Chaplin's home in Switzerland to be museum
Richard Carnahan
Charlie Chaplin's last home in Switzerland will be turned into a
permanent place of pilgrimage for fans of the actor who immortalized
the "Little Tramp," one of his sons said Monday.
The mansion at Corsier-sur-Vevey by the shores of Lake Geneva was
chosen over Los Angeles and London as the site of the first museum
dedicated to the screen legend, said Michael Chaplin.
The museum has been a decade in the planning and will be finished
within two years, he said. It will feature objects from Chaplin's life
and displays chronicling his rise from the music halls of his native
London to stardom in Hollywood's silent movie era and beyond.
"He was very happy here because he had a family life," Michael Chaplin
said of the vintner's chateau where his father lived for more than 20
years and raised eight children until his death in 1977.
The actor, whose film classics include "The Immigrant," "City Lights"
and "The Great Dictator," was barred from the United States in 1952
during the peak of McCarthyism over suspicions he harbored communist
sympathies. He returned briefly two decades later to receive an
honorary Academy Award for his life work.