. After years of being a stay at home mom, Dolores returned to work in the 1970's as an executive secretary at JC Penney and then as medical secretary for Kaiser Permanente from 1980-92. Dolores is survived by her children Karen, Ken (Kathy), and Dave (Jennifer), five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Dolores was a warm, optimistic, graceful, and loving person who cherished spending time with her family. She will be greatly missed.
A gathering to remember Dolores will be held at 11:00 am on Friday, November 18, 2022 at Holy Spirit Church in Santa Rosa with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, a donation may be made to the North Bay Cancer Alliance.

Charles Flinn Obituary
Flinn

Charles Gallagher Flinn

The Rev. Dr. Charles Gallagher Flinn was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and passed on December 21,2022. He was the first of three children born to Robert Galloway Flinn and his wife Gertrude Charles nee Gallagher.

He was devoted to his dear father and mother who predeceased him in death, and the joy of his life were his sister, Carol and brother, John who reside in Florida. Charles always told interesting and hilarious stories of growing up in Ft. Lauderdale with his parents, siblings, and friends. Charles lived a purposeful and fulfilling life and served his God and the Church faithfully to the end. He will be missed by his family, friends, and parishioners of Christ the King Anglican Church in Georgetown, Washington, DC where he worshipped for several years. He leaves to mourn his sister, Carol Flinn-Wesley; brother, John Flinn; sister-in-law, Jane; nieces, nephews, and a host of cousins and friends.

A funeral servce will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 11 a.m. at Christ the King Anglican Church, located at 2727 O St NW, Washington, DC 20007, with a graveside service to be held at 1:30 p.m. at Columbia Gardens Cemetery, located at 3411 Arlington Blvd., Alrington, VA 22201. For more information and to leave condolences, please visit:

www.murphyfuneralhomes.com

Published by The Washington Post from Dec. 23 to Dec. 26, 2022.

LILLIAN FLINN Obituary
FLINN (PHILLIPS), LILLIAN LUCILLE Of Grand Blanc, age 89, died Monday, March 4, 2019 at Abbey Park Assisted Living. Funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 9, 2019 at the Swartz Funeral Home, 1225 West Hill Road, Dr. Max B. Hayden officiating. Burial in Sunset Hills Cemetery. Those desiring may make contributions to Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation, AlzheimersPrevention.org or PO BOX 30783 Tucson, AZ 85751. Visitation 12 p.m. Saturday until the time of the service at the funeral home. Lillian was born in Flint, Michigan on May 16, 1929, the daughter of Albert and Myrtle (Countermanche) Phillips. On June 13, 1947 she married Robert Flinn. Lillian was employed by AC Spark Plug (later Delphi) and was a member of UAW Local #651. She was a devoted mother and grandmother, with a passion for dancing, gardening and travel. Lillian also volunteered in the College and Cultural Center area, regularly giving her time for events that took place at Applewood Estate, Sloan Museum, the Planetarium and at Whiting Auditorium. Lillian also enjoyed traveling with her husband, together they would travel regularly to his Marine Corps reunions all over the country. After the passing of her husband, Lillian became a member of the Eastside Senior Center and spent many happy hours line dancing there. Her senior center dancing group traveled frequently to other senior housing centers and entertained residents with their dancing. Lillian loved nature, observing wildlife and gardening were a deep passion for her. Her roses and gardens were always carefully manicured and were a source of both pride and pleasure. Lillian is surived by her children, Diana Currier, Grand Blanc; Larry (Cathy) Flinn Flint and Gary Flinn Flint; grandchildren, Laura (Lane) Anderson, Flushing and Jeff (Kathryn) Currier, Issaquah, WA. She has 6 great-grandchildren, Erika Anderson, Traverse City; Hannah Anderson, Grand Blanc; Jackson Anderson, Flushing; Joshua Currier, Issaquah, WA; Elizabeth Currier and Caroline Currier, Seattle, WA. She also has a great-great-grandson, Calvin (CJ) Roman. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Robert Flinn; her sisters and brothers. Your condolences may be shared with the family at swartzfuneralhomeinc.com

John W. Peterson Music Company is a copyright management company that administers the timeless copyright catalog of John W. Peterson.

John W. Peterson
John W. Peterson
John W. Peterson (1921-2006) was born in Lindsborg, Kansas, and began his musical career while he was still in his teens. During World War II, he served as an Army Air Force pilot flying the famed "China Hump."

"It has been a great joy over these many years to be able to take some manuscript paper and turn it into something that glorifies God or presents the gospel to others."
- John W. Peterson
Later, he attended Moody Bible Institute and served on the radio staff there for a number of years. In 1953, he graduated from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and shortly thereafter settled in Pennsylvania to continue his songwriting career. He then moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where for over ten years he was President and Editor-in-Chief of Singspiration, a sacred music publishing company. He also served on the board of Gospel Films, Inc. of Muskegon, Michigan for several years. Later he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona where he continued his writing and co-founded Good Life Productions. A few years later, the John W. Peterson Music Company was established. During this time, he also served on the board of Family Life Radio Network in Tucson, Arizona. He had wide experience as a choral director, and throughout his career was in great demand as a guest conductor of his own works.

John W. Peterson

His music is loved and sung around the world. Mr. Peterson has composed well over 1000 individual songs, including titles such as: "It Took a Miracle," "Over the Sunset Mountains," "So Send I You," "Springs of Living Water," "Heaven Came Down," "Jesus Is Coming Again" and "Surely Goodness and Mercy." In addition, he has written 35 cantatas and musicals. Among these are "Night of Miracles," "Born a King," "No Greater Love," "Carol of Christmas," "Jesus Is Coming," "King of Kings," "Down from His Glory" and "The Last Week." Approximately 10,000,000 copies of these cantatas and musicals have been published and sold.

In 1967, the National Evangelical Film Foundation presented Mr. Peterson with the Sacred Music Award in recognition of his accomplishments in the field of sacred music. In the same year, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Sacred Music, from John Brown University. In 1971, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Divinity, from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon; and in 1979, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1977, his autobiography, "The Miracle Goes On," was published by Zondervan Publishing House, and a film by the same title was released by Gospel Films. In 1986, Mr. Peterson was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and in 1996 at MusiCalifornia, he received the prestigious Ray DeVries Church Music Award. He's listed in "Who's Who in America" and "Who's Who in the World."

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.

Ford was born on a farm in Michigan's Springwells Township, leaving home at age 16 to work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, Ford began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He officially founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, after prior failures in business but success in constructing automobiles.

Ford's 1908 introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized both transportation and American industry. As the Ford Motor Company sole owner, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", the mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford was also among the pioneers of the five-day work week. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout North America and major cities on six continents.

Ford was widely known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I. In the 1920s Ford promoted antisemitic content through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent, and the book, The International Jew. After his son Edsel died in 1943, Ford resumed control of the company but was too frail to make decisions and quickly came under the control of subordinates. He turned over the company to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945. He died in 1947 after leaving most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, and control of the company to his family.

Early life
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan.[1] His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that had emigrated from Somerset, England in the 16th century.[2] His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's siblings were Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934). Ford finished eighth grade at a one room school,[3] Springwells Middle School. He never attended high school; he later took a bookkeeping course at a commercial school.[4]

His father gave him a pocket watch when he was 12. At 15, Ford dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman.[5] At twenty, Ford walked four miles to their Episcopal church every Sunday.[6]

Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to take over the family farm eventually, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, "I never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."[7]

In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines.[8]

Ford stated two significant events occurred in 1875 when he was 12. He received the watch, and he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine, "...the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen". In his farm workshop, Ford built a "steam wagon or tractor" and a steam car, but thought "steam was not suitable for light vehicles," as "the boiler was dangerous." Ford also said that he "did not see the use of experimenting with electricity, due to the expense of trolley wires, and "no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical." In 1885, Ford repaired an Otto engine, and in 1887 he built a four-cycle model with a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke. In 1890, Ford started work on a two-cylinder engine.

Ford stated, "In 1892, I completed my first motor car, powered by a two-cylinder four horsepower motor, with a two-and-half-inch bore and a six-inch stroke, which was connected to a countershaft by a belt and then to the rear wheel by a chain. The belt was shifted by a clutch lever to control speeds at 10 or 20 miles per hour, augmented by a throttle. Other features included 28-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires, a foot brake, a 3-gallon gasoline tank, and later, a water jacket around the cylinders for cooling. Ford added that "in the spring of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road." Between 1895 and 1896, Ford drove that machine about 1000 miles. He then started a second car in 1896, eventually building three of them in his home workshop.[9]

Marriage and family

Henry Ford in 1888
(aged 25)
Ford married Clara Jane Bryant (1866–1950) on April 11, 1888, and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill.[10] They had one child, Edsel Ford (1893–1943).[11]

Career
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle, which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.[12]

Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Ford's automobile experimentation. Encouraged by Edison, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898.[13] Backed by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from the Edison Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899.[13] However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford wanted. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.[13]

With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-horsepower automobile in October 1901. With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in the Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer.[13] In 1902, Murphy brought in Henry M. Leland as a consultant; Ford, in response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford gone, Leland renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.[13]

Teaming up with former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer "999," which Barney Oldfield was to drive to victory in a race in October 1902. Ford received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer.[13] They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson, Ltd." to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts.[13] Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment.

Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey S. Firestone. Fort Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.
In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the new company.[13] Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903,[13] with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray, Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomson's lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Because of Ford's volatility, Gray was elected president of the company. Ford then demonstrated a newly designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour (146.9 kilometres per hour). Convinced by this success, race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of the fastest locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.[citation needed]

Model T
The Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. The car was very simple to drive, and easy and cheap to repair. It was so cheap at $825 in 1908 ($26,870 today), with the price falling every year, that by the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T,[14][15] despite the fact that drivers who were only familiar with the Model T's unique foot-operated planetary transmission and steering-column operated throttle-cum-accelerator had to learn a completely different set of skills to drive any other gasoline-powered automobile of the time.[citation needed]


Ford assembly line, 1913
Ford created a huge publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in almost every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but also the concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and encourage them to explore the countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked at the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed—several years posted 100% gains on the previous year. In 1913, Ford introduced moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles E. Sorensen, and C. Harold Wills.[16] (See Ford Piquette Avenue Plant)

Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.[17]

By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. All new cars were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."[18] Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because of its quicker drying time, Model Ts were available in other colors, including red. The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford, and production continued as late as 1927; the final total production was 15,007,034. This record stood for the next 45 years, and was achieved in 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T (1908).[19]

Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry retained final decision authority and sometimes reversed the decisions of his son. Ford started another company, Henry Ford and Son, and made a show of taking himself and his best employees to the new company; the goal was to scare the remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to sell their stakes to him before they lost most of their value. (He was determined to have full control over strategic decisions.) The ruse worked, and Ford and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company.[20]

In 1922, Ford also purchased Lincoln Motor Co., founded by Cadillac founder Henry Leland and his son Wilfred during World War I. The Lelands briefly stayed to manage the company, but were soon expelled from it.[21] Despite this acquisition of a premium car maker, Henry displayed relatively little enthusiasm for luxury automobiles in contrast to Edsel, who actively sought to expand Ford into the upscale market.[22] The original Lincoln Model L that the Lelands had introduced in 1920 was also kept in production, untouched for a decade until it became too outdated. It was replaced by the modernized Model K in 1931.[citation needed]


A 1926 Ford T Roadster on display in India
By the mid-1920s, General Motors was rapidly rising as the leading American automobile manufacturer. GM president Alfred Sloan established the company's "price ladder" whereby GM would offer an automobile for "every purse and purpose" in contrast to Ford's lack of interest in anything outside the low-end market. Although Henry Ford was against replacing the Model T, now 16 years old, Chevrolet was mounting a bold new challenge as GM's entry-level division in the company's price ladder. Ford also resisted the increasingly popular idea of payment plans for cars. With Model T sales starting to slide, Ford was forced to relent and approve work on a successor model, shutting down production for 18 months. During this time, Ford constructed a massive new assembly plant at River Rouge for the new Model A, which launched in 1927.[23]

In addition to its price ladder, GM also quickly established itself at the forefront of automotive styling under Harley Earl's Arts & Color Department, another area of automobile design that Henry Ford did not entirely appreciate or understand. Ford would not have a true equivalent of the GM styling department for many years.[citation needed]

Model A and Ford's later career
By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Ford to make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of interest in the design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Although Ford fancied himself an engineering genius, he had little formal training in mechanical engineering and could not even read a blueprint. A talented team of engineers performed most of the actual work of designing the Model A (and later the flathead V8) with Ford supervising them closely and giving them overall direction. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.[24]

The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than four million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted an annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered by its competitor General Motors (and still in use by automakers today). Not until the 1930s did Ford overcome his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation. Henry Ford still resisted many technological innovations such as hydraulic brakes and all-metal roofs, which Ford vehicles did not adopt until 1935–36. For 1932 however, Ford dropped a bombshell with the flathead Ford V8, the first low-price eight-cylinder engine. The flathead V8, variants of which were used in Ford vehicles for 20 years, was the result of a secret project launched in 1930 and Henry had initially considered a radical X-8 engine before agreeing to a conventional design. It gave Ford a reputation as a performance make well-suited for hot-rodding.[25]

Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration. Without an accounting department, Ford had no way of knowing exactly how much money was being taken in and spent each month, and the company's bills and invoices were reportedly guessed at by weighing them on a scale.[citation needed] Not until 1956 would Ford be a publicly-traded company.[26]

Also, at Edsel's insistence, Ford launched Mercury in 1939 as a mid-range make to challenge Dodge and Buick, although Henry also displayed relatively little enthusiasm for it.[22]

Labor philosophy
Five-dollar wage

Time magazine, January 14, 1935
Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.[27]

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($150 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.[28] A Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression".[29] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant employee turnover, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.[30][31] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying male workers.[32][33]

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[34] Ford's policy proved that paying employees more would enable them to afford the cars they were producing and thus boost the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character.[35] It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day wage.[36]

Real profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and on what are now called deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators and support staff to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing".[37]

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he had spoken of the Social Department and the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense. He admitted that "paternalism has no place in the industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify the industry and strengthen the organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."[38]

Five-day workweek
In addition to raising his workers' wages, Ford also introduced a new, reduced workweek in 1926. The decision was made in 1922, when Ford and Crowther described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[39] but in 1926 it was announced as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[40] The program apparently started with Saturday being designated a workday, before becoming a day off sometime later. On May 1, 1926, the Ford Motor Company's factory workers switched to a five-day, 40-hour workweek, with the company's office workers making the transition the following August.[41]

Ford had decided to boost productivity, as workers were expected to put more effort into their work in exchange for more leisure time. Ford also believed decent leisure time was good for business, giving workers additional time to purchase and consume more goods. However, charitable concerns also played a role. Ford explained, "It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege."[41]

Labor unions
Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work.[42] He thought they were too heavily influenced by leaders who would end up doing more harm than good for workers despite their ostensible good motives. Most wanted to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment, but Ford saw this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary for economic prosperity to exist.[citation needed]

He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would nevertheless stimulate the broader economy and grow new jobs elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in others. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crises to maintain their power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to do right by their workers, because doing so would maximize their profits. However, Ford did acknowledge that many managers were basically too bad at managing to understand this fact. But Ford believed that eventually, if good managers such as he could fend off the attacks of misguided people from both left and right (i.e., both socialists and bad-manager reactionaries), the good managers would create a socio-economic system wherein neither bad management nor bad unions could find enough support to continue existing.[citation needed]

To forestall union activity, Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to head the Service Department. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to quash union organizing.[43] On March 7, 1932, during the Great Depression, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged the Ford Hunger March to the Ford River Rouge Complex to present 14 demands to Henry Ford. The Dearborn police department and Ford security guards opened fire on workers leading to over sixty injuries and five deaths. On May 26, 1937, Bennett's security men beat members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), including Walter Reuther, with clubs.[44] While Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on the scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett's Service Department, and [Brooks] "did not give orders to intervene".[44]: 311 The following day photographs of the injured UAW members appeared in newspapers, later becoming known as The Battle of the Overpass.[citation needed]

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel—who was president of the company—thought Ford had to come to a collective bargaining agreement with the unions because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But Ford, who still had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis even if not an official one, refused to cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge of talking to the unions trying to organize the Ford Motor Company. Sorensen's memoir[45] makes clear that Ford's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached.[citation needed]

The Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW, despite pressure from the rest of the U.S. automotive industry and even the U.S. government. A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted[46] that a distraught Henry Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather than cooperate. Still, his wife Clara told him she would leave him if he destroyed the family business. In her view, it would not be worth the chaos it would create. Ford complied with his wife's ultimatum and even agreed with her in retrospect. Overnight, the Ford Motor Company went from the most stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW contract terms. The contract was signed in June 1941.[46] About a year later, Ford told Walter Reuther, "It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got the UAW into this plant." Reuther inquired, "What do you mean?" Ford replied, "Well, you've been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you're in here and we've given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn't it? We can fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?"[47]

Ford Airplane Company

Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) of the Spanish Republican Airline, L.A.P.E.
Like other automobile companies, Ford entered the aviation business during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company.

Ford's most successful aircraft was the Ford 4AT Trimotor, often called the "Tin Goose" because of its corrugated metal construction. It used a new alloy called Alclad that combined the corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of duralumin. The plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII-3m, and some say[who?] that Ford's engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then copied it. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the U.S. Army. The Smithsonian Institution has honored Ford for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.

In 1985, Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his impact on the industry.[48]

World War I era and peace activism
Further information: Peace Ship and 1918 United States Senate election in Michigan
Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste,[49][50] and supported causes that opposed military intervention.[51] Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a Peace Ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.[52] In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.[53]

According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly that r******* long-term economic growth. The losing side in the war typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, for it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many newspaper articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage warfare because, “If every man who manufactures an article would make the very best he can in the very best way at the very lowest possible price the world would be kept out of war, for commercialists would not have to search for outside markets which the other fellow covets.” Ford admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued the most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work to manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate steady long-term profits.[54]

Ford's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.[9]: 95–100, 119 [55]

In 1918, with the war on and the League of Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide.[56] He was defeated in a close election by the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry, a former United States Secretary of the Navy. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity.[57][58]

World War II era and controversies
Ford had opposed the United States' entry into World War II[44][59] and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction". In 1939, he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.[60] The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War.[44][61] In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel.[44] However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for the British government.[62] In early 1940, he boasted that Ford Motor Company would soon be able to produce 1,000 U.S. warplanes a day, even though it did not have an aircraft production facility at that time.[63]: 430  Ford was a prominent early member of the America First Committee against World War II involvement, but was forced to resign from its executive board when his involvement proved too controversial.[64]

Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.[44]

When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in December 1941.[65]

Willow Run
Before the U.S. entered the war, responding to President Roosevelt's call in December 1940 for the "Great Arsenal of Democracy", Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose-built aircraft factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring (April–June) of 1941, B-24 component production began in May 1942, and the first complete B-24 came off the line in October 1942. At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m2), it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.[66] Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.[66][63]: 430 

Edsel's death
When Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943, aged only 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name.[67] The company was controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944.[68] Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating a coup among executives and directors.[69]

Forced out
Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but had no choice but to give in.[70][better source needed][71] The young man took over and, as his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.

Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent

Main article: Dearborn Independent
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Ford was a conspiracy theorist who drew on a long tradition of false allegations against Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat to traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at risk in the modern world.[72] Part of his racist and antisemitic legacy includes the funding of square-dancing in American schools because he hated jazz and associated its creation with Jewish people.[73] In 1920 Ford wrote, "If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew."[74]

In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.[75] A year and a half later, Ford began publishing a series of articles in the paper under his own name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America.[76] The series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required to carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US and Europe.[77][78] The International Jew blamed nearly all the troubles it saw in American society on Jews.[76] The Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927. With around 700,000 readers of his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice."[79]


The Ford publication The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. Articles from The Dearborn Independent, 1920
In Germany, Ford's The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem was published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[80] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[81] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[82][77] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany", and modeling the Volkswagen Beetle, the people's car, on the Model T.[83] Max Wallace has stated, "History records that ... Adolf Hitler was an ardent Anti-Semite before he ever read Ford's The International Jew."[84] Ford also paid to print and distribute 500,000 copies the antisemitic fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[85][86] Historians say Hitler distributed Ford’s books and articles throughout Germany, stoking the hatred that helped fuel the Holocaust.[86]

On February 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and antisemites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused.[87]

Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). While these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them.[88] According to some trial testimony, none of this work was written by Ford, but he allowed his name to be used as an author. Friends and business associates said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles (he claimed he only read the headlines).[89] On the other hand, court testimony in a libel suit, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did know about the contents of the Independent in advance of publication.[44]

A libel lawsuit was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close the Independent in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page", William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval.[90] Investigative journalist Max Wallace noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro."[91]

Michael Barkun observed: "That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that "I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval."[92] According to Spencer Blakeslee, "[t]he ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, president of the ADL."[93] Wallace also found that Ford's apology was likely, or at least partly, motivated by a business that was slumping as a result of his antisemitism, repelling potential buyers of Ford cars.[44] Up until the apology, a considerable number of dealers, who had been required to make sure that buyers of Ford cars received the Independent, bought up and destroyed copies of the newspaper rather than alienate customers.[44]

Ford's 1927 apology was well received. "Four-fifths of the hundreds of letters addressed to Ford in July 1927 were from Jews, and almost without exception they praised the industrialist..."[94] In January 1937, a Ford statement to The Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as the International Jew".[94] Ford, however, allegedly never signed the retraction and apology, which were written by others—rather, his signature was forged by Harry Bennett—and Ford never actually recanted his antisemitic views, stating in 1940: "I hope to republish The International Jew again some time."[95]


Grand Cross of the German Eagle, an award bestowed on Ford by Nazi Germany
In July 1938, the German consul in Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.[82][96] James D. Mooney, vice president of overseas operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, First Class.[82][97]

On January 7, 1942, Ford wrote another letter to Sigmund Livingston disclaiming direct or indirect support of "any agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens". He concluded the letter with, "My sincere hope that now in this country and throughout the world when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time."[98]

The distribution of The International Jew was halted in 1942 through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of copyright.[94] It is still banned in Germany. Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites. Testifying at Nuremberg, convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as Gauleiter of Vienna, deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated: "The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was ... that book by Henry Ford, The International Jew. I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy."[99]

Robert Lacey wrote in Ford: The Men and the Machines that a close Willow Run associate of Ford reported that when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps, he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke – his last and most serious."[100] Ford had suffered previous strokes and his final cerebral hemorrhage occurred in 1947 at age 83.[101]

International business
Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his company. He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate it.[102]

He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace and reduced the chance of war.[103] In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one of his few failures.


After signing the contract for technical assistance in building Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) Automobile Plant. Dearborn, Mich., May 31, 1929. Left to right, Valery I. Mezhlauk, Vice Chairman of VSNKh; Henry Ford; Saul G. Bron, President of Amtorg.
In 1929, Ford made an agreement with the Soviets to provide technical aid over nine years in building the first Soviet automobile plant (GAZ) near Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky)[104] (an additional contract for construction of the plant was signed with The Austin Company on August 23, 1929).[105] The contract involved the purchase of $30,000,000 worth of knocked-down Ford cars and trucks for assembly during the first four years of the plant's operation, after which the plant would gradually switch to Soviet-made components. Ford sent his engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help install the equipment and train the workforce, while over a hundred Soviet engineers and technicians were stationed at Ford's plants in Detroit and Dearborn "for the purpose of learning the methods and practice of manufacture and assembly in the Company's plants".[106] Said Ford: "No matter where industry prospers, whether in India or China, or Russia, the more profit there will be for everyone, including us. All the world is bound to catch some good from it."[107]

By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one-third of the world's automobiles. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold or assembled the Ford cars and trucks:

Ford of Australia
Ford of Britain
Ford of Argentina
Ford of Brazil
Ford of Canada
Ford of Europe
Ford India
Ford South Africa
Ford Mexico
Ford Philippines

Henry Ford in Germany; September 1930
Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all".[108] Germans who discussed "Fordism" often believed that it represented something quintessentially American. They saw the size, tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at the Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that represented the culture of the United States. Both supporters and critics insisted that Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and that the auto industry was the key to understanding economic and social relations in the United States. As one German explained, "Automobiles have so completely changed the American's mode of life that today one can hardly imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what life was like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation".[109] For many Germans, Ford embodied the essence of successful Americanism.

In My Life and Work, Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological development throughout the world would progress to the point that international trade would no longer be based on (what today would be called) colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all peoples.[110]

Racing

Ford (standing) launched Barney Oldfield's career in 1902.
Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his involvement in the sport as both a constructor and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. On October 10, 1901, he defeated Alexander Winton in a race car named "Sweepstakes"; it was through the wins of this car that Ford created the Henry Ford Company.[111] Ford entered stripped-down Model Ts in races, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an "ocean-to-ocean" (across the United States) race in 1909, and setting a one-mile (1.6 km) oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, he attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required the addition of another 1,000 pounds (450 kg) to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter exited racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model T, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.

In My Life and Work Ford speaks (briefly) of racing in a rather dismissive tone, as something that is not at all a good measure of automobiles in general. He describes himself as someone who raced only because in the 1890s through 1910s, one had to race because prevailing ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an automobile. Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as this was the definition of success (flawed though the definition was), then his cars would be the best that there were at racing.[112] Throughout the book, he continually returns to ideals such as transportation, production efficiency, affordability, reliability, fuel efficiency, economic prosperity, and the automation of drudgery in farming and industry, but rarely mentions, and rather belittles, the idea of merely going fast from point A to point B.

Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.[113]

Later career and death
When Edsel Ford, President of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the presidency. By this point, Ford, nearing 80 years old, had had several cardiovascular events (variously cited as heart attacks or strokes) and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such immense responsibilities.[114]

Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years, though he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had de facto control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this time was no different. The directors elected him,[115] and he served until the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing more than $10 million a month ($169,120,000 today). The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production,[69] but the idea never progressed.


Ford grave, Ford Cemetery
His health failing, Ford ceded the company presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in September 1945 and retired. He died on April 7, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage at Fair Lane, his estate in Dearborn, at the age of 83. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.[101][116]

Personal interests
A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons, published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member.[117] The Grand Lodge of New York confirms that Ford was a Freemason, and was raised in Palestine Lodge No. 357, Detroit, in 1894. When he received the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in 1940, he said, "Masonry is the best balance wheel the United States has."[118]

In 1923, Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or "once believed," in reincarnation.[119]

Ford published an anti-smoking book, circulated to youth in 1914, called The Case Against the Little White Slaver, which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries.[120] At the time, smoking was ubiquitous and not yet widely associated with health problems, making Ford's opposition to cigarettes unusual.

Interest in materials science and engineering
Henry Ford had a long-held interest in materials science and engineering. He enthusiastically described his company's adoption of vanadium steel alloys and subsequent metallurgic R&D work.[121]

Ford also had a long-standing interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, particularly soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George Washington Carver for this purpose.[122][123][124] Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint and other components. The project culminated in 1942, when Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a steel car and was said to be able to withstand blows ten times greater than steel. It ran on grain alcohol (ethanol) instead of gasoline. The design never caught on.[125]

Ford was interested in engineered woods ("Better wood can be made than is grown"[126]) (at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas); corn as a fuel source, via both corn oil and ethanol;[127] and the potential uses of cotton.[126] Ford was instrumental in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name "Kingsford". His brother-in-law, Edward G. Kingsford, used wood scraps from the Ford factory to make the briquets.

In 1927, Ford partnered with Thomas Edison and Harvey Samuel Firestone (each contributing $25,000) to create the Edison Botanic Research Corp. in Fort Myers, Florida to seek a native source of rubber.

Ford was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents.

Florida and Georgia residences and community
Ford had a vacation residence in Fort Myers, Florida, next to that of Thomas Edison, which he bought in 1915 and used until approximately 1930. It still stands today as a museum.[128]

He also had a vacation home (known today as the "Ford Plantation") in Richmond Hill, Georgia, which is now a private community. Ford started buying land in this area and eventually owned 70,000 acres (110 square miles) there.[129] In 1936, Ford broke ground for a beautiful Greek revival style mansion on the banks of the Ogeechee River on the site of a 1730s plantation. The grand house, made of Savannah-gray brick, had marble steps, air conditioning, and an elevator. It sat on 55 acres (22 ha) of manicured lawns and flowering gardens. The house became the center of social gatherings with visitations by the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and the DuPonts. It remains the centerpiece of The Ford Plantation today.[130] Ford converted the 1870s-era rice mill into his personal research laboratory and powerhouse and constructed a tunnel from there to the new home, providing it with steam. He contributed substantially to the community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous local residents.

Preserving Americana
Ford had an interest in "Americana". In the 1920s, he began work to turn Sudbury, Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" nursery rhyme from Sterling, Massachusetts, and purchased the historic Wayside Inn. The historical village plan never came to fruition. He repeated the concept of collecting historic structures with the creation of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It may have inspired the creation of Old Sturbridge Village as well. About the same time, he began collecting materials for his museum, which had a theme of practical technology. It was opened in 1929 as the Edison Institute. The museum has been greatly modernized and is still open today.

In popular culture

Henry and Clara Ford in his first car, the Ford Quadricycle
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), society is organized on "Fordist" lines, the years are dated A.F. or Anno Ford ("In the Year of Ford"), and the expression "My Ford" is used instead of "My Lord". The Christian cross is replaced with a capital "T" for Model-T.
Upton Sinclair created a fictional description of Ford in the 1937 novel The Flivver King.
Symphonic composer Ferde Grofé composed a tone poem in Henry Ford's honor (1938).
Ford appears as a character in several historical novels, notably E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975), and Richard Powers' Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985).[131][132]
Ford, his family, and his company were the subjects of a 1987 film starring Cliff Robertson and Michael Ironside, based on the 1986 biography Ford: The Man and the Machine by Robert Lacey.
In the 2004 alternative history novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth features Ford as Secretary of the Interior in a fictional Charles Lindbergh presidential administration after Lindbergh's victory over Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. The novel draws heavily on the administration's antisemitism and isolationism as a catalyst for its plot.
In the 2020 HBO adapted miniseries of the same name, Ford is portrayed by actor Ed Moran.
Ford appears as a Great Builder in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution.[133]
In the fictional history of the Assassin's Creed video game franchise, Ford is portrayed as having been a major Templar influence on the events of the Great Depression, and later World War II.[134][135]
Ford is featured as an allie of Thomas Edison in the youtube series Super Science Friends.
Honors and recognition
In December 1999, Ford was among 18 included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people.
In 1928, Ford was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal.
In 1938, Ford was awarded Nazi Germany's Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a medal given to foreigners sympathetic to Nazism.[136]
The United States Postal Service honored Ford with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢ postage stamp.
He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1946.[137][138]
In 1975, Ford was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame.[139]
In 1985, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.[48]
He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.[140]
See also
Capitalist peace
Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad
Dodge v. Ford Motor Company
Edison and Ford Winter Estates
Arthur Constantin Krebs
Ferdinand Porsche
Ferdinand Verbiest
Ford family tree
John Burroughs
List of covers of Time magazine (1920s)
List of richest Americans in history
List of wealthiest historical figures
Outline of Henry Ford
Preston Tucker
Ransom Olds
William Benson Mayo
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Bibliography
Foust, James C. (1997). "Mass-produced Reform: Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent". American Journalism. 14 (3–4): 411–424. doi:10.1080/08821127.1997.10731933.
Higham, Charles, Trading with the Enemy The Nazi–American Money Plot 1933–1949; Delacorte Press 1983
Kandel, Alan D. "Ford and Israel" Michigan Jewish History 1999 39: 13–17. covers business and philanthropy
King, Jenny (June 16, 2003). "Lincoln Mercury: Stumbling stepchild". Automotive News. Detroit. ProQuest 219377741. Retrieved June 30, 2021 – via ProQuest.
Lee, Albert; Henry Ford and the Jews; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1980; ISBN 0-8128-2701-5
Lewis, David L. (1984). "Henry Ford's Anti-semitism and its Repercussions". Michigan Jewish History. 24 (1): 3–10.
Reich, Simon (1999) "The Ford Motor Company and the Third Reich" Dimensions, 13(2):15–17 online
Ribuffo, Leo P. (1980). "Henry Ford and the International Jew". American Jewish History. 69 (4): 437–77.
Sapiro, Aaron L. (1982). "A Retrospective View of the Aaron Sapiro-Henry Ford Case". Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly. 15 (1): 79–84.
Silverstein, K. (2000). "Ford and the Führer". The Nation. Vol. 270, no. 3. pp. 11–16.
Woeste, Victoria Saker. (2004). "Insecure Equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the Problem of Defamatory Antisemitism, 1920–1929". Journal of American History. 91 (3): 877–905. doi:10.2307/3662859. JSTOR 3662859.
Further reading
Memoirs by Ford Motor Company principals
Ford, Henry; Crowther, Samuel (1922), My Life and Work, Garden City, New York, USA: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. Various republications, including ISBN 9781406500189. Original is public domain in U.S. Also available at Google Books.
Ford, Henry; Crowther, Samuel (1926). "Today and Tomorrow". Garden City, New York City: Doubleday, Page & Company. Co-edition, 1926, London, William Heinemann. Various republications, including ISBN 0-915299-36-4.
Ford, Henry; Crowther, Samuel (1930). "Moving Forward". Garden City, New York City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. Co-edition, 1931, London, William Heinemann.
Ford, Henry; Crowther, Samuel (1930). "Edison as I Know Him". New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. Apparent co-edition, 1930, as My Friend Mr. Edison, London, Ernest Benn. Republished as Edison as I Knew Him by American Thought and Action, San Diego, 1966, OCLC 3456201. Republished as Edison as I Know Him by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4325-6158-1.
Bennett, Harry; with Marcus, Paul (1951). We Never Called Him Henry. New York: Fawcett Publications. LCCN 51036122..
Sorensen, Charles E. (1956), My Forty Years with Ford, with Williamson, Samuel T., New York, New York, US: Norton, LCCN 56010854. Various republications, including ISBN 9780814332795.
Biographies
Bak, Richard (2003). Henry and Edsel: The Creation of the Ford Empire. Wiley ISBN 0-471-23487-7
Brinkley, Douglas G. Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress (2003)
Halberstam, David. "Citizen Ford" American Heritage 1986 37(6): 49–64. interpretive essay
Jardim, Anne. The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Business Leadership Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Press 1970.
Lacey, Robert. Ford: The Men and the Machine Little, Brown, 1986. popular biography
Lewis, David I. (1976). The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-1553-8.
Nevins, Allan; Frank Ernest Hill (1954). Ford: The Times, The Man, The Company. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ACLS e-book; also online free
Nevins, Allan; Frank Ernest Hill (1957). Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915–1933. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ACLS e-book
Nevins, Allan; Frank Ernest Hill (1962). Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933–1962. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ACLS e-book
Nye, David E. Henry Ford: "Ignorant Idealist." Kennikat, 1979.
Watts, Steven. The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (2005)

Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom (15 April 1892[1] – 15 April 1983) was a Dutch watchmaker and later a Christian writer and public speaker, who worked with her father, Casper ten Boom, her sister Betsie ten Boom and other family members to help many Jewish people escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in her home. They were caught, and she was arrested and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, is a biography that recounts the story of her family's efforts and how she found and shared hope in God while she was imprisoned at the concentration camp.

Early life

Corrie ten Boom c. 1921
Corrie ten Boom was born on 15 April 1892 in Haarlem, Netherlands, the youngest child of Casper ten Boom, a jeweler and watchmaker, and Cornelia (commonly known as "Cor") Johanna Arnolda, née Luitingh, whom he married in 1884.[2] She was named after her mother but known as Corrie all her life.[3] Corrie had three older siblings: Betsie, Willem, and Nollie.[4] Her three maternal aunts, Tante Bepa, Tante Jans, and Tante Anna, lived with the family.[3] Her father was fascinated by the craft of watchmaking and often became so engrossed in his work that he forgot to charge customers for his services.[5]

The Ten Boom family lived above Casper's watch shop in what Corrie called "the Beje," a house named for the Barteljorisstraat where they lived.[1] Corrie spent the first part of her life in charge of the housekeeping. However, when a cold sent Betsie, Corrie's sister, to bed for an extended period, Corrie took Betsie's place and began to work in the family watch shop. She quickly discovered that she loved the "business side" of the watch shop, and she organized the financial proceedings by developing a system of billings and ledgers. Even when Betsie recovered, Corrie kept her place in the shop and Betsie managed the housework, to the delight of them both.[6]

She trained to be a watchmaker herself, and in 1922, she became the first woman to be licensed as a watchmaker in the Netherlands.[7] Over the next decade, in addition to working in her father's shop, she established a youth club for teenage girls, which provided religious instruction and classes in the performing arts, sewing, and handicrafts.[3] She and her family were Calvinist Christians in the Dutch Reformed Church, and their faith inspired them to serve their society, which they did by offering shelter, food and money to those who were in need.[3] Some important tenets of their faith included the fact that the Jews were precious to God[6] and that all people are created equal[8] – powerful motivation for the selfless rescue work she would later become involved in.

World War II
Righteous
Among the Nations
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By country
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In May 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. One of their restrictions was the banning of the youth club.[9][page needed] In May 1942, a well-dressed woman came to the Ten Booms' with a suitcase in hand and told them that she was a Jew, her husband had been arrested several months earlier, her son had gone into hiding and Occupation authorities had recently visited her so she was afraid to go back. She heard that the Ten Booms had previously helped their Jewish neighbors, the Weils, and asked if they could help her too. Casper readily agreed that she could stay with them although the police headquarters was only half a block away.[10] A devoted reader of the Old Testament, he believed that the Jews were the "chosen people" and told the woman, "In this household, God's people are always welcome."[11] The family then became very active in the Dutch underground, hiding refugees and honouring the Jewish Sabbath.[12] The family never sought to convert any of the Jews who stayed with them.[13]

Corrie and her sister Betsie opened their home to Jewish refugees and members of the resistance movement, and as a result, they were sought after by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. The refugee work which Ten Boom and her sister did at the Beje became known by the Dutch Resistance, which sent an architect to the Ten Boom home to build a secret room adjacent to the room for the Jews who were in hiding and an alert buzzer that could be used to warn the refugees to get into the room as quickly as possible.[13] Thus the Ten Booms created "The Hiding Place" (Dutch: De Schuilplaats or de Béjé, pronounced "bayay", an abbreviation of the street, Barteljorisstraat). The secret room was in Corrie's bedroom behind a false wall and would hold 6 people. A ventilation system was installed for the occupants. A buzzer could be heard in the house to warn the refugees to get into the room as quickly as possible during security sweeps through the neighborhood.[14] They had plenty of room, but wartime shortages meant that food was scarce. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card, the requirement for obtaining weekly food coupons. Through her charitable work, Ten Boom knew many people in Haarlem and remembered a family with a disabled daughter, whose father was a civil servant who was now in charge of the local ration-card office.[10] She went to his house one evening, and when he asked how many ration cards she needed, "I opened my mouth to say, 'Five,'" Ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place. "But the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was: 'One hundred.'"[15] He gave them to her and she provided cards to every Jew she met.

Ten Boom's involvement in the Dutch resistance grew beyond gathering stolen ration cards and harboring Jews in her home. She soon became part of the Dutch underground resistance network and oversaw a network of smuggling Jews to safe places. All in all, it is estimated that around 800 Jews were saved by Ten Boom's efforts.[1]

Arrest, detention and release
On 28 February 1944, a Dutch informant, Jan Vogel, told the Nazis about the Ten Booms' work; at around 12:30 p.m. of that day, the Nazis arrested the entire Ten Boom family. They were sent to Scheveningen Prison when Resistance materials and extra ration cards were found at the home.[16] The group of six people hidden by the Ten Booms, made up of both Jews and resistance workers, remained undiscovered. Though the house was under constant surveillance after Ten Boom's arrest, police officers who were also members of the resistance group coordinated the refugees' escape.[17] Ten Boom received a letter one day in prison, "All the watches in your cabinet are safe," meaning that the refugees had managed to escape and were safe.[16] Four days after the raid, resistance workers transferred them to other locations. Altogether, the Gestapo arrested over 30[17] people who were in the family home that day.[18]

Though the Gestapo soon released most of the 30 people they had captured that day, Corrie, Betsie, and their father Casper were held in prison. Casper died ten days later.[8] Corrie was initially held in solitary confinement. After three months, she was taken to her first hearing. At her trial, Ten Boom spoke about her work with people with mental disabilities; the Nazi lieutenant scoffed because the Nazis had been killing individuals with mental disabilities for years by their eugenics policies.[19] Ten Boom defended her work by saying that in the eyes of God, a mentally disabled person might be more valuable "than a watchmaker. Or a lieutenant."[19]

Corrie and Betsie were sent from Scheveningen to Herzogenbusch, a political concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught), and finally to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, a women's labor camp in Germany. There, they held worship services after the hard days at work by using a Bible that they had managed to smuggle in.[19] Through the two sisters’ teachings and examples of unfailing charity, many of the prisoners there converted to Christianity.[17] While they were imprisoned at Ravensbruck, Betsie and her sister began to discuss plans for founding a place of healing after the war. Betsie's health continued to deteriorate, and she died on 16 December 1944 at the age of 59.[20] Before she died, she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still." Twelve days later,[1] Corrie was released. Afterward, she was told that her release was because of a clerical error and that a week later, all the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers.[21]

Ten Boom returned home amid the "hunger winter". She still opened her doors to people with disabilities who were in hiding for fear of execution.[22]

Life after the war
After the war, Ten Boom returned to the Netherlands to set up a rehabilitation center in Bloemendaal. The refuge housed concentration-camp survivors and until 1950 exclusively sheltered jobless Dutch who had collaborated with the Germans during the Occupation, after which it accepted anyone in need of care. She returned to Germany in 1946 and met with and forgave two Germans who had been employed at Ravensbrück, one of whom had been particularly cruel to Betsie.[22] Ten Boom went on to travel the world as a public speaker, appearing in more than 60 countries. She wrote many books during this period.

One of these books is titled Tramp for the Lord and was written in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Each chapter tells a short, different story about her world travels and sharing the gospel message in Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia, and even in difficult-to-reach and dangerous countries such as Russia (then-USSR), Cuba, and China. It features photographs of Ten Boom and her important messages of forgiveness, hope, love, and salvation through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Ten Boom told the story of her family members and their World War II work in her bestselling book, The Hiding Place (1971), which was made into a 1975 World Wide Pictures film, The Hiding Place, starring Jeannette Clift as Corrie and Julie Harris as Betsie. In 1977, the 85-year-old Corrie migrated to Placentia, California. In 1978, she suffered two strokes, the first rendered her unable to speak, and the second resulted in paralysis. She died on her 91st birthday, 15 April 1983, after suffering a third stroke. Ten Boom was buried in Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California.

A sequel film, Return to the Hiding Place (War of Resistance), was released in 2011 in the United Kingdom and 2013 it was released in the United States. The film was based on Hans Poley's book, which painted a wider picture of the circle of which she was a part.

Honors
The Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority in[23] Israel honored her by naming her Righteous Among the Nations on December 12, 1967.[23]
She was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war.[1]
The Ten Boom Museum in Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family in recognition of their work.
The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honor.
Further reading
Backhouse, Halcyon C. (1992), Corrie ten Boom: Faith Triumphs, Heroes of The Faith, Alton: Hunt & Thorpe, ISBN 1-85608-007-2.
Baez, Kjersti Hoff; Bohl, Al (2008) [1989], Corrie ten Boom, Chronicles of Faith, Ulrichsville, Ohio: Barbour Pub, ISBN 978-1-59789-967-3.
Benge, Janet; Benge, Geoffrey ‘Geoff’ (1999), Corrie ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels' Den, Seattle, WA: YWAM Pub, ISBN 1-57658-136-5.
Briscoe, Jill (1991), Paint the Prisons Bright: Corrie ten Boom, Dallas: Word Pub, ISBN 0-8499-3308-0
Brown, Joan Winmill (1979), Corrie, the Lives She's Touched, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co, ISBN 0-8007-1049-5.
Carlson, Carole C. (1983), Corrie ten Boom, Her Life, Her Faith: A Biography, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co, ISBN 0-8007-1293-5.
Causey, Charles M. (2016), The Lion and the Lamb: The True Holocaust Story of a Powerful Nazi Leader and a Dutch Resistance Worker, ISBN 1-51276-109-5
Couchman, Judith (1997), Corrie ten Boom: Anywhere He Leads Me.
Guthrie, Stan (2019), Victorious: Corrie ten Boom and The Hiding Place, Paraclete Press.
Mainse, David (1976), The Corrie ten Boom Story: Turning Point.
McKenzie, Catherine (2006), Corrie ten Boom: Are All The Watches Safe.
Meloche, Renée; Pollard, Bryan (2002), Corrie ten Boom: Shining In The Darkness.
Metaxas, Eric (2015), Seven Women And The Secret To Their Greatness, Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.
Moore, Pamela Rosewell (1986), The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom.
Moore, Pamela Rosewell (2004), Life Lessons From The Hiding Place: Discovering The Heart of Corrie ten Boom.
Poley, Hans (1993), Return to The Hiding Place.
Ray, Chaplain (1985), Corrie ten Boom Speaks To Prisoners.
Shaw, Sue (1996), Corrie ten Boom: Faith In Dark Places.
Smith, Emily S, A Visit To The Hiding Place: The Life-Changing Experiences of Corrie ten Boom.
Stamps, Ellen de Kroon (1978), My Years with Corrie, Old Tappan, N.J: F.H. Revell Co.
Wallington, David (1981), The Secret Room: The Story of Corrie ten Boom, Exeter: Religious Education Press.
Watson, Jean (1994), Corrie ten Boom: The Watchmaker's Daughter.
Wellman, Samuel ‘Sam’ (1984), Corrie ten Boom: The Heroine of Haarlem.
Wellman, Samuel ‘Sam’ (2004), Corrie ten Boom: Heroes of The Faith.
White, Kathleen (1991), Corrie ten Boom.

Amy Beatrice Carmichael (16 December 1867 – 18 January 1951) was an Irish Christian missionary in India who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years and wrote 35 books about her work as a missionary.

Early life
Amy Beatrice Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle, County Down, Ireland, in 1867, as the oldest of seven siblings. Her parents were David Carmichael, a miller, and his wife Catherine, both devout Christians.[1] Amy attended Harrogate Ladies College for four years in her youth.

Amy's father moved the family to Belfast when she was 16 years old, but he died two years later. In Belfast, the Carmichaels founded the Welcome Evangelical Church.[2] In the mid-1880s, Carmichael started a Sunday-morning class for the 'Shawlies' (mill girls who wore shawls instead of hats) in the church hall of Rosemary Street Presbyterian. This mission grew quickly to include several hundred attendees. At this time Amy saw an advertisement in The Christian for an iron hall that could be erected for £500 and would seat 500 people. Two donations, £500 from Miss Kate Mitchell and one plot of land from a mill owner, led to the erection of the first "Welcome Hall", on the corner of Cambrai Street and Heather Street in 1887.[citation needed]

Amy continued at the Welcome until she received a call to work among the mill girls of Manchester in 1889, from which she moved on to overseas missionary work, despite suffering from neuralgia. At the Keswick Convention of 1887, she heard Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM), speak about missionary life; soon afterwards, she became convinced of her calling to missionary work. She applied to the China Inland Mission and lived in London at the training house for women, where she met author and missionary to China Mary Geraldine Guinness, who encouraged her to pursue missionary work. Carmichael was ready to sail for Asia, but it was determined that her health made her unfit for the work. She postponed her missionary career with the CIM and decided later to join the Church Missionary Society.


The bronze statue of Amy Carmichael as a young girl that stands in Hamilton Road in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, on the grounds of the Presbyterian church.
Work in India
Initially Carmichael traveled to Japan, staying for fifteen months, but returned home for health reasons.[3] After a brief period of service in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), she went to Bangalore, India, for her health, where she chose to stay to continue her work as a missionary. She was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Mission. Carmichael's most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were saved from customs that amounted to forced prostitution(i.e., Devadasi)[4][5]

Carmichael founded the Dohnavur Fellowship[6] in 1901 to continue her work,[7] as she later wrote in The Gold Cord (1932). Dohnavur is situated in Tamil Nadu, thirty miles from India's southern tip. The name derives from Count Dohna, who initially funded German missionaries at the site in the early 19th century, on which the Rev. Thomas Walker then established a school. Carmichael's fellowship transformed Dohnavur into a sanctuary for over one thousand children.[8] Carmichael often said that her ministry of rescuing temple children started with a girl named Preena. Having become a temple servant against her wishes, Preena managed to escape. Amy Carmichael provided her shelter and withstood the threats of those who insisted that the girl be returned either to the temple directly to continue her sexual assignments, or to her family for a more indirect return to the temple. The number of such incidents soon grew, thus beginning Amy Carmichael's new ministry.[9]

In an attempt to respect Indian culture, members of the Dohnavur organization wore Indian dress and gave the rescued children Indian names. Carmichael herself dressed in Indian clothes and dyed her skin with dark coffee. While serving in India, Carmichael received a letter from a young lady who was considering life as a missionary, asking, "What is missionary life like?" Carmichael wrote back, "Missionary life is simply a chance to die."[citation needed]

In 1912, money and workers were available that helped fund a hospital at Dohnavur.[10] By 1913, the Dohnavur Fellowship was serving 130 girls. In 1918, Dohnavur added a home for young boys, many born to the former temple prostitutes. Meanwhile, in 1916 Carmichael formed a Protestant religious order called Sisters of the Common Life.

Legacy
Amy Carmichael was a prolific writer, publishing many books and articles about her experiences as a missionary in India.

Carmichael died in India in 1951 at the age of 83. She asked that no stone be put over her grave at Dohnavur.

Other Christian missionaries have cited her as an influence.[11]

India outlawed temple prostitution in 1948. However, the Dohnavur Fellowship continues, now supporting approximately 500 people on 400 acres with 16 nurseries and a hospital. The foundation is now run by Indians under the jurisdiction of the C.S.I. Tirunelveli Diocese, founded in 1896. Changed policies acknowledging Indian law require that all children born in or brought to Dohnavur be sent out for education in the 6th grade. Furthermore, since 1982, infant boys have been adopted out rather than remaining in the community.

Amy is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 18 January.[12]

Carmichael College in Morayfield, Moreton Bay Region, Queensland, Australia is named after her.[13]

Selected works
[14]

From Sunrise Land: Letters from Japan, Marshall (1895)
From fight[15] (1901)
Raisins (1901)
Things as they are; mission work in southern India, London: Morgan and Scott (1905)
Overweights of Joy (1906)[16]
Beginning of a Story (1908)
Lotus Buds, London: Morgan and Scott (1912)
Continuation of a Story (1914)[17]
Walker of Tinnevelly, London: Morgan & Scott (1916) (biography of Thomas Walker)
NorScrip (1922)[14]
Ragland, pioneer, Madras: S.P.C.K. Depository (1922) (biography of Thomas Gajetan Ragland)
Made in the Pans (1917)
Ponnammal: Her Story (1918)
From the Forest (1920)
Dohnavur Songs (1921)
Tables in the Wilderness (1923)
The Valley of Vision (1924)
Mimosa: A True Story (1924), CLC Publications (September 2005)
Raj (1926)
The Widow of the Jewels (1928)
Meal in a Barrel (1929)
Gold Cord (1932),[18] Christian Literature Crusade (June 1957)
Rose from Brier (1933), Christian Literature Crusade (June 1972)
Ploughed Under: The Story of a Little Lover, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) (1934)
Gold by Moonlight (1935)[19]
Towards Jerusalem (1936)
Windows (1937)
If (1938), Christian Literature Crusade (June 1999) If...
Figures of the True (1938)
Pools and the Valley of Vision (1938)
Kohila: The Shaping of an Indian Nurse (1939), CLC Publications (July 2002)
His Thoughts Said...His Father Said (1941)
Though the Mountains Shake, Madras: Diocesan Press (1943)
Before the Door Shuts (1948)
This One Thing (1950)
Edges of His Ways, Fort Washington: Christian Literature Crusade (1955) Edges of His ways : selections for daily reading
Wings (with Florence Margaret Spencer Palmer; 1960)[20]
Thou Givest, They Gather, Thou givest-- they gather CLC Publications (June 1970)
Candles in the Dark, Christian Literature Crusade (June 1982)
Mountain Breezes: The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael, Christian Literature Crusade (August 1999)
Whispers of His Power, CLC Publications (June 1993) Whispers of His power
That Way and No Other, Plough Publishing (January 2020)

"Charles Chaplin" redirects here. For other uses, see Charles Chaplin (disambiguation).
Sir
Charlie Chaplin
KBE
Charlie Chaplin portrait.jpg
Chaplin in the early 1920s
Born Charles Spencer Chaplin
16 April 1889
London, England
Died 25 December 1977 (aged 88)
Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland
Burial place Cimetière de Corsier-sur-Vevey, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland
Occupations
Actorcomediandirectorcomposerscreenwriterproducereditor
Years active 1899–1975
Works Full list
Spouses
Mildred Harris
​
​(m. 1918; div. 1920)​
Lita Grey
​
​(m. 1924; div. 1927)​
Paulette Goddard
​
​(m. 1936; div. 1942)​
Oona O'Neill ​(m. 1943)​
Children 11, including Charles, Sydney, Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene and Christopher
Parent(s) Charles Chaplin Sr.
Hannah Hill
Relatives Chaplin family
Website charliechaplin.com
Signature
Firma de Charles Chaplin.svg
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.

Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially – he was sent to a workhouse twice before age nine. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon developed the Tramp persona and attracted a large fan base. He directed his own films and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay, Mutual, and First National corporations. By 1918, he was one of the world's best-known figures.

In 1919, Chaplin co-founded distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films. His first feature-length film was The Kid (1921), followed by A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928). He initially refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) without dialogue. His first sound film was The Great Dictator (1940), which satirised Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were marked with controversy for Chaplin, and his popularity declined rapidly. He was accused of communist sympathies, and some members of the press and public were scandalised by his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the U.S. and settle in Switzerland. He abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which include Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), A King in New York (1957), and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).

Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films. He was a perfectionist, and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterised by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramp's struggles against adversity. Many contain social and political themes, as well as autobiographical elements. He received an Honorary Academy Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century" in 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in high regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator often ranked on lists of the greatest films.

Biography
1889–1913: early years
Background and childhood hardship

Seven-year-old Chaplin (middle centre, leaning slightly) at the Central London District School for paupers, 1897
Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was born on 16 April 1889 to Hannah Chaplin (née Hill) and Charles Chaplin Sr. His paternal grandmother came from the Smith family, who belonged to Romani people.[1][2][3][4] There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London.[5][a] His parents had married four years previously, at which time Charles Sr. became the legal guardian of Hannah's first son, Sydney John Hill.[9][b] At the time of his birth, Chaplin's parents were both music hall entertainers. Hannah, the daughter of a shoemaker,[10] had a brief and unsuccessful career under the stage name Lily Harley,[11] while Charles Sr., a butcher's son,[12] was a popular singer.[13] Although they never divorced, Chaplin's parents were estranged by around 1891.[14] The following year, Hannah gave birth to a third son, George Wheeler Dryden, fathered by the music hall entertainer Leo Dryden. The child was taken by Dryden at six months old, and did not re-enter Chaplin's life for thirty years.[15]

Chaplin's childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory "the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told" according to his authorised biographer David Robinson.[16] Chaplin's early years were spent with his mother and brother Sydney in the London district of Kennington. Hannah had no means of income, other than occasional nursing and dressmaking, and Chaplin Sr. provided no financial support.[17] As the situation deteriorated, Chaplin was sent to Lambeth Workhouse when he was seven years old.[c] The council housed him at the Central London District School for paupers, which Chaplin remembered as "a forlorn existence".[19] He was briefly reunited with his mother 18 months later, before Hannah was forced to readmit her family to the workhouse in July 1898. The boys were promptly sent to Norwood Schools, another institution for destitute children.[20]

I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis; and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness.

— Charlie Chaplin, on his childhood[21]
In September 1898, Hannah was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum; she had developed a psychosis seemingly brought on by an infection of syphilis and malnutrition.[22] For the two months she was there, Chaplin and his brother Sydney were sent to live with their father, whom the young boys scarcely knew.[23] Charles Sr. was by then a severe alcoholic, and life there was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.[24] Chaplin's father died two years later, at 38 years old, from cirrhosis of the liver.[25]

Hannah entered a period of remission but, in May 1903, became ill again.[24] Chaplin, then 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary, from where she was sent back to Cane Hill.[26] He lived alone for several days, searching for food and occasionally sleeping rough, until Sydney – who had joined the Navy two years earlier – returned.[27] Hannah was released from the asylum eight months later,[28] but in March 1905, her illness returned, this time permanently. "There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate", Chaplin later wrote, and she remained in care until her death in 1928.[29]

Young performer

A teenage Chaplin in the play Sherlock Holmes
Between his time in the poor schools and his mother succumbing to mental illness, Chaplin began to perform on stage. He later recalled making his first amateur appearance at the age of five years, when he took over from Hannah one night in Aldershot.[d] This was an isolated occurrence, but by the time he was nine Chaplin had, with his mother's encouragement, grown interested in performing. He later wrote: "[she] imbued me with the feeling that I had some sort of talent".[31] Through his father's connections,[32] Chaplin became a member of the Eight Lancashire Lads clog-dancing troupe, with whom he toured English music halls throughout 1899 and 1900.[e] Chaplin worked hard, and the act was popular with audiences, but he was not satisfied with dancing and wished to form a comedy act.[34]

In the years Chaplin was touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads, his mother ensured that he still attended school but, by age 13, he had abandoned education.[35][36] He supported himself with a range of jobs, while nursing his ambition to become an actor.[37] At 14, shortly after his mother's relapse, he registered with a theatrical agency in London's West End. The manager sensed potential in Chaplin, who was promptly given his first role as a newsboy in Harry Arthur Saintsbury's Jim, a Romance of Cockayne.[38] It opened in July 1903, but the show was unsuccessful and closed after two weeks. Chaplin's comic performance, however, was singled out for praise in many of the reviews.[39]

Saintsbury secured a role for Chaplin in Charles Frohman's production of Sherlock Holmes, where he played Billy the pageboy in three nationwide tours.[40] His performance was so well received that he was called to London to play the role alongside William Gillette, the original Holmes.[f] "It was like tidings from heaven", Chaplin recalled.[42] At 16 years old, Chaplin starred in the play's West End production at the Duke of York's Theatre from October to December 1905.[43] He completed one final tour of Sherlock Holmes in early 1906, before leaving the play after more than two-and-a-half years.[44]

Stage comedy and vaudeville
Chaplin soon found work with a new company and went on tour with his brother, who was also pursuing an acting career, in a comedy sketch called Repairs.[45] In May 1906, Chaplin joined the juvenile act Casey's Circus,[46] where he developed popular burlesque pieces and was soon the star of the show. By the time the act finished touring in July 1907, the 18-year-old had become an accomplished comedic performer.[47] He struggled to find more work, however, and a brief attempt at a solo act was a failure.[g]


Advertisement from Chaplin's American tour with the Fred Karno comedy company, 1913
Meanwhile, Sydney Chaplin had joined Fred Karno's prestigious comedy company in 1906 and, by 1908, he was one of their key performers.[49] In February, he managed to secure a two-week trial for his younger brother. Karno was initially wary, and considered Chaplin a "pale, puny, sullen-looking youngster" who "looked much too shy to do any good in the theatre".[50] However, the teenager made an impact on his first night at the London Coliseum and he was quickly signed to a contract.[51] Chaplin began by playing a series of minor parts, eventually progressing to starring roles in 1909.[52] In April 1910, he was given the lead in a new sketch, Jimmy the Fearless. It was a big success, and Chaplin received considerable press attention.[53]

Karno selected his new star to join the section of the company, one that also included Stan Laurel, that toured North America's vaudeville circuit.[54][55] The young comedian headed the show and impressed reviewers, being described as "one of the best pantomime artists ever seen here".[56] His most successful role was a drunk called the "Inebriate Swell", which drew him significant recognition.[57] The tour lasted 21 months, and the troupe returned to England in June 1912.[58] Chaplin recalled that he "had a disquieting feeling of sinking back into a depressing commonplaceness" and was, therefore, delighted when a new tour began in October.[59]

1914–1917: entering films
Keystone
Six months into the second American tour, Chaplin was invited to join the New York Motion Picture Company. A representative who had seen his performances thought he could replace Fred Mace, a star of their Keystone Studios who intended to leave.[60] Chaplin thought the Keystone comedies "a crude mélange of rough and rumble", but liked the idea of working in films and rationalised: "Besides, it would mean a new life."[61] He met with the company and signed a $150-per-week[h] contract in September 1913.[63] Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles in early December,[64] and began working for the Keystone studio on 5 January 1914.[65]

Making a Living screenshot
Chaplin (left) in his first film appearance, Making a Living, with Henry Lehrman who directed the picture (1914)
Kid Auto Races at Venice screenshot
Chaplin's trademark character "the Tramp" debuts in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), Chaplin's second released film
Chaplin's boss was Mack Sennett, who initially expressed concern that the 24-year-old looked too young.[66] He was not used in a picture until late January, during which time Chaplin attempted to learn the processes of filmmaking.[67] The one-reeler Making a Living marked his film acting debut and was released on 2 February 1914. Chaplin strongly disliked the picture, but one review picked him out as "a comedian of the first water".[68] For his second appearance in front of the camera, Chaplin selected the costume with which he became identified. He described the process in his autobiography:

I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large ... I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.[69][i]

The film was Mabel's Strange Predicament, but "the Tramp" character, as it became known, debuted to audiences in Kid Auto Races at Venice – shot later than Mabel's Strange Predicament but released two days earlier on 7 February 1914.[71][72] Chaplin adopted the character as his screen persona and attempted to make suggestions for the films he appeared in. These ideas were dismissed by his directors.[73] During the filming of his 11th picture, Mabel at the Wheel, he clashed with director Mabel Normand and was almost released from his contract. Sennett kept him on, however, when he received orders from exhibitors for more Chaplin films.[74] Sennett also allowed Chaplin to direct his next film himself after Chaplin promised to pay $1,500 ($41,000 in 2021 dollars) if the film was unsuccessful.[75]

Caught in the Rain, issued 4 May 1914, was Chaplin's directorial debut and was highly successful.[76] Thereafter he directed almost every short film in which he appeared for Keystone,[77] at the rate of approximately one per week,[78] a period which he later remembered as the most exciting time of his career.[79] Chaplin's films introduced a slower form of comedy than the typical Keystone farce,[71] and he developed a large fan base.[80] In November 1914, he had a supporting role in the first feature length comedy film, Tillie's Punctured Romance, directed by Sennett and starring Marie Dressler, which was a commercial success and increased his popularity.[81] When Chaplin's contract came up for renewal at the end of the year, he asked for $1,000 a week,[j] an amount Sennett refused as he thought it was too large.[82]

Essanay

Chaplin and Edna Purviance, his regular leading lady, in Work (1915)
The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company of Chicago sent Chaplin an offer of $1,250[k] a week with a signing bonus of $10,000.[l] He joined the studio in late December 1914,[83] where he began forming a stock company of regular players, actors he worked with again and again, including Ben Turpin, Leo White, Bud Jamison, Paddy McGuire, Fred Goodwins, and Billy Armstrong. He soon recruited a leading lady, Edna Purviance, whom Chaplin met in a café and hired on account of her beauty. She went on to appear in 35 films with Chaplin over eight years;[84] the pair also formed a romantic relationship that lasted until 1917.[85]

Chaplin asserted a high level of control over his pictures and started to put more time and care into each film.[86] There was a month-long interval between the release of his second production, A Night Out, and his third, The Champion.[87] The final seven of Chaplin's 14 Essanay films were all produced at this slower pace.[88] Chaplin also began to alter his screen persona, which had attracted some criticism at Keystone for its "mean, crude, and brutish" nature.[89] The character became more gentle and romantic;[90] The Tramp (April 1915) was considered a particular turning point in his development.[91] The use of pathos was developed further with The Bank, in which Chaplin created a sad ending. Robinson notes that this was an innovation in comedy films, and marked the time when serious critics began to appreciate Chaplin's work.[92] At Essanay, writes film scholar Simon Louvish, Chaplin "found the themes and the settings that would define the Tramp's world".[93]

During 1915, Chaplin became a cultural phenomenon. Shops were stocked with Chaplin merchandise, he was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about him.[94] In July, a journalist for Motion Picture Magazine wrote that "Chaplinitis" had spread across America.[95] As his fame grew worldwide, he became the film industry's first international star.[96] When the Essanay contract ended in December 1915,[97][m] Chaplin, fully aware of his popularity, requested a $150,000[n] signing bonus from his next studio. He received several offers, including Universal, Fox, and Vitagraph, the best of which came from the Mutual Film Corporation at $10,000[o] a week.[99]

Mutual

By 1916, Chaplin was a global phenomenon. Here he shows off some of his merchandise, c. 1918.
A contract was negotiated with Mutual that amounted to $670,000[p] a year,[100] which Robinson says made Chaplin – at 26 years old – one of the highest paid people in the world.[101] The high salary shocked the public and was widely reported in the press.[102] John R. Freuler, the studio president, explained: "We can afford to pay Mr. Chaplin this large sum annually because the public wants Chaplin and will pay for him."[103]

Mutual gave Chaplin his own Los Angeles studio to work in, which opened in March 1916.[104] He added two key members to his stock company, Albert Austin and Eric Campbell,[105] and produced a series of elaborate two-reelers: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond, One A.M., and The Count.[106] For The Pawnshop, he recruited the actor Henry Bergman, who was to work with Chaplin for 30 years.[107] Behind the Screen and The Rink completed Chaplin's releases for 1916. The Mutual contract stipulated that he release a two-reel film every four weeks, which he had managed to achieve. With the new year, however, Chaplin began to demand more time.[108] He made only four more films for Mutual over the first ten months of 1917: Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer.[109] With their careful construction, these films are considered by Chaplin scholars to be among his finest work.[110][111] Later in life, Chaplin referred to his Mutual years as the happiest period of his career.[112] However, Chaplin also felt that those films became increasingly formulaic over the period of the contract, and he was increasingly dissatisfied with the working conditions encouraging that.[113]

Chaplin was attacked in the British media for not fighting in the First World War.[114] He defended himself, claiming that he would fight for Britain if called and had registered for the American draft, but he was not summoned by either country.[q] Despite this criticism, Chaplin was a favourite with the troops,[116] and his popularity continued to grow worldwide. Harper's Weekly reported that the name of Charlie Chaplin was "a part of the common language of almost every country", and that the Tramp image was "universally familiar".[117] In 1917, professional Chaplin imitators were so widespread that he took legal action,[118] and it was reported that nine out of ten men who attended costume parties, did so dressed as the Tramp.[119] The same year, a study by the Boston Society for Psychical Research concluded that Chaplin was "an American obsession".[119] The actress Minnie Maddern Fiske wrote that "a constantly increasing body of cultured, artistic people are beginning to regard the young English buffoon, Charles Chaplin, as an extraordinary artist, as well as a comic genius".[117]

1918–1922: First National

A Dog's Life (1918). It was around this time that Chaplin began to conceive the Tramp as a sad clown.
In January 1918, Chaplin was visited by leading British singer and comedian Harry Lauder, and the two acted in a short film together.[120]

Mutual was patient with Chaplin's decreased rate of output, and the contract ended amicably. With his aforementioned concern about the declining quality of his films because of contract scheduling stipulations, Chaplin's primary concern in finding a new distributor was independence; Sydney Chaplin, then his business manager, told the press, "Charlie [must] be allowed all the time he needs and all the money for producing [films] the way he wants ... It is quality, not quantity, we are after."[121] In June 1917, Chaplin signed to complete eight films for First National Exhibitors' Circuit in return for $1 million.[r][122] He chose to build his own studio, situated on five acres of land off Sunset Boulevard, with production facilities of the highest order.[123] It was completed in January 1918,[124] and Chaplin was given freedom over the making of his pictures.[125]

A Dog's Life, released April 1918, was the first film under the new contract. In it, Chaplin demonstrated his increasing concern with story construction and his treatment of the Tramp as "a sort of Pierrot".[126] The film was described by Louis Delluc as "cinema's first total work of art".[127] Chaplin then embarked on the Third Liberty Bond campaign, touring the United States for one month to raise money for the Allies of the First World War.[128] He also produced a short propaganda film at his own expense, donated to the government for fund-raising, called The Bond.[129] Chaplin's next release was war-based, placing the Tramp in the trenches for Shoulder Arms. Associates warned him against making a comedy about the war but, as he later recalled: "Dangerous or not, the idea excited me."[130] He spent four months filming the picture, which was released in October 1918 with great success.[131]

United Artists, Mildred Harris, and The Kid
After the release of Shoulder Arms, Chaplin requested more money from First National, which was refused. Frustrated with their lack of concern for quality, and worried about rumours of a possible merger between the company and Famous Players-Lasky, Chaplin joined forces with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D. W. Griffith to form a new distribution company, United Artists, in January 1919.[132] The arrangement was revolutionary in the film industry, as it enabled the four partners – all creative artists – to personally fund their pictures and have complete control.[133] Chaplin was eager to start with the new company and offered to buy out his contract with First National. They refused and insisted that he complete the final six films owed.[134]


The Kid (1921), with Jackie Coogan, combined comedy with drama and was Chaplin's first film to exceed an hour.
Before the creation of United Artists, Chaplin married for the first time. The 16-year-old actress Mildred Harris had revealed that she was pregnant with his child, and in September 1918, he married her quietly in Los Angeles to avoid controversy.[135] Soon after, the pregnancy was found to be false.[136] Chaplin was unhappy with the union and, feeling that marriage stunted his creativity, struggled over the production of his film Sunnyside.[137] Harris was by then legitimately pregnant, and on 7 July 1919, gave birth to a son. Norman Spencer Chaplin was born malformed and died three days later.[138] The marriage ended in April 1920, with Chaplin explaining in his autobiography that they were "irreconcilably mismated".[139]

Losing the child, plus his own childhood experiences, are thought to have influenced Chaplin's next film, which turned the Tramp into the caretaker of a young boy.[125][140] For this new venture, Chaplin also wished to do more than comedy and, according to Louvish, "make his mark on a changed world".[141] Filming on The Kid began in August 1919, with four-year-old Jackie Coogan his co-star.[142] The Kid was in production for nine months until May 1920 and, at 68 minutes, it was Chaplin's longest picture to date.[143] Dealing with issues of poverty and parent–child separation, The Kid was one of the earliest films to combine comedy and drama.[144] It was released in January 1921 with instant success, and, by 1924, had been screened in over 50 countries.[145]

Chaplin spent five months on his next film, the two-reeler The Idle Class.[133] Work on the picture was for a time delayed by more turmoil in his personal life. First National had on 12 April announced Chaplin's engagement to the actress May Collins, whom he had hired to be his secretary at the studio. By early June, however, Chaplin "suddenly decided he could scarcely stand to be in the same room" as Collins, but instead of breaking off the engagement directly, he "stopped coming in to work, sending word that he was suffering from a bad case of influenza, which May knew to be a lie."[146]

Ultimately work on the film resumed, and following its September 1921 release, Chaplin chose to return to England for the first time in almost a decade.[147] He wrote a book about his journey, titled My Wonderful Visit.[148] He then worked to fulfil his First National contract, releasing Pay Day in February 1922. The Pilgrim, his final short film, was delayed by distribution disagreements with the studio and released a year later.[149]

1923–1938: silent features
A Woman of Paris and The Gold Rush
Having fulfilled his First National contract, Chaplin was free to make his first picture as an independent producer. In November 1922, he began filming A Woman of Paris, a romantic drama about ill-fated lovers.[150] Chaplin intended it to be a star-making vehicle for Edna Purviance,[151] and did not appear in the picture himself other than in a brief, uncredited cameo.[152] He wished the film to have a realistic feel and directed his cast to give restrained performances. In real life, he explained, "men and women try to hide their emotions rather than seek to express them".[153] A Woman of Paris premiered in September 1923 and was acclaimed for its innovative, subtle approach.[154] The public, however, seemed to have little interest in a Chaplin film without Chaplin, and it was a box office disappointment.[155] The filmmaker was hurt by this failure – he had long wanted to produce a dramatic film and was proud of the result – and soon withdrew A Woman of Paris from circulation.[156]


The Tramp resorts to eating his boot in The Gold Rush (1925)
Chaplin returned to comedy for his next project. Setting his standards high, he told himself "This next film must be an epic! The Greatest!"[157] Inspired by a photograph of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, and later the story of the Donner Party of 1846–1847, he made what Geoffrey Macnab calls "an epic comedy out of grim subject matter".[158] In The Gold Rush, the Tramp is a lonely prospector fighting adversity and looking for love. With Georgia Hale as his leading lady, Chaplin began filming the picture in February 1924.[159] Its elaborate production, costing almost $1 million,[160] included location shooting in the Truckee mountains in Nevada with 600 extras, extravagant sets, and special effects.[161] The last scene was shot in May 1925 after 15 months of filming.[162]

Chaplin felt The Gold Rush was the best film he had made.[163] It opened in August 1925 and became one of the highest-grossing films of the silent era with a U.S. box-office of $5 million.[s][164] The comedy contains some of Chaplin's most famous sequences, such as the Tramp eating his shoe and the "Dance of the Rolls".[165] Macnab has called it "the quintessential Chaplin film".[166] Chaplin stated at its release, "This is the picture that I want to be remembered by".[167]

Lita Grey and The Circus

Lita Grey, whose bitter divorce from Chaplin caused a scandal
While making The Gold Rush, Chaplin married for the second time. Mirroring the circumstances of his first union, Lita Grey was a teenage actress, originally set to star in the film, whose surprise announcement of pregnancy forced Chaplin into marriage. She was 16 and he was 35, meaning Chaplin could have been charged with statutory rape under California law.[168] He therefore arranged a discreet marriage in Mexico on 25 November 1924.[169] They originally met during her childhood and she had previously appeared in his works The Kid and The Idle Class.[170] Their first son, Charles Spencer Chaplin III, was born on 5 May 1925, followed by Sydney Earl Chaplin on 30 March 1926.[171] On 6 July 1925, Chaplin became the first movie star to be featured on a Time magazine cover.[172]

It was an unhappy marriage, and Chaplin spent long hours at the studio to avoid seeing his wife.[173] In November 1926, Grey took the children and left the family home.[174] A bitter divorce followed, in which Grey's application – accusing Chaplin of infidelity, abuse, and of harbouring "perverted sexual desires" – was leaked to the press.[175][t] Chaplin was reported to be in a state of nervous breakdown, as the story became headline news and groups formed across America calling for his films to be banned.[177] Eager to end the case without further scandal, Chaplin's lawyers agreed to a cash settlement of $600,000[u] – the largest awarded by American courts at that time.[178] His fan base was strong enough to survive the incident, and it was soon forgotten, but Chaplin was deeply affected by it.[179]

Before the divorce suit was filed, Chaplin had begun work on a new film, The Circus.[180] He built a story around the idea of walking a tightrope while besieged by monkeys, and turned the Tramp into the accidental star of a circus.[181] Filming was suspended for ten months while he dealt with the divorce scandal,[182] and it was generally a trouble-ridden production.[183] Finally completed in October 1927, The Circus was released in January 1928 to a positive reception.[184] At the 1st Academy Awards, Chaplin was given a special trophy "For versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus".[185] Despite its success, he permanently associated the film with the stress of its production; Chaplin omitted The Circus from his autobiography, and struggled to work on it when he recorded the score in his later years.[186]

City Lights
I was determined to continue making silent films ... I was a pantomimist and in that medium I was unique and, without false modesty, a master.

— Charlie Chaplin, explaining his defiance against sound in the 1930s[187]
By the time The Circus was released, Hollywood had witnessed the introduction of sound films. Chaplin was cynical about this new medium and the technical shortcomings it presented, believing that "talkies" lacked the artistry of silent films.[188] He was also hesitant to change the formula that had brought him such success,[189] and feared that giving the Tramp a voice would limit his international appeal.[190] He, therefore, rejected the new Hollywood craze and began work on a new silent film. Chaplin was nonetheless anxious about this decision and remained so throughout the film's production.[190]


City Lights (1931) is regarded as one of Chaplin's finest works.
When filming began at the end of 1928, Chaplin had been working on the story for almost a year.[191] City Lights followed the Tramp's love for a blind flower girl (played by Virginia Cherrill) and his efforts to raise money for her sight-saving operation. It was a challenging production that lasted 21 months,[192] with Chaplin later confessing that he "had worked himself into a neurotic state of wanting perfection".[193] One advantage Chaplin found in sound technology was the opportunity to record a musical score for the film, which he composed himself.[193][194]

Chaplin finished editing City Lights in December 1930, by which time silent films were an anachronism.[195] A preview before an unsuspecting public audience was not a success,[196] but a showing for the press produced positive reviews. One journalist wrote, "Nobody in the world but Charlie Chaplin could have done it. He is the only person that has that peculiar something called 'audience appeal' in sufficient quality to defy the popular penchant for movies that talk."[197] Given its general release in January 1931, City Lights proved to be a popular and financial success, eventually grossing over $3 million.[v][198] The British Film Institute called it Chaplin's finest accomplishment, and the critic James Agee hails the closing scene as "the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies".[199][200] City Lights became Chaplin's personal favourite of his films and remained so throughout his life.[201]

Travels, Paulette Goddard, and Modern Times
City Lights had been a success, but Chaplin was unsure if he could make another picture without dialogue. He remained convinced that sound would not work in his films, but was also "obsessed by a depressing fear of being old-fashioned".[202] In this state of uncertainty, early in 1931, the comedian decided to take a holiday and ended up travelling for 16 months.[203][w] He spent months travelling Western Europe, including extended stays in France and Switzerland, and spontaneously decided to visit Japan.[205] The day after he arrived in Japan, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by ultra-nationalists in the May 15 Incident. The group's original plan had been to provoke a war with the United States by assassinating Chaplin at a welcome reception organised by the prime minister, but the plan had been foiled due to delayed public announcement of the event's date.[206]


Modern Times (1936), described by Jérôme Larcher as a "grim contemplation on the automatization of the individual"[207]
In his autobiography, Chaplin recalled that on his return to Los Angeles, "I was confused and without plan, restless and conscious of an extreme loneliness". He briefly considered retiring and moving to China.[208] Chaplin's loneliness was relieved when he met 21-year-old actress Paulette Goddard in July 1932, and the pair began a relationship.[209] He was not ready to commit to a film, however, and focused on writing a serial about his travels (published in Woman's Home Companion).[210] The trip had been a stimulating experience for Chaplin, including meetings with several prominent thinkers, and he became increasingly interested in world affairs.[211] The state of labour in America troubled him, and he feared that capitalism and machinery in the workplace would increase unemployment levels. It was these concerns that stimulated Chaplin to develop his new film.[212]

Modern Times was announced by Chaplin as "a satire on certain phases of our industrial life".[213] Featuring the Tramp and Goddard as they endure the Great Depression, it took ten and a half months to film.[214] Chaplin intended to use spoken dialogue but changed his mind during rehearsals. Like its predecessor, Modern Times employed sound effects but almost no speaking.[215] Chaplin's performance of a gibberish song did, however, give the Tramp a voice for the only time on film.[216] After recording the music, Chaplin released Modern Times in February 1936.[217] It was his first feature in 15 years to adopt political references and social realism,[218] a factor that attracted considerable press coverage despite Chaplin's attempts to downplay the issue.[219] The film earned less at the box-office than his previous features and received mixed reviews, as some viewers disliked the politicising.[220] Today, Modern Times is seen by the British Film Institute as one of Chaplin's "great features",[199] while David Robinson says it shows the filmmaker at "his unrivalled peak as a creator of visual comedy".[221]

Following the release of Modern Times, Chaplin left with Goddard for a trip to the Far East.[222] The couple had refused to comment on the nature of their relationship, and it was not known whether they were married or not.[223] Sometime later, Chaplin revealed that they married in Canton during this trip.[224] By 1938, the couple had drifted apart, as both focused heavily on their work, although Goddard was again his leading lady in his next feature film, The Great Dictator. She eventually divorced Chaplin in Mexico in 1942, citing incompatibility and separation for more than a year.[225]

1939–1952: controversies and fading popularity
The Great Dictator

Chaplin satirised Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940).
The 1940s saw Chaplin face a series of controversies, both in his work and in his personal life, which changed his fortunes and severely affected his popularity in the United States. The first of these was his growing boldness in expressing his political beliefs. Deeply disturbed by the surge of militaristic nationalism in 1930s world politics,[226] Chaplin found that he could not keep these issues out of his work.[227] Parallels between himself and Adolf Hitler had been widely noted: the pair were born four days apart, both had risen from poverty to world prominence, and Hitler wore the same moustache style as Chaplin. It was this physical resemblance that supplied the plot for Chaplin's next film, The Great Dictator, which directly satirised Hitler and attacked fascism.[228]

Chaplin spent two years developing the script[229] and began filming in September 1939, six days after Britain declared war on Germany.[230] He had submitted to using spoken dialogue, partly out of acceptance that he had no other choice, but also because he recognised it as a better method for delivering a political message.[231] Making a comedy about Hitler was seen as highly controversial, but Chaplin's financial independence allowed him to take the risk.[232] "I was determined to go ahead", he later wrote, "for Hitler must be laughed at."[233][x] Chaplin replaced the Tramp (while wearing similar attire) with "A Jewish Barber", a reference to the Nazi Party's belief that he was Jewish.[234][y] In a dual performance, he also played the dictator "Adenoid Hynkel", a parody of Hitler.[236]

The Great Dictator spent a year in production and was released in October 1940.[237] The film generated a vast amount of publicity, with a critic for The New York Times calling it "the most eagerly awaited picture of the year", and it was one of the biggest money-makers of the era.[238] The ending was unpopular, however, and generated controversy.[239] Chaplin concluded the film with a five-minute speech in which he abandoned his barber character, looked directly into the camera, and pleaded against war and fascism.[240] Charles J. Maland has identified this overt preaching as triggering a decline in Chaplin's popularity, and writes, "Henceforth, no movie fan would ever be able to separate the dimension of politics from [his] star image".[241] Nevertheless, both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt liked the film, which they saw at private screenings before its release. Roosevelt subsequently invited Chaplin to read the film's final speech over the radio during his January 1941 inauguration, with the speech becoming a "hit" of the celebration. Chaplin was often invited to other patriotic functions to read the speech to audiences during the years of the war.[242] The Great Dictator received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.[243]

Legal troubles and Oona O'Neill
In the mid-1940s, Chaplin was involved in a series of trials that occupied most of his time and significantly affected his public image.[244] The troubles stemmed from his affair with an aspiring actress named Joan Barry, with whom he was involved intermittently between June 1941 and the autumn of 1942.[245] Barry, who displayed obsessive behaviour and was twice arrested after they separated,[z] reappeared the following year and announced that she was pregnant with Chaplin's child. As Chaplin denied the claim, Barry filed a paternity suit against him.[246]

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, who had long been suspicious of Chaplin's political leanings, used the opportunity to generate negative publicity about him. As part of a smear campaign to damage Chaplin's image,[247] the FBI named him in four indictments related to the Barry case. Most serious of these was an alleged violation of the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of women across state boundaries for sexual purposes.[aa] Historian Otto Friedrich called this an "absurd prosecution" of an "ancient statute",[250] yet if Chaplin was found guilty, he faced 23 years in jail.[251] Three charges lacked sufficient evidence to proceed to court, but the Mann Act trial began on 21 March 1944.[252] Chaplin was acquitted two weeks later, on 4 April.[253][248] The case was frequently headline news, with Newsweek calling it the "biggest public relations scandal since the Fatty Arbuckle murder trial in 1921".[254]


Chaplin's fourth wife and widow, Oona
Barry's child, Carol Ann, was born in October 1943, and the paternity suit went to court in December 1944. After two arduous trials, in which the prosecuting lawyer accused him of "moral turpitude",[255] Chaplin was declared to be the father. Evidence from blood tests that indicated otherwise were not admissible,[ab] and the judge ordered Chaplin to pay child support until Carol Ann turned 21. Media coverage of the suit was influenced by the FBI, which fed information to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and Chaplin was portrayed in an overwhelmingly critical light.[257]

The controversy surrounding Chaplin increased when – two weeks after the paternity suit was filed – it was announced that he had married his newest protégée, 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the daughter of American playwright Eugene O'Neill.[258] Chaplin, then 54, had been introduced to her by a film agent seven months earlier.[ac] In his autobiography, Chaplin described meeting O'Neill as "the happiest event of my life", and claimed to have found "perfect love".[261] Chaplin's son, Charles III, reported that Oona "worshipped" his father.[262] The couple remained married until Chaplin's death, and had eight children over 18 years: Geraldine Leigh (b. July 1944), Michael John (b. March 1946), Josephine Hannah (b. March 1949), Victoria Agnes (b. May 1951), Eugene Anthony (b. August 1953), Jane Cecil (b. May 1957), Annette Emily (b. December 1959), and Christopher James (b. July 1962).[263]

Monsieur Verdoux and communist accusations

Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a dark comedy about a serial killer, marked a significant departure for Chaplin.
Chaplin claimed that the Barry trials had "crippled [his] creativeness", and it was some time before he began working again.[264] In April 1946, he finally began filming a project that had been in development since 1942.[265] Monsieur Verdoux was a black comedy, the story of a French bank clerk, Verdoux (Chaplin), who loses his job and begins marrying and murdering wealthy widows to support his family. Chaplin's inspiration for the project came from Orson Welles, who wanted him to star in a film about the French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru. Chaplin decided that the concept would "make a wonderful comedy",[266] and paid Welles $5,000[ad] for the idea.[267]

Chaplin again vocalised his political views in Monsieur Verdoux, criticising capitalism and arguing that the world encourages mass killing through wars and weapons of mass destruction.[268] Because of this, the film met with controversy when it was released in April 1947;[269] Chaplin was booed at the premiere, and there were calls for a boycott.[270] Monsieur Verdoux was the first Chaplin release that failed both critically and commercially in the United States.[271] It was more successful abroad,[272] and Chaplin's screenplay was nominated at the Academy Awards.[273] He was proud of the film, writing in his autobiography, "Monsieur Verdoux is the cleverest and most brilliant film I have yet made."[274]

The negative reaction to Monsieur Verdoux was largely the result of changes in Chaplin's public image.[275] Along with the damage of the Joan Barry scandal, he was publicly accused of being a communist.[276] His political activity had heightened during World War II, when he campaigned for the opening of a Second Front to help the Soviet Union and supported various Soviet–American friendship groups.[277] He was also friendly with several suspected communists, and attended functions given by Soviet diplomats in Los Angeles.[278] In the political climate of 1940s America, such activities meant Chaplin was considered, as Larcher writes, "dangerously progressive and amoral".[279] The FBI wanted him out of the country,[280] and launched an official investigation in early 1947.[281][ae]

Chaplin denied being a communist, instead calling himself a "peacemonger",[283] but felt the government's effort to suppress the ideology was an unacceptable infringement of civil liberties.[284] Unwilling to be quiet about the issue, he openly protested against the trials of Communist Party members and the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee.[285] Chaplin received a subpoena to appear before HUAC but was not called to testify.[286] As his activities were widely reported in the press, and Cold War fears grew, questions were raised over his failure to take American citizenship.[287] Calls were made for him to be deported; in one extreme and widely published example, Representative John E. Rankin, who helped establish HUAC, told Congress in June 1947: "[Chaplin's] very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America. [If he is deported] ... his loathsome pictures can be kept from before the eyes of the American youth. He should be deported and gotten rid of at once."[288]

In 2003, declassified British archives belonging to the British Foreign Office revealed that George Orwell secretly accused Chaplin of being a secret communist and a friend of the USSR.[289] Chaplin's name was one of 35 Orwell gave to the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret British Cold War propaganda department which worked closely with the CIA, according to a 1949 document known as Orwell's list.[289] Chaplin was not the only actor in America Orwell accused of being a secret communist. He also described American civil-rights leader and actor Paul Robeson as being "anti-white".[289]

Limelight and banning from the United States

Limelight (1952) was a serious and autobiographical film for Chaplin. His character, Calvero, is an ex-music hall star (described in this image as a "Tramp Comedian") forced to deal with his loss of popularity.
Although Chaplin remained politically active in the years following the failure of Monsieur Verdoux,[af] his next film, about a forgotten music hall comedian and a young ballerina in Edwardian London, was devoid of political themes. Limelight was heavily autobiographical, alluding not only to Chaplin's childhood and the lives of his parents, but also to his loss of popularity in the United States.[291] The cast included various members of his family, including his five oldest children and his half-brother, Wheeler Dryden.[292]

Filming began in November 1951, by which time Chaplin had spent three years working on the story.[293][ag] He aimed for a more serious tone than any of his previous films, regularly using the word "melancholy" when explaining his plans to his co-star Claire Bloom.[295] Limelight featured a cameo appearance from Buster Keaton, whom Chaplin cast as his stage partner in a pantomime scene. This marked the only time the comedians worked together in a feature film.[296]

Chaplin decided to hold the world premiere of Limelight in London, since it was the setting of the film.[297] As he left Los Angeles, he expressed a premonition that he would not be returning.[298] At New York, he boarded the RMS Queen Elizabeth with his family on 18 September 1952.[299] The next day, United States Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Chaplin's re-entry permit and stated that he would have to submit to an interview concerning his political views and moral behaviour to re-enter the US.[299] Although McGranery told the press that he had "a pretty good case against Chaplin", Maland has concluded, on the basis of the FBI files that were released in the 1980s, that the US government had no real evidence to prevent Chaplin's re-entry. It is likely that he would have gained entry if he had applied for it.[300] However, when Chaplin received a cablegram informing him of the news, he privately decided to cut his ties with the United States:

Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me. I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up of America's insults and moral pomposity ...[301]

Because all of his property remained in America, Chaplin refrained from saying anything negative about the incident to the press.[302] The scandal attracted vast attention,[303] but Chaplin and his film were warmly received in Europe.[299] In America, the hostility towards him continued, and, although it received some positive reviews, Limelight was subjected to a wide-scale boycott.[304] Reflecting on this, Maland writes that Chaplin's fall, from an "unprecedented" level of popularity, "may be the most dramatic in the history of stardom in America".[305]

1953–1977: European years
Move to Switzerland and A King in New York
I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.

— Charlie Chaplin's press release regarding his decision not to seek re‑entry to the US[306]
Chaplin did not attempt to return to the United States after his re-entry permit was revoked, and instead sent his wife to settle his affairs.[ah] The couple decided to settle in Switzerland and, in January 1953, the family moved into their permanent home: Manoir de Ban, a 14-hectare (35-acre) estate[308] overlooking Lake Geneva in Corsier-sur-Vevey.[309][ai] Chaplin put his Beverly Hills house and studio up for sale in March, and surrendered his re-entry permit in April. The next year, his wife renounced her US citizenship and became a British citizen.[311] Chaplin severed the last of his professional ties with the United States in 1955, when he sold the remainder of his stock in United Artists, which had been in financial difficulty since the early 1940s.[312]

Chaplin remained a controversial figure throughout the 1950s, especially after he was awarded the International Peace Prize by the communist-led World Peace Council, and after his meetings with Zhou Enlai and Nikita Khrushchev.[313] He began developing his first European film, A King in New York, in 1954.[314] Casting himself as an exiled king who seeks asylum in the United States, Chaplin included several of his recent experiences in the screenplay. His son, Michael, was cast as a boy whose parents are targeted by the FBI, while Chaplin's character faces accusations of communism.[315] The political satire parodied HUAC and attacked elements of 1950s culture – including consumerism, plastic surgery, and wide-screen cinema.[316] In a review, the playwright John Osborne called it Chaplin's "most bitter" and "most openly personal" film.[317] In a 1957 interview, when asked to clarify his political views, Chaplin stated "As for politics, I am an anarchist. I hate government and rules – and fetters ... People must be free."[318]

Chaplin founded a new production company, Attica, and used Shepperton Studios for the shooting.[314] Filming in England proved a difficult experience, as he was used to his own Hollywood studio and familiar crew, and no longer had limitless production time. According to Robinson, this had an effect on the quality of the film.[319] A King in New York was released in September 1957, and received mixed reviews.[320] Chaplin banned American journalists from its Paris première and decided not to release the film in the United States. This severely limited its revenue, although it achieved moderate commercial success in Europe.[321] A King in New York was not shown in America until 1973.[322][323]

Final works and renewed appreciation

Chaplin with his wife Oona and six of their children in 1961
In the last two decades of his career, Chaplin concentrated on re-editing and scoring his old films for re-release, along with securing their ownership and distribution rights.[324] In an interview he gave in 1959, the year of his 70th birthday, Chaplin stated that there was still "room for the Little Man in the atomic age".[325] The first of these re-releases was The Chaplin Revue (1959), which included new versions of A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms, and The Pilgrim.[325]

In America, the political atmosphere began to change and attention was once again directed to Chaplin's films instead of his views.[324] In July 1962, the New York Times published an editorial stating, "We do not believe the Republic would be in danger if yesterday's unforgotten little tramp were allowed to amble down the gangplank of a steamer or plane in an American port".[326] The same month, Chaplin was invested with the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the universities of Oxford and Durham.[327] In November 1963, the Plaza Theater in New York started a year-long series of Chaplin's films, including Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight, which gained excellent reviews from American critics.[328] September 1964 saw the release of Chaplin's memoir, My Autobiography, which he had been working on since 1957.[329] The 500-page book became a worldwide best-seller. It focused on his early years and personal life, and was criticised for lacking information on his film career.[330]

Shortly after the publication of his memoirs, Chaplin began work on A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), a romantic comedy based on a script he had written for Paulette Goddard in the 1930s.[331] Set on an ocean liner, it starred Marlon Brando as an American ambassador and Sophia Loren as a stowaway found in his cabin.[331] The film differed from Chaplin's earlier productions in several aspects. It was his first to use Technicolor and the widescreen format, while he concentrated on directing and appeared on-screen only in a cameo role as a seasick steward.[332] He also signed a deal with Universal Pictures and appointed his assistant, Jerome Epstein, as the producer.[333] Chaplin was paid $600,000 director's fee as well as a percentage of the gross receipts.[334] A Countess from Hong Kong premiered in January 1967, to unfavourable reviews, and was a box-office failure.[335][336] Chaplin was deeply hurt by the negative reaction to the film, which turned out to be his last.[335]

Chaplin had a series of minor strokes in the late 1960s, which marked the beginning of a slow decline in his health.[337] Despite the setbacks, he was soon writing a new film script, The Freak, a story of a winged girl found in South America, which he intended as a starring vehicle for his daughter, Victoria.[337] His fragile health prevented the project from being realised.[338] In the early 1970s, Chaplin concentrated on re-releasing his old films, including The Kid and The Circus.[339] In 1971, he was made a Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour at the Cannes Film Festival.[340] The following year, he was honoured with a special award by the Venice Film Festival.[341]


Chaplin (right) receiving his Honorary Academy Award from Jack Lemmon in 1972. It was the first time he had been to the United States in twenty years.
In 1972, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered Chaplin an Honorary Award, which Robinson sees as a sign that America "wanted to make amends". Chaplin was initially hesitant about accepting but decided to return to the US for the first time in 20 years.[340] The visit attracted a large amount of press coverage and, at the Academy Awards gala, he was given a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest in the academy's history.[342] Visibly emotional, Chaplin accepted his award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century".[343]

Although Chaplin still had plans for future film projects, by the mid-1970s he was very frail.[344] He experienced several further strokes, which made it difficult for him to communicate, and he had to use a wheelchair.[345][346] His final projects were compiling a pictorial autobiography, My Life in Pictures (1974) and scoring A Woman of Paris for re-release in 1976.[347] He also appeared in a documentary about his life, The Gentleman Tramp (1975), directed by Richard Patterson.[348] In the 1975 New Year Honours, Chaplin was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II,[347][349][aj] though he was too weak to kneel and received the honour in his wheelchair.[351]

Death

Chaplin's grave in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland
By October 1977, Chaplin's health had declined to the point that he needed constant care.[352] In the early morning of Christmas Day 1977, Chaplin died at home after having a stroke in his sleep.[346] He was 88 years old. The funeral, on 27 December, was a small and private Anglican ceremony, according to his wishes.[353][ak] Chaplin was interred in the Corsier-sur-Vevey cemetery.[352] Among the film industry's tributes, director René Clair wrote, "He was a monument of the cinema, of all countries and all times ... the most beautiful gift the cinema made to us."[355] Actor Bob Hope declared, "We were lucky to have lived in his time."[356] Chaplin left more than $100 million to his widow.[357]

On 1 March 1978, Chaplin's coffin was dug up and stolen from its grave by Roman Wardas and Gantcho Ganev. The body was held for ransom in an attempt to extort money from his widow, Oona Chaplin. The pair were caught in a large police operation in May, and Chaplin's coffin was found buried in a field in the nearby village of Noville. It was re-interred in the Corsier cemetery in a reinforced concrete vault.[358][359]

Filmmaking
Influences
Chaplin believed his first influence to be his mother, who entertained him as a child by sitting at the window and mimicking passers-by: "it was through watching her that I learned not only how to express emotions with my hands and face, but also how to observe and study people."[360] Chaplin's early years in music hall allowed him to see stage comedians at work; he also attended the Christmas pantomimes at Drury Lane, where he studied the art of clowning through performers like Dan Leno.[361] Chaplin's years with the Fred Karno company had a formative effect on him as an actor and filmmaker. Simon Louvish writes that the company was his "training ground",[362] and it was here that Chaplin learned to vary the pace of his comedy.[363] The concept of mixing pathos with slapstick was learnt from Karno,[al] who also used elements of absurdity that became familiar in Chaplin's gags.[363][364] From the film industry, Chaplin drew upon the work of the French comedian Max Linder, whose films he greatly admired.[365] In developing the Tramp costume and persona, he was likely inspired by the American vaudeville scene, where tramp characters were common.[366]

Method

A 1922 image of Charlie Chaplin Studios, where all of Chaplin's films between 1918 and 1952 were produced
Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion.[367] Little was known about his working process throughout his lifetime,[368] but research from film historians – particularly the findings of Kevin Brownlow and David Gill that were presented in the three-part documentary Unknown Chaplin (1983) – has since revealed his unique working method.[369]

Until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator (1940), Chaplin never shot from a completed script.[370] Many of his early films began with only a vague premise, for example "Charlie enters a health spa" or "Charlie works in a pawn shop".[371] He then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and "business" using them, almost always working the ideas out on film.[369] As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story.[372] From A Woman of Paris (1923) onward Chaplin began the filming process with a prepared plot,[373] but Robinson writes that every film up to Modern Times (1936) "went through many metamorphoses and permutations before the story took its final form".[374]

Producing films in this manner meant Chaplin took longer to complete his pictures than almost any other filmmaker at the time.[375] If he was out of ideas, he often took a break from the shoot, which could last for days, while keeping the studio ready for when inspiration returned.[376] Delaying the process further was Chaplin's rigorous perfectionism.[377] According to his friend Ivor Montagu, "nothing but perfection would be right" for the filmmaker.[378] Because he personally funded his films, Chaplin was at liberty to strive for this goal and shoot as many takes as he wished.[379] The number was often excessive, for instance 53 takes for every finished take in The Kid (1921).[380] For The Immigrant (1917), a 20-minute short, Chaplin shot 40,000 feet of film – enough for a feature-length.[381]

No other filmmaker ever so completely dominated every aspect of the work, did every job. If he could have done so, Chaplin would have played every role and (as his son Sydney humorously but perceptively observed) sewn every costume.

— Chaplin biographer David Robinson[367]
Describing his working method as "sheer perseverance to the point of madness",[382] Chaplin would be completely consumed by the production of a picture.[383] Robinson writes that even in Chaplin's later years, his work continued "to take precedence over everything and everyone else".[384] The combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism – which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense – often proved taxing for Chaplin who, in frustration, would lash out at his actors and crew.[385]

Chaplin exercised complete control over his pictures,[367] to the extent that he would act out the other roles for his cast, expecting them to imitate him exactly.[386] He personally edited all of his films, trawling through the large amounts of footage to create the exact picture he wanted.[387] As a result of his complete independence, he was identified by the film historian Andrew Sarris as one of the first auteur filmmakers.[388] Chaplin did receive help from his long-time cinematographer Roland Totheroh, brother Sydney Chaplin, and various assistant directors such as Harry Crocker and Charles Reisner.[389]

Style and themes
4:13
Collection of scenes from The Kid (1921) that demonstrate Chaplin's use of slapstick, pathos, and social commentary
While Chaplin's comedic style is broadly defined as slapstick,[390] it is considered restrained and intelligent,[391] with the film historian Philip Kemp describing his work as a mix of "deft, balletic physical comedy and thoughtful, situation-based gags".[392] Chaplin diverged from conventional slapstick by slowing the pace and exhausting each scene of its comic potential, with more focus on developing the viewer's relationship to the characters.[71][393] Unlike conventional slapstick comedies, Robinson states that the comic moments in Chaplin's films centre on the Tramp's attitude to the things happening to him: the humour does not come from the Tramp bumping into a tree, but from his lifting his hat to the tree in apology.[71] Dan Kamin writes that Chaplin's "quirky mannerisms" and "serious demeanour in the midst of slapstick action" are other key aspects of his comedy,[394] while the surreal transformation of objects and the employment of in-camera trickery are also common features.[395] His signature style consisted of gestural idiosyncrasies like askew derby hat, drooping shoulders, deflated chest and dangling arms and tilted back pelvis to enrich the comic persona of his 'tramp' character. His shabby but neat clothing and incessant grooming behaviour along with his geometrical walk and movement gave his onscreen characters a puppet-like quality.[396]

Chaplin's silent films typically follow the Tramp's efforts to survive in a hostile world.[397] The character lives in poverty and is frequently treated badly, but remains kind and upbeat;[398] defying his social position, he strives to be seen as a gentleman.[399] As Chaplin said in 1925, "The whole point of the Little Fellow is that no matter how down on his a** he is, no matter how well the jackals succeed in tearing him apart, he's still a man of dignity."[400] The Tramp defies authority figures[401] and "gives as good as he gets",[400] leading Robinson and Louvish to see him as a representative for the underprivileged – an "everyman turned heroic saviour".[402] Hansmeyer notes that several of Chaplin's films end with "the homeless and lonely Tramp [walking] optimistically ... into the sunset ... to continue his journey."[403]

It is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule ... ridicule, I suppose, is an attitude of defiance; we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature – or go insane.

— Charlie Chaplin, explaining why his comedies often make fun of tragic circumstances[404]
The infusion of pathos is a well-known aspect of Chaplin's work,[405] and Larcher notes his reputation for "[inducing] laughter and tears".[406] Sentimentality in his films comes from a variety of sources, with Louvish pinpointing "personal failure, society's strictures, economic disaster, and the elements".[407] Chaplin sometimes drew on tragic events when creating his films, as in the case of The Gold Rush (1925), which was inspired by the fate of the Donner Party.[404] Constance B. Kuriyama has identified serious underlying themes in the early comedies, such as greed (The Gold Rush) and loss (The Kid).[408] Chaplin also touched on controversial issues: immigration (The Immigrant, 1917); illegitimacy (The Kid, 1921); and drug use (Easy Street, 1917).[393] He often explored these topics ironically, making comedy out of suffering.[409]

Social commentary was a feature of Chaplin's films from early in his career, as he portrayed the underdog in a sympathetic light and highlighted the difficulties of the poor.[410] Later, as he developed a keen interest in economics and felt obliged to publicise his views,[411] Chaplin began incorporating overtly political messages into his films.[412] Modern Times (1936) depicted factory workers in dismal conditions, The Great Dictator (1940) parodied Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and ended in a speech against nationalism, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) criticised war and capitalism, and A King in New York (1957) attacked McCarthyism.[413]

Several of Chaplin's films incorporate autobiographical elements, and the psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that Chaplin "always plays only himself as he was in his dismal youth".[414] The Kid is thought to reflect Chaplin's childhood trauma of being sent into an orphanage,[414] the main characters in Limelight (1952) contain elements from the lives of his parents,[415] and A King in New York references Chaplin's experiences of being shunned by the United States.[416] Many of his sets, especially in street scenes, bear a strong similarity to Kennington, where he grew up. Stephen M. Weissman has argued that Chaplin's problematic relationship with his mentally ill mother was often reflected in his female characters and the Tramp's desire to save them.[414]

Regarding the structure of Chaplin's films, the scholar Gerald Mast sees them as consisting of sketches tied together by the same theme and setting, rather than having a tightly unified storyline.[417] Visually, his films are simple and economic,[418] with scenes portrayed as if set on a stage.[419] His approach to filming was described by the art director Eugène Lourié: "Chaplin did not think in 'artistic' images when he was shooting. He believed that action is the main thing. The camera is there to photograph the actors".[420] In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote, "Simplicity is best ... pompous effects slow up action, are boring and unpleasant ... The camera should not intrude."[421] This approach has prompted criticism, since the 1940s, for being "old fashioned",[422] while the film scholar Donald McCaffrey sees it as an indication that Chaplin never completely understood film as a medium.[423] Kamin, however, comments that Chaplin's comedic talent would not be enough to remain funny on screen if he did not have an "ability to conceive and direct scenes specifically for the film medium".[424]

Composing

Chaplin playing the cello in 1915
Chaplin developed a passion for music as a child and taught himself to play the piano, violin, and cello.[425] He considered the musical accompaniment of a film to be important,[184] and from A Woman of Paris onwards he took an increasing interest in this area.[426] With the advent of sound technology, Chaplin began using a synchronised orchestral soundtrack – composed by himself – for City Lights (1931). He thereafter composed the scores for all of his films, and from the late 1950s to his death, he scored all of his silent features and some of his short films.[427]

As Chaplin was not a trained musician, he could not read sheet music and needed the help of professional composers, such as David Raksin, Raymond Rasch and Eric James, when creating his scores. Musical directors were employed to oversee the recording process, such as Alfred Newman for City Lights.[428] Although some critics have claimed that credit for his film music should be given to the composers who worked with him, Raksin – who worked with Chaplin on Modern Times – stressed Chaplin's creative position and active participation in the composing process.[429] This process, which could take months, would start with Chaplin describing to the composer(s) exactly what he wanted and singing or playing tunes he had improvised on the piano.[429] These tunes were then developed further in a close collaboration among the composer(s) and Chaplin.[429] According to film historian Jeffrey Vance, "although he relied upon associates to arrange varied and complex instrumentation, the musical imperative is his, and not a note in a Chaplin musical score was placed there without his assent."[430]

Chaplin's compositions produced three popular songs. "Smile", composed originally for Modern Times (1936) and later set to lyrics by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, was a hit for Nat King Cole in 1954.[430] For Limelight, Chaplin composed "Terry's Theme", which was popularised by Jimmy Young as "Eternally" (1952).[431] Finally, "This Is My Song", performed by Petula Clark for A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), reached number one on the UK and other European charts.[432] Chaplin also received his only competitive Oscar for his composition work, as the Limelight theme won an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1973 following the film's re-release.[430][am]

Legacy

Chaplin as the Tramp, cinema's "most universal icon", in 1915[434]
In 1998, the film critic Andrew Sarris called Chaplin "arguably the single most important artist produced by the cinema, certainly its most extraordinary performer and probably still its most universal icon".[434] He is described by the British Film Institute as "a towering figure in world culture",[435] and was included in Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Important People of the 20th Century" for the "laughter [he brought] to millions" and because he "more or less invented global recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art".[436] In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin as the 10th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.[437]

The image of the Tramp has become a part of cultural history;[438] according to Simon Louvish, the character is recognisable to people who have never seen a Chaplin film, and in places where his films are never shown.[439] The critic Leonard Maltin has written of the "unique" and "indelible" nature of the Tramp, and argued that no other comedian matched his "worldwide impact".[440] Praising the character, Richard Schickel suggests that Chaplin's films with the Tramp contain the most "eloquent, richly comedic expressions of the human spirit" in movie history.[441] Memorabilia connected to the character still fetches large sums in auctions: in 2006 a bowler hat and a bamboo cane that were part of the Tramp's costume were bought for $140,000 in a Los Angeles auction.[442]

As a filmmaker, Chaplin is considered a pioneer and one of the most influential figures of the early twentieth century.[443] He is often credited as one of the medium's first artists.[444] Film historian Mark Cousins has written that Chaplin "changed not only the imagery of cinema, but also its sociology and grammar" and claims that Chaplin was as important to the development of comedy as a genre as D.W. Griffith was to drama.[445] He was the first to popularise feature-length comedy and to slow down the pace of action, adding pathos and subtlety to it.[446][447] Although his work is mostly classified as slapstick, Chaplin's drama A Woman of Paris (1923) was a major influence on Ernst Lubitsch's film The Marriage Circle (1924) and thus played a part in the development of "sophisticated comedy".[448] According to David Robinson, Chaplin's innovations were "rapidly assimilated to become part of the common practice of film craft".[449] Filmmakers who cited Chaplin as an influence include Federico Fellini (who called Chaplin "a sort of Adam, from whom we are all descended"),[356] Jacques Tati ("Without him I would never have made a film"),[356] René Clair ("He inspired practically every filmmaker"),[355] François Truffaut ("My religion is cinema. I believe in Charlie Chaplin…"),[450] Michael Powell,[451] Billy Wilder,[452] Vittorio De Sica,[453] and Richard Attenborough.[454] Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky praised Chaplin as "the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old."[455] Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray said about Chaplin "If there is any name which can be said to symbolize cinema – it is Charlie Chaplin… I am sure Chaplin's name will survive even if the cinema ceases to exist as a medium of artistic expression. Chaplin is truly immortal."[456] French auteur Jean Renoir's favourite filmmaker was Chaplin.[457][458]


A Chaplin impersonator and his audience in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1919
Chaplin also strongly influenced the work of later comedians. Marcel Marceau said he was inspired to become a mime artist after watching Chaplin,[447] while the actor Raj Kapoor based his screen persona on the Tramp.[452] Mark Cousins has also detected Chaplin's comedic style in the French character Monsieur Hulot and the Italian character Totò.[452] In other fields, Chaplin helped inspire the cartoon characters Felix the Cat[459] and Mickey Mouse,[460] and was an influence on the Dada art movement.[461] As one of the founding members of United Artists, Chaplin also had a role in the development of the film industry. Gerald Mast has written that although UA never became a major company like MGM or Paramount Pictures, the idea that directors could produce their own films was "years ahead of its time".[462]

In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Chaplin at No. 5 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time.[463] In the 21st century, several of Chaplin's films are still regarded as classics and among the greatest ever made. The 2012 Sight & Sound poll, which compiles "top ten" ballots from film critics and directors to determine each group's most acclaimed films, saw City Lights rank among the critics' top 50, Modern Times inside the top 100, and The Great Dictator and The Gold Rush placed in the top 250.[464] The top 100 films as voted on by directors included Modern Times at number 22, City Lights at number 30, and The Gold Rush at number 91.[465] Every one of Chaplin's features received a vote.[466] Chaplin was ranked at No. 35 on Empire magazine's "Top 40 Greatest Directors of All-Time" list in 2005.[467] In 2007, the American Film Institute named City Lights the 11th greatest American film of all time, while The Gold Rush and Modern Times again ranked in the top 100.[468] Books about Chaplin continue to be published regularly, and he is a popular subject for media scholars and film archivists.[469] Many of Chaplin's film have had a DVD and Blu-ray release.[470]

Chaplin's legacy is managed on behalf of his children by the Chaplin office, located in Paris. The office represents Association Chaplin, founded by some of his children "to protect the name, image and moral rights" to his body of work, Roy Export SAS, which owns the copyright to most of his films made after 1918, and Bubbles Incorporated S.A., which owns the copyrights to his image and name.[471] Their central archive is held at the archives of Montreux, Switzerland and scanned versions of its contents, including 83,630 images, 118 scripts, 976 manuscripts, 7,756 letters, and thousands of other documents, are available for research purposes at the Chaplin Research Centre at the Cineteca di Bologna.[472] The photographic archive, which includes approximately 10,000 photographs from Chaplin's life and career, is kept at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland.[473] The British Film Institute has also established the Charles Chaplin Research Foundation, and the first international Charles Chaplin Conference was held in London in July 2005.[474] Elements for many of Chaplin's films are held by the Academy Film Archive as part of the Roy Export Chaplin Collection.[475]

Commemoration and tributes
Chaplin's final home, Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, has been converted into a museum named "Chaplin's World". It opened on 17 April 2016 after fifteen years of development, and is described by Reuters as "an interactive museum showcasing the life and works of Charlie Chaplin".[476] On the 128th anniversary of his birth, a record-setting 662 people dressed as the Tramp in an event organised by the museum.[477] Previously, the Museum of the Moving Image in London held a permanent display on Chaplin, and hosted a dedicated exhibition to his life and career in 1988. The London Film Museum hosted an exhibition called Charlie Chaplin – The Great Londoner, from 2010 until 2013.[478]


Chaplin memorial plaque in St Paul's, Covent Garden, London
In London, a statue of Chaplin as the Tramp, sculpted by John Doubleday and unveiled in 1981, is located in Leicester Square.[479] The city also includes a road named after him in central London, "Charlie Chaplin Walk", which is the location of the BFI IMAX.[480] There are nine blue plaques memorialising Chaplin in London, Hampshire, and Yorkshire.[481] In Canning Town, East London, the Gandhi Chaplin Memorial Garden, opened by Chaplin's granddaughter Oona Chaplin in 2015, commemorates the meeting between Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi at a local house in 1931.[482] The Swiss town of Vevey named a park in his honour in 1980 and erected a statue there in 1982.[479] In 2011, two large murals depicting Chaplin on two 14-storey buildings were also unveiled in Vevey.[483] Chaplin has also been honoured by the Irish town of Waterville, where he spent several summers with his family in the 1960s. A statue was erected in 1998;[484] since 2011, the town has been host to the annual Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival, which was founded to celebrate Chaplin's legacy and to showcase new comic talent.[485]

In other tributes, a minor planet, 3623 Chaplin (discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina in 1981) is named after him.[486] Throughout the 1980s, the Tramp image was used by IBM to advertise their personal computers.[487] Chaplin's 100th birthday anniversary in 1989 was marked with several events around the world,[an] and on 15 April 2011, a day before his 122nd birthday, Google celebrated him with a special Google Doodle video on its global and other country-wide homepages.[491]


Statues of Chaplin around the world, located at (left to right) 1. Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia; 2. Chełmża, Poland; 3. Waterville, Ireland; 4. London, England; 5. Hyderabad, India; 6. Alassio, Italy; 7. Barcelona, Spain; 8. Vevey, Switzerland
Characterisations
Chaplin is the subject of a biographical film, Chaplin (1992) directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, with Geraldine Chaplin playing Hannah Chaplin.[492] He is also a character in the historical drama film The Cat's Meow (2001), played by Eddie Izzard, and in the made-for-television movie The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980), played by Clive Revill.[493][494] A television series about Chaplin's childhood, Young Charlie Chaplin, ran on PBS in 1989, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program.[495] The French film The Price of Fame (2014) is a fictionalised account of the robbery of Chaplin's grave.[496]

Chaplin's life has also been the subject of several stage productions. Two musicals, Little Tramp and Chaplin, were produced in the early 1990s. In 2006, Thomas Meehan and Christopher Curtis created another musical, Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, which was first performed at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2010.[497] It was adapted for Broadway two years later, re-titled Chaplin – A Musical.[498] Chaplin was portrayed by Robert McClure in both productions. In 2013, two plays about Chaplin premiered in Finland: Chaplin at the Svenska Teatern,[499] and Kulkuri (The Tramp) at the Tampere Workers' Theatre.[500]

Chaplin has also been characterised in literary fiction. He is the protagonist of Robert Coover's short story "Charlie in the House of Rue" (1980; reprinted in Coover's 1987 collection A Night at the Movies), and of Glen David Gold's Sunnyside (2009), a historical novel set in the First World War period.[501] A day in Chaplin's life in 1909 is dramatised in the chapter titled "Modern Times" in Alan Moore's Jerusalem (2016), a novel set in the author's home town of Northampton, England.[502]

Awards and recognition

Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6755 Hollywood Boulevard
Chaplin received many awards and honours, especially later in life. In the 1975 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).[503] He was also awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degrees by the University of Oxford and the University of Durham in 1962.[327] In 1965, he and Ingmar Bergman were joint winners of the Erasmus Prize[504] and, in 1971, he was appointed a Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government.[505]

From the film industry, Chaplin received a special Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1972,[506] and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lincoln Center Film Society the same year. The latter has since been presented annually to filmmakers as The Chaplin Award.[507] Chaplin was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1972, having been previously excluded because of his political beliefs.[508]

Chaplin received three Academy Awards: an Honorary Award for "versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing, and producing The Circus" in 1929,[185] a second Honorary Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century" in 1972,[343] and a Best Score award in 1973 for Limelight (shared with Ray Rasch and Larry Russell).[430] He was further nominated in the Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture (as producer) categories for The Great Dictator, and received another Best Original Screenplay nomination for Monsieur Verdoux.[509] In 1976, Chaplin was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).[510]

Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).[511]

Filmography
Main article: Charlie Chaplin filmography
Directed features:

The Kid (1921)
A Woman of Paris (1923)
The Gold Rush (1925)
The Circus (1928)
City Lights (1931)
Modern Times (1936)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Limelight (1952)
A King in New York (1957)
A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

Rosalind Rinker (1906-2002) Rosalind Beatrice Rinker was born April 2, 1906, in New Rockford, North Dakota. Converted at the age of 15, Rinker sailed to China at the age of 20 to work for the Oriental Mission Society (now OMS International). She served in China for 14 years as a secretary, teacher, and evangelist.

As the political climate in China got dangerous, Rinker came back to the U.S. and enrolled at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Upon graduating in 1945, she began working as a staff counselor for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. She worked three years in New York City and eleven years in the Pacific Northwest.

Rinker wrote extensively, which resulted in many speaking engagements. Many of these engagements were workshops based on her well-known book, Prayer: Conversing with God, which taught Christians about the art of conversational prayer.

In October 2006, Christianity Today Magazine published its list of “The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals” (over the past 50 years). Rinker’s Prayer: Conversing with God was voted number one on that list by CT‘s editors. The magazine had this to say: “In the 1950s, evangelical prayer was characterized by Elizabethan ‘wouldsts’ and ‘shouldsts’. Prayer meetings were often little more than a series of formal prayer speeches. Then Rosalind Rinker taught us something revolutionary: Prayer is a conversation with God. The idea took hold, sometimes too much (e.g., ‘Lord, we just really wanna…’). But today evangelicals assume that casual, colloquial, intimate prayer is the most authentic way to pray.”

Books by Rosalind Rinker Available at Kinlaw Library and/or Asbury College Archives:

The Years That Count: A Book Which Allows Young People to Think for Themselves (1958)
Prayer: Conversing with God (1959)
Who Is This Man?: Studies on the Life of Christ from Mark’s Gospel (1960)
On Being a Christian (1963)
Communicating Love Through Prayer (1966)
Praying Together (1968)
Conversational Prayer: A Handbook for Groups (1970)
How God Speaks to Us Today (1985)


Bio Written by Matt Kinnell

References:

“Rosalind Rinker”, by Joyce Beth Sanford
Prayer: Conversing with God, by Rosalind Rinker
Christianity Today Magazine, October 2006

David Livingstone
Scottish explorer and missionary

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David Livingstone.
David Livingstone
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Born: March 19, 1813 Scotland
Died: May 1, 1873 (aged 60) Zambia
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David Livingstone, (born March 19, 1813, Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland—died May 1, 1873, Chitambo [now in Zambia]), Scottish missionary and explorer who exercised a formative influence on Western attitudes toward Africa.

Early life
Blantyre: David Livingstone's birthplace
Blantyre: David Livingstone's birthplace
Livingstone grew up in a distinctively Scottish family environment of personal piety, poverty, hard work, zeal for education, and a sense of mission. His father’s family was from the island of Ulva, off the west coast of Scotland. His mother, a Lowlander, was descended from a family of Covenanters, a group of militant Presbyterians. Both were poor, and Livingstone was reared as one of seven children in a single room at the top of a tenement building for the workers of a cotton factory on the banks of the Clyde. At age 10 he had to help his family and was put to work in a cotton mill, and with part of his first week’s wages he bought a Latin grammar. Although he was brought up in the Calvinist faith of the established Scottish church, Livingstone, like his father, joined an independent Christian congregation of stricter discipline when he came to manhood. By this time he had acquired those characteristics of mind and body that were to fit him for his African career.

In 1834 an appeal by British and American churches for qualified medical missionaries in China made Livingstone determined to pursue that profession. To prepare himself, while continuing to work part-time in the mill, he studied Greek, theology, and medicine for two years in Glasgow. In 1838 he was accepted by the London Missionary Society. The first of the Opium Wars (1839–42) put an end to his dreams of going to China, but a meeting with Robert Moffat, the notable Scottish missionary in southern Africa, convinced him that Africa should be his sphere of service. On November 20, 1840, he was ordained as a missionary; he set sail for South Africa at the end of the year and arrived at Cape Town on March 14, 1841.

Initial explorations
Explorations of David Livingstone.
Explorations of David Livingstone.
For the next 15 years, Livingstone was constantly on the move into the African interior: strengthening his missionary determination; responding wholeheartedly to the delights of geographic discovery; clashing with the Boers and the Portuguese, whose treatment of the Africans he came to detest; and building for himself a remarkable reputation as a dedicated Christian, a courageous explorer, and a fervent antislavery advocate. Yet so impassioned was his commitment to Africa that his duties as husband and father were relegated to second place.

Mayflower. Plymouth. Photograph of the Mayflower II a full-scale reproduction of the Mayflower. The Mayflower II built in Devon, England, crossed the Atlantic in 1957 maintained by Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA.
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From Moffat’s mission at Kuruman on the Cape frontier, which Livingstone reached on July 31, 1841, he soon pushed his search for converts northward into untried country where the population was reputed to be more numerous. This suited his purpose of spreading the Gospel through “native agents.” By the summer of 1842, he had already gone farther north than any other European into the difficult Kalahari country and had familiarized himself with the local languages and cultures. His mettle was dramatically tested in 1844 when, during a journey to Mabotsa to establish a mission station, he was mauled by a lion. The resulting injury to his left arm was complicated by another accident, and he could never again support the barrel of a gun steadily with his left hand and thus was obliged to fire from his left shoulder and to take aim with his left eye.

Ngami, Lake
Ngami, Lake
On January 2, 1845, Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter, Mary, and she accompanied him on many of his journeys until her health and the family’s needs for security and education forced him to send her and their four children back to Britain in 1852. Before this first parting with his family, Livingstone had already achieved a small measure of fame as surveyor and scientist of a small expedition responsible for the first European sighting of Lake Ngami (August 1, 1849), for which he was awarded a gold medal and monetary prize by the British Royal Geographical Society. This was the beginning of his lifelong association with the society, which continued to encourage his ambitions as an explorer and to champion his interests in Britain.


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Opening the interior
Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River as seen from Zambia.
Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River as seen from Zambia.
With his family safely in Scotland, Livingstone was ready to push Christianity, commerce, and civilization—the trinity that he believed was destined to open up Africa—northward beyond the frontiers of South Africa and into the heart of the continent. In a famous statement in 1853 he made his purpose clear: “I shall open up a path into the interior, or perish.” On November 11, 1853, from Linyanti at the approaches to the Zambezi and in the midst of the Makololo peoples whom he considered eminently suitable for missionary work, Livingstone set out northwestward with little equipment and only a small party of Africans. His intention was to find a route to the Atlantic coast that would permit legitimate commerce to undercut the slave trade and that would also be more suitable for reaching the Makololo than the route leading through Boer territory. (In 1852 the Boers had destroyed his home at Kolobeng and attacked his African friends.) After an arduous journey that might have wrecked the constitution of a lesser man, Livingstone reached Luanda on the west coast on May 31, 1854. In order to take his Makololo followers back home and to carry out further explorations of the Zambezi, as soon as his health permitted—on September 20, 1854—he began the return journey. He reached Linyanti nearly a year later on September 11, 1855. Continuing eastward on November 3, Livingstone explored the Zambezi regions and reached Quelimane in Mozambique on May 20, 1856. His most spectacular visit on this last leg of his great journey was to the thundering, smokelike waters on the Zambezi at which he arrived on November 16, 1855, and with typical patriotism named Victoria Falls after his queen. Livingstone returned to England on December 9, 1856, a national hero. News from and about him during the previous three years had stirred the imagination of English-speaking peoples everywhere to an unprecedented degree.

David Livingstone
David Livingstone
Livingstone recorded his accomplishments modestly but effectively in his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), which quickly sold more than 70,000 copies and took its place in publishing history as well as in that of exploration and missionary endeavour. Honours flowed in upon him. His increased income meant that he was now able to provide adequately for his family, which had lived in near poverty since returning to Britain. He was also able to make himself independent of the London Missionary Society. After the completion of his book, Livingstone spent six months speaking all over the British Isles. In his Senate House address at Cambridge on December 4, 1857, he foresaw that he would be unable to complete his work in Africa, and he called on young university men to take up the task that he had begun. The publication of Dr. Livingstone’s Cambridge Lectures (1858) roused almost as much interest as his book, and out of his Cambridge visit came the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in 1860, on which Livingstone set high hopes during his second expedition to Africa.

The Zambezi expedition of David Livingstone
Livingstone, David
Livingstone, David
This time Livingstone was away from Britain from March 12, 1858, to July 23, 1864. He went out originally as British consul at Quelimane:

for the Eastern Coast and independent districts of the interior, and commander of an expedition for exploring eastern and central Africa, for the promotion of Commerce and Civilization with a view to the extinction of the slave-trade.

This expedition was infinitely better organized than Livingstone’s previous solitary journeys. It had a paddle steamer, impressive stores, 10 Africans, and 6 Europeans (including his brother Charles and an Edinburgh doctor, John Kirk). That Livingstone’s by then legendary leadership had its limitations was soon revealed. Quarrels broke out among the Europeans, and some were dismissed. Disillusionment with Livingstone set in among members both of his own expedition and of the abortive Universities’ Mission that followed it to central Africa. It proved impossible to navigate the Zambezi by ship, and Livingstone’s two attempts to find a route along the Ruvuma River bypassing Portuguese territory to districts around Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) also proved impractical. Livingstone and his party had been the first Britons to reach (September 17, 1859) these districts that held out promise of colonization. To add to Livingstone’s troubles, his wife, who had been determined to accompany him back to Africa, died at Shupanga on the Zambezi on April 27, 1862. His eldest son, Robert, who was to have joined his father in 1863, never reached him and went instead to the United States, where he died fighting for the North in the Civil War on December 5, 1864.

The British government recalled the expedition in 1863, when it was clear that Livingstone’s optimism about economic and political developments in the Zambezi regions was premature. Livingstone, however, showed something of his old fire when he took his little vessel, the Lady Nyassa, with a small untrained crew and little fuel, on a hazardous voyage of 2,500 miles (4,000 km) across the Indian Ocean and left it for sale in Bombay (now Mumbai). Furthermore, within the next three decades the Zambezi expedition proved to be anything but a disaster. It had amassed a valuable body of scientific knowledge, and the association of the Lake Nyasa regions with Livingstone’s name and the prospects for colonization that he envisaged there were important factors for the creation in 1893 of the British Central Africa Protectorate, which in 1907 became Nyasaland and in 1966 the republic of Malawi.

Back in Britain in the summer of 1864, Livingstone, with his brother Charles, wrote his second book, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries (1865). Livingstone was advised at this time to have a surgical operation for the hemorrhoids that had troubled him since his first great African journey. He refused, and it is probable that severe bleeding hemorrhoids were the cause of his death at the end of his third and greatest African journey.

Quest for the Nile
Livingstone returned to Africa, after another short visit to Bombay, on January 28, 1866, with support from private and public bodies and the status of a British consul at large. His aim, as usual, was the extension of the Gospel and the abolition of the slave trade on the East African coast, but a new object was the exploration of the central African watershed and the possibility of finding the ultimate sources of the Nile. This time Livingstone went without European subordinates and took only African and Asian followers. Trouble, however, once more broke out among his staff, and Livingstone, prematurely aged from the hardships of his previous expeditions, found it difficult to cope. Striking out from Mikindani on the east coast, he was compelled by Ngoni raids to give up his original intention of avoiding Portuguese territory and reaching the country around Lake Tanganyika by passing north of Lake Nyasa. The expedition was forced south, and in September some of Livingstone’s followers deserted him. To avoid punishment when they returned to Zanzibar, they concocted the story that Livingstone had been killed by the Ngoni. Although it was proved the following year that he was alive, a touch of drama was added to the reports circulating abroad about his expedition.

Zambia: Lake Bangweulu
Zambia: Lake Bangweulu
Drama mounted as Livingstone moved north again from the south end of Lake Nyasa. Early in 1867 a deserter carried off his medical chest, but Livingstone pressed on into central Africa. He was the first European to reach Lake Mweru (November 8, 1867) and Lake Bangweulu (July 18, 1868). Assisted by Arab traders, Livingstone reached Lake Tanganyika in February 1869. Despite illness, he went on and arrived on March 29, 1871, at his ultimate northwesterly point, Nyangwe, on the Lualaba leading into the Congo River. This was farther west than any European had penetrated.

Henry Morton Stanley, raising his hat at left, meeting David Livingstone at Ujiji (now in Tanzania), 1871.
Henry Morton Stanley, raising his hat at left, meeting David Livingstone at Ujiji (now in Tanzania), 1871.
When he returned to Ujiji on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika on October 23, 1871, Livingstone was a sick and failing man. Search parties had been sent to look for him because he had not been heard from in several years, and Henry M. Stanley, a correspondent of the New York Herald, found the explorer, greeting him with the now famous quote, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” (The exact date of the encounter is unclear, as the two men wrote different dates in their journals; Livingstone’s journal suggests that the meeting took place sometime in October 24–28, 1871, while Stanley reported November 10.) Stanley brought much-needed food and medicine, and Livingstone soon recovered. He joined Stanley in exploring the northern reaches of Lake Tanganyika and then accompanied him to Unyanyembe, 200 miles (320 km) eastward. But he refused all Stanley’s pleas to leave Africa with him, and on March 14, 1872, Stanley departed for England to add, with journalistic fervour, to the saga of David Livingstone.

Livingstone moved south again, obsessed by his quest for the Nile sources and his desire for the destruction of the slave trade, but his illness overcame him. In May 1873, at Chitambo in what is now northern Zambia, Livingstone’s African servants found him dead, kneeling by his bedside as if in prayer. In order to embalm Livingstone’s body, they removed his heart and viscera and buried them in African soil. In a difficult journey of nine months, they carried his body to the coast. It was taken to England and, in a great Victorian funeral, was buried in Westminster Abbey on April 18, 1874. The Last Journals of David Livingstone were published in the same year.

Influence of David Livingstone
Livingstone
Livingstone
In his 30 years of travel and Christian missionary work in southern, central, and eastern Africa—often in places where no European had previously ventured—Livingstone may well have influenced Western attitudes toward Africa more than any other individual before him. His discoveries—geographic, technical, medical, and social—provided a complex body of knowledge that is still being explored. In spite of his paternalism and Victorian prejudices, Livingstone believed wholeheartedly in the African’s ability to advance into the modern world. He was, in this sense, a forerunner not only of European imperialism in Africa but also of African nationalism.

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Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr.

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Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr.
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr.jpg
Born March 17, 1911
Plainfield, New Jersey
Died February 18, 2001 (aged 89)
Charleston, South Carolina
Education University of Michigan
Parent(s) Frank Bunker Gilbreth
Lillian Evelyn Moller
Relatives Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, (sister)
Robert Moller Gilbreth, (brother)
Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. (March 17, 1911 – February 18, 2001) was an American journalist and author. He co-authored, with his sister Ernestine, the autobiographical bestsellers Cheaper by the Dozen (1948; which was adapted as a 1950 film) and Belles on Their Toes (1950; which was adapted as a 1952 film). Under his own name, he wrote multiple additional books, such as Time Out for Happiness and Ancestors of the Dozen, and a long-running newspaper column.

Early life and education
Gilbreth was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the fifth child (and first boy) of the 12 children born to efficiency experts Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, and grew up in the family home in Montclair, New Jersey, where he attended Montclair High School.[1][2] Gilbreth graduated from the University of Michigan, where he served as editor of the college newspaper, The Michigan Daily.

Career
During World War II, he served as a naval officer in the South Pacific, participated in three invasions in the Admiralty Islands and the Philippines, and was decorated with two air medals and a bronze star.

In 1947, he relocated to Charleston, South Carolina, where he returned to The Post and Courier (the city's main daily newspaper), as an editorial writer and columnist;[3] under the nom de plume of Ashley Cooper, he wrote a long-running column, Doing the Charleston,[3] which ran until 1993.[2] He retired from The Post and Courier in 2001, as assistant publisher and vice president.[4]

He and his older sister, Ernestine, wrote the bestselling books Cheaper by the Dozen (1948; adapted as a 1950 film) and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1950; adapted as a 1952 film), which were largely autobiographical. On his own, he also wrote about fatherhood in the post-World War II "baby boom", and about family members.

Personal life
Gilbreth was married twice, to Elizabeth Cauthen (until her death in 1954), with whom he had a daughter (Elizabeth G. Cantler), and then to Mary Pringle Manigault (1955-2001), with whom he had two children (Dr. Edward M. Gilbreth and Rebecca G. Herres).[3]

Death
Gilbreth died in 2001, aged 89, in Charleston, South Carolina, where he had lived for the preceding half century.[5] At the time, he also maintained the family home in Nantucket, Massachusetts, which his father had bought in 1921.[2][6]

Publications
Gilbreth's published books include:[2]

Cheaper by the Dozen (1st ed.). Thomas Y. Crowell. 1948. ASIN B001ACNZYK. (with Ernestine Gilbreth Carey)
I'm a Lucky Guy, 1951
Belles on Their Toes (1st ed.). Thomas Y. Crowell. 1950. ASIN B0007F54BI. (with Ernestine Gilbreth Carey)
Held's Angels, with John Held (illustrator), 1952
Innside Nantucket, 1954
Of Whales and Women, 1956
How To Be a Father, 1958
Loblolly, 1959[7]
He's My Boy, 1962
Time Out for Happiness, 1970
Ashley Cooper's Doing the Charleston, 1993[8]

For the author of Cheaper by the Dozen and his son, see Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr.
Frank Bunker Gilbreth
Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr 1868-1924.jpg
Frank Bunker Gilbreth
Born July 7, 1868
Fairfield, Maine, U.S.
Died June 14, 1924 (aged 55)
Montclair, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupations
Builder
Industrial engineer
Management consultant
Known for Time-motion study
Spouse Lillian Moller ​(m. 1904)​
Children 12, including Ernestine, Frank Jr., and Robert
Frank Bunker Gilbreth (July 7, 1868 – June 14, 1924) was an American engineer, consultant, and author known as an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of time and motion study, and is perhaps best known as the father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen.

Both he and his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth were industrial engineers and efficiency experts who contributed to the study of industrial engineering in fields such as motion study and human factors.

Biography
Early life and education
Gilbreth was born in Fairfield, Maine, on July 7, 1868. He was the third child and only son of John Hiram Gilbreth and Martha Bunker Gilbreth. His mother had been a schoolteacher. His father owned a hardware store and was a stockbreeder. When Gilbreth was three and a half years old his father died suddenly from pneumonia.[1]: 75 

After his father's death his mother moved the family to Andover, Massachusetts, to find better schools for her children. The substantial estate left by her husband was managed by her husband's family. By the fall of 1878 the money had been lost or stolen and Martha Gilbreth had to find a way to make a living. She moved the family to Boston where good public schools existed. She opened a boarding house since a schoolteacher's salary would not support the family.[1]: 76–77 

Gilbreth was not a good student. He attended Rice Grammar School, but his mother was concerned enough to teach him at home for a year. He attended Boston's English High School, and his grades improved when he became interested in his science and math classes. He took the entrance examinations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but wanted his mother to be able to give up the boarding house. He decided to go to work rather than to college.[1]: 77–78 

Whidden Construction Company
Renton Whidden, Gilbreth's old Sunday School teacher, hired him for his building company. He was to start as a laborer, learn the various building trades, and work his way up in the firm. In July 1885 at age 17 he started as a bricklayer's helper.[1]: 78  As he learned bricklaying he noticed the many variations in the bricklayers' methods and efficiency. This began his interest in finding "the one best way" of executing any task. He quickly learned every part of building work and contracting, and advanced rapidly. He took night school classes to learn mechanical drawing.[2] After five years he was a superintendent, which allowed his mother to give up her boarding house.[1]: 79 

Using his observations of workmen laying brick, Gilbreth developed a multilevel scaffold that kept the bricks within easy reach of the bricklayer.[3] He began patenting his innovations with this "Vertical Scaffold", then developed and patented the "Gilbreth Waterproof Cellar".[1]: 79  He made innovations in concrete construction,[3]as well. After ten years, at age 27, he was the chief superintendent.[4] When after ten years the Whiddens were unwilling to make him a partner, he resigned to start his own company.[1]: 79 

Career as general contractor
Gilbreth founded his own commercial contracting firm on April 1, 1895. For the next fifteen years, "Frank B. Gilbreth, General Contractor" and two subsidiary companies would build some 100 large-scale projects across the United States (along with two in Canada), including full scale factories, paper mills, canals, dams and powerhouses. The largest such project was a complete paper mill constructed in Canton, North Carolina in 1907-8, a $2 million facility consisting of more than thirty full-scale industrial buildings.[5][6]

One Gilbreth construction project was the Simmons Hardware Company's Sioux City Warehouse. The architects had specified that hundreds of 20-foot (6.1 m) hardened concrete piles (based on Gibreth's own patents for design and installation) were to be driven in to allow the soft ground to take the weight of two million bricks required to construct the building. The "Time and Motion" approach could be applied to the bricklaying and the transportation. The building was also required to support efficient input and output of deliveries via its own railroad switching facilities.[7]

Gilbreth was also an inventor with thirteen patents, beginning in his years with the Whiddens, and had patent and product management offices in London and Berlin. Other than two projects in Ontario, Canada, and a third that was abandoned after initial construction, he did not build any projects outside the United States.

Career as efficiency expert
Gilbreth changed careers to efficiency and management engineering with the close of his construction companies in about 1912. He eventually became an occasional lecturer at Purdue University, which houses his papers.

Gilbreth discovered his vocation as efficiency expert while still a young construction worker, when he sought ways to make bricklaying faster and easier. During the later part of his contracting career, this grew into a collaboration with his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Together they studied the work habits of manufacturing and clerical employees in all sorts of industries to find ways to increase output and make their jobs easier. He and Lillian founded a management consulting firm, Frank B. Gilbreth, Inc. (renamed Gilbreth, Inc. after his death), focusing on such endeavors.

Gilbreth was also an adamant champion of the "cost-plus-a-fixed sum" contract in his building contracting business. He described this method in an article in Industrial Magazine in 1907, comparing it to fixed price and guaranteed maximum price methods. Many of his prolific advertisements throughout the era boast of and recommend this as "their special method of construction."

Family
Gilbreth married Lillian Evelyn Moller on October 19, 1904, in Oakland, California; they had 12 children. Their names were Anne Moller Gilbreth Barney (1905–1987), Mary Elizabeth Gilbreth (1906–1912), Ernestine Moller Gilbreth Carey (1908–2006), Martha Bunker Gilbreth Tallman (1909–1968), Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. (1911–2001), William Moller Gilbreth (1912–1990), Lillian Gilbreth Johnson (1914–2001), Frederick Moller Gilbreth (1916–2015), Daniel Bunker Gilbreth (1917–2006), John Moller Gilbreth (1919–2002), Robert Moller Gilbreth (1920–2007), and Jane Moller Gilbreth Heppes (1922–2006); there was also a stillborn daughter (1915) who was not named.

Death
Gilbreth died of a heart attack on June 14, 1924, at age 55. He was at the Lackawanna Terminal in Montclair, New Jersey, talking with his wife by telephone. Lillian outlived him by 48 years.[8][9]

Work
Motion studies
Main articles: Time and motion study and Gilbreth, Inc.

Gilbreth in about 1916
15:24
Original Films Of Frank B. Gilbreth (Part I)
Gilbreth served as a major in the U.S. Army during World War I. His assignment was to find quicker and more efficient means of assembling and disassembling small arms. However, he was stricken with rheumatic fever and then pneumonia just weeks into his service, and spent four months in recovery before being discharged. The heart damage from this episode would contribute to his premature death six years later. According to Claude George (1968), Gilbreth reduced all motions of the hand into some combination of 17 basic motions. These included grasp, transport loaded, and hold. Gilbreth named the motions therbligs — "Gilbreth" spelled backwards with letters th transposed to their original order. He used a motion picture camera that was calibrated in fractions of minutes to time the smallest of motions in workers.

Their emphasis on the "one best way" and therbligs predates the development of continuous quality improvement (CQI),[10] and the late 20th century understanding that repeated motions can lead to workers experiencing repetitive motion injuries.

Gilbreth was the first to propose the position of "caddy" (Gilbreth's term) to a surgeon, who handed surgical instruments to the surgeon as needed. Gilbreth also devised the standard techniques used by armies around the world to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness.

Scientific management
The work of the Gilbreths is often associated with that of Frederick Winslow Taylor, yet there was a substantial philosophical difference between the Gilbreths and Taylor. The symbol of Taylorism was the stopwatch; Taylor was concerned primarily with reducing process times. The Gilbreths, in contrast, sought to make processes more efficient by reducing the motions involved. They saw their approach as more concerned with workers' welfare than Taylorism, which workers themselves often perceived as concerned mainly with profit. This difference led to a personal rift between Taylor and the Gilbreths which, after Taylor's death, turned into a feud between the Gilbreths and Taylor's followers. After Frank's death, Lillian Gilbreth took steps to heal the rift;[11] however, some friction remains over questions of history and intellectual property.[12]

Fatigue study
In conducting their Motion Study method to work, they found that the key to improving work efficiency was in reducing unnecessary motions. Not only were some motions unnecessary, but they caused employee fatigue. Their efforts to reduce fatigue included reduced motions, tool redesign, parts placement, and bench and seating height, for which they began to develop workplace standards. The Gilbreths' work broke ground for contemporary understanding of ergonomics.[13]

Legacy
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth often used their large family (and Frank himself) as guinea pigs in experiments. Their family exploits are lovingly detailed in the 1948 book Cheaper by the Dozen, written by son Frank Jr. and daughter Ernestine (Ernestine Gilbreth Carey). The book inspired a film and the title inspired a second and third unrelated film of the same name. The first, in 1950, starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy.[14] The second, in 2003, starred comedians Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt,[15] and bears no resemblance to the book, except that it features a family with twelve children, and the wife's maiden name is Gilbreth. The third, in 2022, also bears no relation to the book and starred Gabrielle Union and Zach Braff.[16] A 1952 sequel titled Belles on Their Toes chronicled the adventures of the Gilbreth family after Frank's 1924 death. A later biography of his parents, Time Out For Happiness, was written by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. alone in 1962.[14]

The award for lifetime achievement by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) is named in Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's honor.[17]

His maxim of “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it” is still commonly used today, although it is often misattributed to Bill Gates, who merely repeated the quote but did not originate it.[18]

Selected publications
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth wrote in collaboration, but Lillian's name was not included on the title page until after she earned her PhD.[1]: 165 

— (1909). Bricklaying System. The M.C. Clark Publishing Co. ISBN 978-1402161131. LCCN 74014805. OCLC 190641233. OL 32552248M – via Internet Archive.
— (1911). Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman. Introduction by Robert Thurston Kent. D. Van Nostrand Company – via Internet Archive.
— (1912). Primer of Scientific Management. D. Van Nostrand Company – via Internet Archive.
—; Gilbreth, Lillian Moller (1916). Fatigue Study, the Elimination of Humanity's Greatest Unnecessary Waste: A First Step in Motion Study. Sturgis & Walton Company – via Internet Archive.
—; Gilbreth, L. M. (1917). Applied Motion Study: A Collection of Papers on the Efficient Method to Industrial Preparedness. Sturgis & Walton Company – via Internet Archive.

When David Holbrook Hatch was born on 4 September 1910, in Clawson, Teton, Idaho, United States, his father, Perry Orin Hatch, was 33 and his mother, Lucy Alice Holbrook, was 30. He married Priscilla England on 2 October 1934, in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States. They were the parents of at least 1 daughter. He lived in Felt, Teton, Idaho, United States for about 5 years. He died on 16 August 2010, in Blackfoot, Bingham, Idaho, United States, at the age of 99, and was buried in Grove City Cemetery, Blackfoot, Bingham, Idaho, United States.

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Perry Orin Hatch
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1877–1940
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Lucy Alice Holbrook
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1879–1917
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Lawrence Perry Hatch
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1899–1978
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Cecil Joseph Hatch
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1900–1965
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Elden Holbrook Hatch
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1903–1981
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Mark Holbrook Hatch
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1905–1998
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David Holbrook Hatch
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David Holbrook Hatch
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Priscilla England
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1912–2001
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George Williams (philanthropist)

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Sir George Williams
Sir George Williams by John Collier.jpg
Born 11 October 1821
Dulverton, Somerset, England
Died 6 November 1905 (aged 84)
London, England
Resting place St Paul's Cathedral, England
Nationality English
Occupation(s) Philanthropist, businessman
Organisation YMCA
Known for Founding YMCA
Spouse Helen Jane Maunder Hitchcock
​
​(m. 1853)​
Children 7
Parents
Amos Williams (father)
Ann 'Betty' Vickery (mother)
Signature
Sir George Williams Signature.png

A plaque for George Williams 13-16 Russell Square, London.

Family vault of Sir George Williams at Highgate Cemetery (west)
Sir George Williams (11 October 1821 – 6 November 1905) was an English philanthropist, businessman and founder of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).[1] The oldest and largest youth charity in the world, its aim is to support young people to belong, contribute and thrive in their communities.[2]

Williams was knighted by Queen Victoria in her 1894 Birthday Honours. He died in 1905 and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

He is the great-great-great-grandfather of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.[3]

Early life and education
Williams was born on a farm in Dulverton, Somerset, England, as the youngest of seven surviving sons of Amos Williams and Elizabeth Vickery. He was baptised into the Church of England.[4] He came from several generations of farmers in Somerset, and attended Gloyn's in Tiverton, Devon until he was age 13, when he began working on his family farm.[5] As a young man, he described himself as a "careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow". For unknown reasons, his family sent him to Bridgwater to be an apprentice at Henry William Holmes' draper shop. In 1837, Williams converted from Anglicanism to Congregationalism. He went to the Zion Congregational Church and became an involved member.[6]

Works
In 1841, he went to London and worked as an apprentice at Hitchcock & Rogers, a draper's shop and became a member of the King's Weigh House Congregational Church, using his time for evangelisation. After three years, in 1844, Williams was promoted to department manager. He married the owner George Hitchcock's daughter, Helen Jane Maunder Hitchcock in 1853, and was taken into partnership at the drapers, renaming to George Hitchcock, Williams & Co. When Hitchcock died in 1863, Williams became the sole owner of the firm.

Hitchcock and Williams had 7 children, his son Albert, a solicitor would go on to marry the granddaughter of Thomas Cook. Williams's nephew John Williams married the only child of his lifelong London friend, Matthew Hodder, founder of British publisher Hodder & Stoughton.[5]

In 1868, Williams offered to contribute towards the election expenses of Charles Reed (British politician).[5] When Williams died on 6 November 1905 at the Victoria and Albert Hotel, Torquay, England, he was president for societies including Band of Hope, London City Mission, Railway Mission and YWCA.

His funeral took place at St Paul's Cathedral[7] on 14 November 1905, with 2,600 people in attendance[5] and is commemorated with a bust atop his family vault at Highgate Cemetery (west).

Founding of YMCA
Appalled by the terrible conditions in London for young working men, on 6 June 1844 Williams gathered a group of 11 fellow drapers in the living quarters of Hitchcock & Rogers to create a place that would not tempt young men into sin.[8] They were James Smith (from W D Owen drapers), Christopher. W Smith, Norton Smith, Edward Valentine, Edward Beaumont, M Glasson, William Creese, Francis John Crockett, E Rogers, John Harvey and John C Symons.

The name, Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), was settled on at the suggestion of Christopher W Smith, a fellow draper at Hitchcock & Rogers. It promoted Muscular Christianity. One of the earliest converts and contributors to the new association was George's employer, George Hitchcock, who was the organisation's first treasurer.

Honours
Williams was knighted by Queen Victoria in her 1894 Birthday Honours, YMCA's silver jubilee year, as well as receiving the Freedom of the City of London.[5] After his death in 1905, he was commemorated by a stained-glass window in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Sir George Williams is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Sir George Williams University in Montreal, which was founded by YMCA, was named in commemoration of Williams; it was later merged into Concordia University,[9] with its former campus retaining the name Sir George Williams Campus. George Williams College, located on the shores of Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, USA, is a satellite of Aurora University, and is also named after Williams.

Williams House in YMCA of Hong Kong Christian College, which was founded by YMCA of Hong Kong, was named in commemoration of Williams.[10]