Vance’s Buster Keaton Remembered (2001) and Harold Lloyd [BKL My 15 02] are the finest photographic books ever published on their subjects, so it is not altogether surprising that his treatment of the greatest silent film comedian is a stunner. Still, that it contains so many superbly reproduced images from Chaplin’s earliest years as an English touring-company member; so many documentary photos of Chaplin at work, at play, and in the public eye; and such wonderful rediscoveries as the great photojournalist W. Eugene Smith’s expressionistic shots of Chaplin directing and acting in his greatest sound film, Limelight, as well as the expected wealth of movie production and publicity stills, is vastly impressive.

In late 1914, Charlie Chaplin’s name first began appearing on marquees. By the end of the following year, moviegoers couldn’t get enough of him and his iconic persona, the Little Tramp. Perpetually outfitted with baggy pants, a limp cane, and a dusty bowler hat, the character became so beloved that Chaplin was mobbed by fans, journalists, and critics at every turn.

Wife of the Life of the Party is the memoir of the late Lita Grey Chaplin (1908-1995), the only one of Chaplin’s wives to have written an account of life with Chaplin. Her memoir is an extraordinary Hollywood story of someone who was there from the very beginning. Born Lillita Louise MacMurray in Hollywood, she began her career at twelve with the Charlie Chaplin Film Company, when Chaplin selected her to appear with him as the flirting angel in “The Kid”.

Richard Schickel has assembled, organized, edited, and provided an Introduction to 33 essays about one of the greatest film actors, Charles Chaplin (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977). Their authors’ diverse perspectives on his life and career provide an excellent supplement to Stephen Weissman’s recently published Chaplin: A Life in Film as well as to Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story (as told to Rose Wilder Lane) and Chaplin’s My Autobiography as well as David Robinson’s Chaplin: His Life and Art.

Psychiatrist Weissman offers a fascinating, analytic portrait of a most complex man, who from 1915 to the mid-1930s was the most famous person in the world. Chaplin’s near-Dickensian childhood was one of squalid poverty in London. Both parents were in show business, and alcoholism and syphilis blighted their lives. At seven, Charlie was committed to the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. According to Weissman, Chaplin recreated his painful childhood over and over in his movies, especially through the adventures of Chaplin’s archetypal film persona, the Little Tramp, the comical and lovable Everyman who never gives up.

Born into a theatrical family, Chaplin’s father died of drink while his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from bouts of insanity, Chaplin embarked on a film-making career which won him immeasurable success, as well as intense controversy. His extraordinary autobiography was first published in 1964 and was written almost entirely without reference to documentation – simply as an astonishing feat of memory by a 75 year old man. It is an incomparably vivid reconstruction of a poor London childhood, the music hall and then his prodigious life in the movies.