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Stephen Weissman, M.D., is a psychoanalyst and psychobiographer who brings both his areas of expertise to the creation of a compelling and enthralling account of the historical and emotional life of Charlie Chaplin, the Little Tramp of silent movie fame. The data was drawn from Weissman's extensive knowledge of Chaplin's films, existing biographies, and research of historical records and documents. The account he has assembled reads like a Dickens novel with a Hollywood ending and a psychoanalytic formulation. It is so well done that Chaplin's daughter Geraldine Chaplin provided a preface after meeting with Weissman to discuss some of the more controversial assertions he made and accepting them as valid.
Charlie Chaplin was the middle of three sons born to a music hall actress by three different men. Hannah Hill (stage name Lilly Harley) met Charlie's father Charlie Chaplin, Sr. when they were both adolescents touring in a theatrical company. They quickly became a couple and lived together, but two years later, Hannah ran off to South Africa with Sydney Hawkes, a man she believed to be a wealthy businessman but in all likelihood was a con artist who may have forced her into prostitution where she contracted syphilis. She returned to London pregnant and immediately reconnected with Charlie Chaplin, Sr., who took her back and treated her child as his own. Charlie was conceived several years later, but not long after his birth, Hannah became involved with another man, Leo Dryden, who was a fairly successful