Who had the longest standing ovation at the Oscars?
It seems almost impossible to imagine, but Charlie Chaplin only ever won a single competitive Academy Award during his lifetime.
The legendary actor came to prominence in tandem with the Oscars, having already created classic films like The Kid and The Circus by the time the first Academy Awards were ever held in May of 1929. Chaplin remained active in film all the way up to the mid-1970s, but he never took home an Oscar for acting, directing, writing, or producing any of his films. Instead, Chaplin won ‘Best Original Score’ in 1972 for his work on Limelight, a film that was already two decades old by that point.
The Academy awarded Chaplin an honourary Academy Award during the Oscars’ first ceremony for “versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing, and producing The Circus“. In the subsequent years, Chaplin created some of his most iconic films, including The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator. The latter film saw Chaplin get nominated for ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Picture’, and ‘Best Original Screenplay’, or ‘Best Writing’ as it was called at that point, but Chaplin was snubbed for each award.
By the 1950s, Chaplin had come under fire by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The English-born actor had friends with ties to the Communist Party, but Chaplin himself never had any association with it. Nevertheless, with increasing pressure and the threat of being blacklisted, Chaplin opted to return to London in September 1952. The day after he left, his re-entry permit to the United States of America was revoked.
Insulted by the treatment he received from the country that he had worked in for nearly four decades, Chaplin refused to return to Hollywood for the next 20 years. “Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me,” Chaplin wrote in his 1964 autobiography. “I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up of America’s insults and moral pomposity.” He continued making films in Europe, selling off his stock in the American production company that he founded in 1919, United Artists.
Starting in the 1970s, Chaplin began receiving renewed attention and acclaim for his role as a film pioneer. The Cannes Film Festival honoured him in 1971, while the Venice Film Festival did the same the following year. With a change in political relations and a new leadership structure, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences decided to give Chaplin another honourary Academy Award, this time to celebrate his lifetime of achievement. Chaplin was still stung by his departure from the United States two decades prior but ultimately opted to accept the award in person.
Chaplin’s appearance at the 44th Academy Awards represented his first return to the United States in 20 years. The 82-year-old became visibly emotional as the crowd proceeded to give Chaplin a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest in the award show’s history. Chaplin’s health continued to decline throughout the 1970s, culminating in his death in 1977 at the age of 88. Chaplin had managed to live long enough to see himself be embraced, then exiled, and then embraced again by the American film industry.
Watch footage from Chaplin’s appearance at the 44th Academy Awards down below.
