Actor Sydney Chaplin died 3 March 2009 of complications from a stroke. Born 31 March 1926 in Los Angeles, California, he was the son of Charlie Chaplin, but managed to build a successful stage and film career for himself. He appeared opposite Billy Holliday in Bells are Ringing, a role which earned him a Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical in 1957, and later he was on-stage with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (for which he was nominated for a Tony for best actor in a musical).
His first film appearance was in his father’s Limelight (1952), in a role which Charlie had written specifically for him. He also appeared in his father’s last film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).
His genre roles include: Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977; his last film role), The Bionic Woman (1977), So Evil, My Sister (1974), and The Adding Machine (1969).
Sydney was the younger of Charlie Chaplin’s sons with his second wife, Lita Grey. His parents divorved in 1927, and Sydney was raised by his maternal grandmother, having only brief contact with his father before he became an adult. He dropped out of school at the age of 17 and tried to enlist in the Army, but was denied. The next year, he was drafted, and operated a bazooka in Europe with the Third Army under General George Patton. He joined a brand new semiprofessional theatre company in Los Angeles after the war, and gained some notoriety from it. After his acting career, he opened a restaurant called Chaplin’s in Palm Springs, California; it was in business from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
He is survived by his second (or possibly third) wife, Margaret Beebe Chaplin, whom he married in 1998; his son, Stephan (from his first marriage); a granddaughter; and several half-siblings (including actress Geraldine Chaplin) from his father’s fourth marriage, to Oona O’Neill.