Customer Reviews

I couldn't smoke the grass on my father's lawn

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If you have read either his own words, or that of Charles Chaplin Jr, then this book will give no further information on the great comedian and film maker. But then, Charlie Chaplin, while a major figure in history, is not the focus of the book, but rather, the motivating force of a narcissistic boy trying to start his adult actor career in the motion picture business during the mid-60's. While it was written with the "modern' jargon of the hippie era, it is nothing more than a self-delusional journey into Michael's own feeling of self-importance. The only reason I've kept my copy is because it only rounds out the other Charlie Chaplin biographies I have. It is no wonder this book has not been reprinted and that Michael has disappeared from the public eye.

I wouldn't recommend throwing away more than a dollar on this book (I spent a quarter for my copy)

Reading Michael Chaplin's "tell-all" book about life as Chaplin's son is like opening a time capsule from the mid-Sixties. The language is archaic, steeped in the jargon of its time, and amusing to an inhabitant of a time frame of almost fourty years ahead. The boy reveals nothing startling about his famous father, indeed I suspect he accepted a book contract because it would bring an easy buck. Having read two other Bios from people on the fringe of the Chaplin universe (Lita Gray Chaplin's as well as Charlie Jr's), this is an interesting addition to my collection, but does not reveal anything new about Charlie Chaplin. Or about his son Michael, except that by today's standards, he might have been said to have a learning disability. It's a pity he ended up doing drugs, but I do wonder what the past 40 years have done for him...

I Couldn't Smoke The Grass On My Father's Lawn

I was born in the same year as Michael Chaplin and I was living in the town of his birth, Santa Monica, California when I read his book when it was released in paperback. I don't think there had ever been a hardcover release.

1966 was a tumultuous time when baby boomers were breaking away. I related completely with the alienation between a famous parent and an emerging adult in their shadow. I admit that it wasn't a great piece of writing but broke as he was in London this book was a personal catharsis that had to be written. If money had anything to do with it, it was to buy pot. All that being said this small volume depicts through the voice of his son and important side of Charley Chaplin. Paradoxically, it will add depth to his father who as I would learn later was one of the great geniuses of the 20th century. I have no doubt that he was hard on Michael but Michael survived.