Was Charlie Chaplin Jewish?
The jewishness of Charlie Chaplin is something that comes up as a subject for debate on several occasions and per a request from a subscriber; I thought it is something that would be good clear up.
Accusations (and quite strong belief) that Chaplin was born a jew – or part jewish – were current in his lifetime as the ‘Jewish Telegraphic Agency’ themselves quoted Albert Einstein as suggesting on 12th March 1931 when they wrote how:
‘Professor Einstein, who spent several days with Charlie Chaplin at his home in Hollywood, told the J.T.A. here before he sailed for New York on his return to Europe that Chaplin is a half-Jew, his grandfather having been a Jew.
The legend that Charlie Chaplin was a Jew was widely held at one time. Israel Zangwill accepted him as such in some of his essays on the Jewish question. The French antisemitic novelists, the brothers Thardieu, have published a book on Chaplin based on the belief that he is a Jew, describing his mannerisms as typical expressions of Jewish characteristics, and making much of his habit of always keeping his hat on.
There does not seem to be any ground, however, for the belief, and nothing is known in London, where he was born and spent his early life, which would bear it out. Mr. Hannen Sweffer, the well known London theatrical and film critic, said in one of his recent books that when a report in an American paper was brought to Chaplin’s notice, in which he was spoken of as a Jew, and he was asked to deny the assertion, he replied that there were many Jews in America who might like to think he was. Konrad Bercovici, the well known Jewish novelist of gypsy life, who is a friend of Chaplin’s, describing a visit he paid to Chaplin’s home in Hollywood recently, revealed that Chaplin’s is a gypsy on his mother’s side. When I was born, he quotes him as saying, all my mother’s relatives arrived in caravan waggons from all over. It was a complete give-away for mother, who had kept her origin secret.
A few years ago, when Jackie Coogan, the boy film actor, who played with Chaplin in “The Kid”, and who is of Irish Catholic origin, was visiting Vienna the antisemites there similarly organised demonstrations against him, in the mistaken belief that he was Jewish.’ (1)
Indeed, Chaplin’s origins were the subject of significant speculation and investigation in his own lifetime because of his links to left-wing – and specifically communist – politics in both the United States and Great Britain which Jill Lawless described in a 2012 article in the ‘Times of Israel’:
‘Although the entertainer is celebrated as one of London’s most famous sons, newly declassified files reveal that Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service found no records to back up Chaplin’s claim that he was born in the city on April 16, 1889.
Uncertainty about Chaplin’s origins linger to this day — a mystery Chaplin himself may have helped to nurture.
The previously secret file, released Friday by Britain’s National Archives, shows that MI5 investigated the silent film star in the 1950s at the request of US authorities, who had long suspected him of communist sympathies. MI5 historian Christopher Andrew said the FBI’s red-hating chief, J. Edgar Hoover, privately denounced Chaplin as “one of Hollywood’s parlor Bolsheviks.”
To the spies’ surprise, there was no record of the performer’s birth.
“It would seem that Chaplin was either not born in this country or that his name at birth was other than those mentioned,” MI5 concluded.
Chaplin’s life is a Dickensian rags-to-riches story. Raised in London in a family of music-hall entertainers, he moved to the United States in 1910 and became one of Hollywood’s first megastars with his shabby, bowler-hatted everyman persona, the Little Tramp.
But British spies could find no trace of him in the birth records at London’s Somerset House under Chaplin, Thornstein or Harley, his mother’s stage name.
The spies also checked French records amid rumors that he might have been born in the town of Fontainebleau — but that, too, drew a blank.
Elsewhere in the file, agents speculate that Chaplin might have Russian roots. There was an allegation that he had once spoken of “going back to Russia.”
“This might refer to paying another visit, or it might denote his origin as Russia,” noted senior MI5 officer W.M.T. Magan, speculating that Chaplin might have come from a Jewish family fleeing pogroms at the end of the 19th century.
Film historian Matthew Sweet said rumors about Chaplin’s roots had been swirling well before the 1950s. The French claim stemmed from a fan magazine article from the 1910s that suggested Chaplin was born while his performer mother was on tour. The idea he was Jewish appears to have been an assumption by some fans that came to be widely believed. Chaplin did little to correct the record.’
‘In a locked drawer of a bureau left behind after Chaplin’s death, his family found a letter from a man in England named Jack Hill. It claimed Chaplin had been born “in a caravan (that) belonged to the Gypsy Queen, who was my auntie” in a Roma community near Birmingham in central England.
Chaplin had alluded to Roma roots in his autobiography, writing that “Grandma was half-Gypsy. This fact was the skeleton in our family cupboard.”
Sweet said the letter was not proof of Chaplin’s birthplace but evidence he cultivated the mystery of his origins.
“It is very widely accepted that he was born in London in 1889, but the piece of paper just isn’t there,” Sweet said.
“That letter is not proof that he was born in a Gypsy encampment. It is proof that he was terrifically attracted to the idea of that story, enough to keep the letter and lock it away and think of it as something important.
“The idea of the mystery of his own birth is something that he quite enjoyed, I think.”’ (2)
The truth is while we don’t have a birth certificate for Chaplin – this isn’t at all unsurprising despite Lawless’ attempt to make it seem unusual – (3) we do have evidence of where he spent his childhood and we do know who his parents were (and we have records of them).
The reason we don’t have a formal birth certificate is because Chaplin’s parents were iterant music hall performers living a semi-nomadic existence and also because Chaplin’s mother Hannah Hill (better known by her stage name of ‘Lily Harley’) (4) was somewhat… shall we say… loose and flighty and while she married Chaplin’s father Charles Chaplin Sr. in 1885; she already had a child (Chaplin’s elder step-brother Sydney Hill) (5) that Chaplin’s father formally adopted and then in 1892 – a year after Chaplin’s father had separated from her (and was never to formally divorce her) – (6) she gave birth to another love child (Chaplin’s younger step-brother George Wheeler Dryden Jr.) from her lover and fellow music hall entertainer George Wheeler Dryden Sr. (better known by his stage name of ‘Leo Dryden’). (7)
Indeed, we know that Chaplin’s father Charles Chaplin Sr. was the son of a butcher, (8) while his mother Hannah Hill was the daughter of a shoemaker. (9) We also know that Chaplin believed he was born on 16th April 1889 in East Street, Walworth in South London. (10)
Chaplin (11) and his son Charles Chaplin Jr. (12) both explicitly endorse this parentage and while there is some evidence – hinted at albeit dismissively by Lawless - that one of Chaplin’s grandmothers (probably his maternal) was of Romani origin. (13) There is absolutely no evidence that Chaplin had any jewish ancestry at all nor that he was born with the name ‘Israel Thornstein’.
So where on earth did this belief come from?
Well simply put Chaplin’s origins were decidedly British as well as working class (so weren’t well documented which he likely knew) and so he simply used the lure of ‘mystery’ around his origins to suggest he was of jewish origin in order to succeed in the jewish-dominated film industry in Hollywood of the 1920s to 1940s.
If Chaplin had revealed that he was the destitute son of a drunk (his father) and a crazed syphilitic (his mother) – if we are to use Weissman’s 2008 characterization of them anyway – then he likely wouldn’t have gotten his chance in – nor the career he had – in Hollywood.
References
(1) https://www.jta.org/archive/einstein-says-chaplin-is-half-jewish-his-grandfather-was-a-jew
(2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/charlie-chaplin-or-israel-thornstein-a-mystery-even-in-modern-times/
(3) For example: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=744682.0; https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/early-civil-registration/
(4) David Robinson, 1986, ‘Chaplin: His Life and Art’, 1st Edition, Paladin: London, pp. 3-7
(5) Ibid., pp. 3-4; 19
(6) Ibid., pp. 13-15
(7) Ibid., p. 15
(8) Stephen Weissman, 2008, ‘Chaplin: A Life’, 1st Edition, Arcade: New York, p. 10
(9) Robinson, Op. Cit., p. 3
(10) Ibid.
(11) Charles Chaplin, 1964, ‘My Autobiography’, 1st Edition, Simon & Schuster: New York, p. 19
(12) Charles Chaplin, Jr., 1960, ‘My Father, Charlie Chaplin’, 1st Edition, Random House: New York, pp. 7–8
(13) Ian Hancock, 2002, ‘We are the Romani People’, 1st Edition, University of Hertfordshire Press: Hatfield, p. 129