Reviews

Published on the centenary of Charlie Chaplin's birth, this bountiful book is likely to be greeted as a landmark in film reminiscences. Epstein celebrates the late master of mime with fond recollections of the years he worked with (on Limelight , A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong ) and was a close friend of Chaplin. Three hundred photographs are included, taken by Chaplin's wife Oona, Epstein and others, all revealing aspects of the inimitable actor from his boyhood to his death in 1977. The memoir visits the London slums where Chaplin grew up with abjectly poor parents and traces the international star in America through the decades when the ``little tramp'' created silent and talking movies. Chaplin's suspected Communist sympathies and scandals about his personal life are covered, but only cursorily in a book that emphasizes his enduring legacy. (Apr.)