Charlie Chaplin - Awards and Recognition

Awards and Recognition

Chaplin received several awards and recognitions during his lifetime, especially during his later career in the 1960s and the 1970s. In 1975, he was knighted a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour had already been proposed in 1931 and 1956, but was vetoed after a Foreign Office report raised concerns over Chaplin's political views and private life; it was felt that honouring him would damage both the reputation of the British honours system and relations with the United States. Chaplin was also awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degrees by the University of Oxford and the University of Durham in 1962. In 1965 he received a joint Erasmus Prize with film director Ingmar Bergman and in 1971 he was made a Commander of the national order of the Legion of Honor by the French Minister of Culture Jacques Duhamel at the Cannes Film Festival.

Chaplin also received several special film awards. He was given a special Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1972. When he briefly returned to the United States in 1972, the Lincoln Center Film Society honoured him with a gala and awarded him a lifetime achievement award, which has since been awarded annually to filmmakers as The Chaplin Award. Chaplin was also given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1970, after having been excluded due to his political beliefs when the project was initially started in 1958.

Chaplin also received three Academy Awards, one competitive award for Best Original Score, and two Honorary Awards, and was nominated for three more:

• 1st Academy Awards (1929): Special Award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus". Chaplin had originally been nominated for Best Production, Best Director in a Comedy Picture, Best Actor and Best Writing (Original Story) for The Circus. However, the Academy decided to withdraw his name from all the competitive categories and instead give him a special award.
• 13th Academy Awards (1941): Best Actor and Best Writing, nominations, for The Great Dictator. The film was also nominated for further three awards.
• 20th Academy Awards (1948): Best Screenplay, nomination, for Monsieur Verdoux
• 44th Academy Awards (1972): Honorary Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century".
• 45th Academy Awards (1973): Best Original Score, win, for Limelight. Although the film had originally been released in 1952, due to Chaplin's political difficulties at the time, it did not play for one week in Los Angeles, and thus did not meet the criterion for nomination until it was re-released in 1972.

Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).