Charlie Chaplin was onstage at a young age. According to History, he was 5 years old when his mother, a music-hall artist, found herself unable to sing during a performance, so he was shoved into the spotlight to cover for her. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and his early life was a series of struggles.
He didn’t forget those who helped him the most, though, and according to a recently unearthed interview, that included the aunt of one Effie Wisdom. The Guardian reports that Wisdom was 92 when she gave her 1983 interview, which was only discovered by the British Film Institute about four decades later. In it, she recalled how her aunt had become something of a foster mother to the destitute Chaplin — and when he started going down the wrong path, she corrected him.
“He used to go up Lambeth Walk and pinch,” Wisdom recalled. “He’d come home with four eggs one day in his pocket. He came home with a pair of boots one day he’d nicked.” While he couldn’t exactly return the eggs, Chaplin was made to return the boots amid reminders about where the life of a thief was bound to end up: intersecting with law enforcement.
Wisdom’s aunt promised Chaplin’s mother that she would care for Chaplin and his brother, and did. She fed and clothed them, and Chaplin never forgot it. Once he hit it big, Wisdom remembered: “He used to send my aunt so much money because she used to look after him.”
