Doesn’t seem to have been picked up all that widely in Eurotrash circles, but Sydney Chaplin died on the 3rd March.
Here’s the obituary from the Guardian:
Sydney Chaplin, who has died aged 82, achieved brief Broadway fame, an on-and-off film career, and a vivid private life, without being too much awed or overshadowed by being the son of the great Charlie Chaplin. He was the second son of Chaplin’s tempestuous second marriage to the teenage actor Lita Grey. By the time of Sydney’s birth, relations between his parents had totally broken down. In November 1926 Lita removed Sydney and his older brother, Charles, from the Chaplin home.
The 1927 divorce settlement granted her custody, but the boys were mostly brought up by their still-youthful maternal grandmother, while Lita attempted to make a career as a singer. With their grandmother and her boyfriend, they spent most of one year in and around Nice, where they learned French. Lita insisted on calling her son “Tommy” on account of her distaste for Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother Sydney, after whom he had been officially named.
In 1932 Charlie Chaplin brought a successful action to prevent Lita putting the children into films. A positive result of this conflict was that Chaplin was stirred to re-establish contact with his sons, who from this time spent most weekends with him, incidentally falling deeply in love with his new live-in companion, Paulette Goddard. As they grew older they became still closer to their father, and, in the 1940s, after his separation from Paulette, were favourite chaperones when Chaplin Sr dined out with female stars who were nearer their age than his.
Sydney was variously educated at the Black-Foxe military institute, Lawrenceville preparatory school, New Jersey, and North Hollywood high; and did war service in the 65th Infantry Division. In 1946, he joined his friend Jerry Epstein, the actor Kathleen Freeman and students from UCLA in forming the Circle Theatre. The first performances were given in a friend’s drawing-room, but later a corner grocery store was converted into a theatre.
Props were borrowed from the Chaplin studios, and, nostalgic for his own theatre days, Charlie Chaplin himself took a hand with direction, or would happily sit beside Epstein in the box office. The theatre became Hollywood’s first centre of avant-garde drama; William Saroyan gave them the play Sam Ego’s House; and the Circle became a meeting place for Hollywood’s brighter people, including Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor and Edward G Robinson.
Sydney made his screen debut in 1952 as the young romantic lead, opposite Claire Bloom, in his father’s film Limelight, but effective though he was, he found few subsequent rewarding roles. The best of them were Treneh in Howard Hawks’s Land of the Pharaohs and the leading role in a good British thriller, Ken Hughes’s Confession, both in 1955.
Tall and handsome, he was constantly in and out of love. On Land of the Pharaohs he was romantically involved with the female star, Joan Collins; and later the same year, working on Gregory Ratoff’s Abdulla the Great, he embarked on a much-publicised affair with the film’s star, Kay Kendall.
He had supporting roles in George Marshall’s western Pillars of the Sky (1956) and Jack Sher’s Four Girls in Town (1957), but had greater success on Broadway. His first starring role was opposite Judy Holliday in Bells are Ringing (1956), which ran for 924 performances and earned him a Tony award as best supporting or featured actor in a musical. In George Axelrod’s comedy Goodbye Charlie (1959) his co-star was Lauren Bacall. This was followed by another musical, Subways are for Sleeping (1961), with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. Then came a less fortunate play, In the Counting House (1962), which closed after four performances. His best and last Broadway role was in Funny Girl (1964), for which he was again Tony-nominated. His eventual departure from the cast and disillusion with the stage appear to have been the result of deteriorating relations with his Tony-winning co-star Barbra Streisand.
Twice he came to Britain to star in independent low-budget comedies directed by his Circle Theatre collaborator Epstein: Follow That Man (1961) and The Adding Machine (1969), from the Elmer Rice play that had been the Circle’s first notable success. Also in England, he played alongside Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren in his father’s last film, the romantic comedy A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).
Otherwise, between 1966 and 1971 he worked in France and Italy, accepting secondary roles in films now best forgotten. Back in Hollywood he appeared in a horror film, So Evil, My Sister (1974), and thereafter made occasional appearances in TV dramas. His last big-screen appearance was in a horror comedy, Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977), though he continued to make appearances in documentaries about his father until 2003, when he was seen in Richard Schickel’s Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin.
After 40, however, it seemed as if he had determined not to allow work to intrude upon his insatiable zest for social life. He loved good living, rich friends and golf. He could imbibe startling quantities of whisky without any apparent ill effect. If anything it only brightened his gifts as raconteur, with an endless stock of anecdotes, quite liberated from pedantic concern with fact. This endeared him to his stepmother, the former Oona O’Neill (only six months his senior), and the eight children she had given Chaplin; and he remained a favourite guest at their home in Vevey, Switzerland, until Oona’s death in 1991, 14 years after her husband. For some years he ran a stylish restaurant – Chaplin’s – in Palm Springs, which suited his gregarious inclinations, but was probably more popular than profitable: Sydney’s talent for spending money never pleased his financially prudent father, who had too many memories of early penury.
An early marriage to Susan Magnes ended in divorce, and in 1960 he married the French dancer and actress Noëlle Adam, by whom he had one son. In 1985 this marriage also ended in divorce. In 1998, after a 14-year engagement, he married Margaret Beebe, who was with him when he died at his home in Palm Springs.
• Sydney Earl Chaplin, actor, born 30 March 1926; died 3 March 2009
Well, I’m not at all sure about the ‘secondary roles in films now best forgotten’ comment about his European career, as anyone with any interest in the field will be able to point to several above average films he appeared in: playing the cop in Michele Lupo’s excellent Troppo per vivere… poco per morire, a smooth villain in Gianfranco Parolini’s Sartana, in Riccardo Freda’s Double Face & Henri Verneuil’s The Sicilian Clan. All of which were of just as much – if not more – interest than just about any of his non-European films. But then again, it’s almost obligatory for newspaper journalists to pass comment on things they haven’t actually bothered to see, isn’t it…