As the world became captivated by moving pictures in the early 20th century, there was one name on everyone’s lips: Chaplin. In 1913, at the dawn of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin was in the right place, at the right time – and audiences couldn’t get enough of the young British comic.
Starring in films such as City Lights, Modern Times and The Great Dictator, Chaplin not only defined the silent film era with his world-famous character, the Tramp, but made a successful transition to talkies, unlike many of his erstwhile peers (see the plot of Singin’ in the Rain).
He fathered 11 children, including eight with his fourth and final wife, Oona O’Neill. Now Charlie’s fifth child, Michael J Chaplin, who has spent his life sporadically as an actor, screenwriter and farmer, has written a medieval romance novel, A Fallen God. Born in California in 1946, Michael is the eldest son of Oona, daughter of Irish-American playwright Eugene O’Neill. Oona met 53-year-old Charlie when she was 18 and they soon married.
I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I wouldn’t be interested in writing an autobiography
— Michael Chaplin
On a video call from his sometime residence in Málaga, Michael, now in his late 70s, is dressed in a loose beige jacket, a tight blue scarf and a brown fedora. A short white beard completes his brooding author persona.
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“I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I wouldn’t be interested in writing an autobiography,” Michael says, laughing. He’s soft-spoken and isn’t in a rush to get to the end of sentences. Then with some melancholy in his voice: “My life doesn’t merit that.”
It is a rather unremarkable paint-by-numbers tale of true love and its casualties, but an enjoyable one nonetheless with a propulsive plot. The story feels like a bingo card for medieval adventures, featuring duels, jousting tournaments, royal politics, crusades, sieges and Machiavellian intrigue in the Vatican.
There are, however, some notable twists in his retelling of the story, namely: a distinct lack of any love potions that saturated the songs troubadours once sang about the star-crossed lovers; and Isolt isn’t even Irish. In his version, Tristan is Irish and Isolt is a Cypriot named by an Irish nun.
I was hopeless at school. I would sit down and go off dreaming ... It became a big problem because he thought I wasn’t trying hard enough
— Michael Chaplin
Michael spent 20 years working on the novel, which was inspired by a conversation he had with Gottfried Wagner, the great-grandson of the famous German composer. “It’s just that I’m quite slow and I had to learn the art of writing a novel,” he says, and adds that about a decade ago he replaced his typewriter with a computer, slowing him down a little. “I used to try and write novels in odd moments of my life. I would start and I would dry up very quickly. I had a friend who said to me, ‘You dry up because you’re not able to put yourself on the page.’ And that was a great help for me.”
Pursuit of art in the shadow of one of the most famous screen artists of the 20th century must be daunting. “I never felt in his shadow because I could never put myself in his shadow!” Michael says with a chuckle. “That was more of a problem. I had a closer relationship to my mother, who is of Irish decent. My father had very close relationships with his daughters. With me it was difficult because education for him was everything. He hadn’t had any formal education, and he said, ‘The only defence against this world, is to have an education – defence against poverty.’ And I was hopeless at school. I would sit down and go off dreaming ... It became a big problem because he thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. He’d say to me, ‘As long as you try, I don’t [mind]. But you’re not trying.’” Michael imitates his father in an almost stern voice, with a sense of urgency.
Following a high-profile paternity suit, a succession of marriages to younger women and accusations in the press of communist sympathies, public opinion turned against Charlie in the 1940s. At the age of six, soon after Michael and his family got on a boat bound for England, his father received a telegram. In 1952, at the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, Charlie had his US visa revoked (despite living stateside for more the 40 years, he never became a citizen, preferring to style himself as a citizen of the world).
“They were in great turmoil, my parents,” he says. “My mother had to fly back and get all his money out of the country.”
The family soon settled in Switzerland where Michael had “a happy childhood” in Manoir de Ban, a huge white house overlooking Lake Geneva that has since been turned into a museum commemorating Charlie’s life.
The family frequently holidayed in Waterville, Co Kerry. “My mother loved to go back there. My father, he liked it but he always said he’s, ‘A man of the Mediterranean and not the Atlantic.’” But it grew on Charlie after a time, he said.
“It was wonderful.” He went fishing every day with his father and a gillie named Mark Moriarty, with whom Michael recalls having a “great relationship. It’s one thing I could do better than [my father].”
Michael, once described by Charlie’s biographer, Simon Louvish, as “the family rebel”, moved out abruptly at age 16.
“I left home because I couldn’t face going back to school. I told my parents I was off on a camping holiday with friends ... but I went straight to London. There was a girl I was in love with [who] I met in Ireland.” Though his father was disappointed, he says, Michael had made it to “swinging London” and began to read books he never encountered in the classroom: Hemingway, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, etc. “It was liberating,” he says.
While A Fallen God is his first novel to be published, it isn’t technically his first book. I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass On My Father’s Lawn, published in 1966, was a teenage memoir ghostwritten on Michael’s behalf. It’s a difficult book to get your hands on, and I mention I haven’t read it. “Good,” he says. “I didn’t really write it.” At the time in London when he was married to a previous wife with two sons, he became “really broke” and signed on for the dole — quite a scandal in the press at the time, he says. He decided to make some money off his father’s fame and tell his story. “At that point, I had no sense of responsibility. I was the bad boy. And was doing everything my friends were doing at that moment: smoking dope [and] going out all night.”
In the book’s acknowledgements, Michael thanks a wide range of people from his life, including his late mother ‘for passing on to me her love of literature’. His father, perhaps understandably, appears absent from this list
Eventually, the pot-filled haze of the 1960s faded into memory and, after his father died in 1977, he moved to southwest France where he lived with his family on a farm. Much of A Fallen God is inspired by his time there. “Living down there was so beautiful,” he says. “A bit like parts of Ireland like Co Kerry. It seemed like a forgotten place ... But also I felt a real melancholy hanging over the place, which I liked — and that was a real help to me.”
It was while living there that he learned of the Cathars in the 13th century and their brutal persecution by the Catholic Church, who saw them as heretics. This episode provides much of the political backdrop to his novel.
In the book’s acknowledgements, Michael thanks a wide range of people from his life, including his late mother “for passing on to me her love of literature”. His father, perhaps understandably, appears absent from this list. I ask why.
“I’ve never thought about that. I love my father. We had a very happy childhood and he was a wonderful man.” Michael pauses for a moment, appearing uncomfortable with the question, and looks away from the camera to his son-in-law, Ashim Bhalla, in the room who whispers to him: “You’ve made a documentary.” Michael picks up this train of thought, mentioning a film that his family has made about Charlie’s gypsy heritage. “I’ve always loved gypsy music, and he too — so that’s the one connection. But there was nothing about writing the book that I needed to thank him for. It was my mother who made me interested in novels.”
I tell him I hope it won’t be another 20 years before he publishes his next book. He laughs politely: “I don’t know if I’ve got 20 years left to do it.”
