How Charlie Chaplin Nearly Retired to China

It’s well known that Charlie Chaplin spent one day (or a little less than a day, more an evening and night) in Shanghai in 1936 (if you don’t know about it the story is told here rather well). What I think is less well known is that he once considered chucking in the moving pictures business and retiring to China. He didn’t obviously, but he apparently, according to himself did consider it.

Chaplin tells the story in his autobiography entitled “My Autobiography”. In 1931 Chaplin had completed City Lights and decided to sail from America to London for the English premiere. He then opted to travel through Europe and head to Asia via the Suez Canal stopping at India, Singapore, Bali and a few other places to get to Japan, which had long fascinated him (indeed had done so since he read one of Lafcadio Hearn’s books about Japan). After Japan, Chaplin sailed back to America on a ship that did dock at Shanghai, but Chaplin chose not to leave the ship. He eventually got back to Hollywood.

Chaplin was not happy in Hollywood in 1932 describing himself as “…confused and without plan, restless and conscious of an extreme loneliness.” He was single and found California a “graveyard“. He was living in a big house, a star, but dining alone each night. He found Hollywood Boulevard and its stores depressing and drab, in the grip of the Great Depression. He writes: “As I walked the boulevards I began to deliberate whether I should retire, sell everything and go to China.”

Chaplin was heartened by Roosevelt’s victory in the 1932 presidential election but still thought he might just up and head East away from it all – “I still toyed with idea of pulling up stakes and settling in China. In Hong Kong I could live well and forget motion pictures, instead of languishing here in Hollywood, rotting on the vine.”

But he never did. What changed his mind? Basically Paulette Goddard – he met her, fell in love and decided to get back to work. So he never did retire to China though he did visit in 1936 briefly with Goddard in tow. She got him back to work and back into Hollywood though they separated after The Great Dictator.

Chaplin and Goddard – if not for her Charlie might have ended up a Hongkonger or a Shanghailander