Books: The Little Tramp: As Told to Himself

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Charles Chaplin. 512 pages. Simon & Schuster. $6.95.

The actor was Hollywood's greatest contribution to folklore—the Tramp, symbol of the indomitable little guy preposterously pitted against the tyranny of circumstances and the system. The man was something quite different —notoriously vain, snobbish, difficult to know and to work with. He thumbed his nose at the ancient rule that a prominent man may get away with flamboyant politics or flamboyant sex, but never both. The combination turned a large part of the U.S. press and public noisily against Charles Spencer Chaplin, and...