‘A spectacular show’: How a Swiss chateau museum is bringing Charlie Chaplin back to life

In the many biographies and documentaries about the man, the 25 years he spent at his mansion in Switzerland are hardly mentioned. William Cook returns to Manoir de Ban after a decade to find a show fit for the most famous comedian who ever lived

Chaplin’s World opened in 2016 at the former family home in Switzerland (Chaplin’s World/Bubbles Incorporated)

Nine years ago, on a cold midwinter morning, I travelled to the Manoir de Ban, a Swiss chateau in lush parkland on the northern shore of Lake Geneva, to meet Michael Chaplin, the eldest surviving son of Charlie Chaplin. The huge white house was deserted. No one had lived there for years. It felt like a scene from a film noir: The Third Man meets Citizen Kane.

Charlie Chaplin bought the Manoir de Ban in 1952 after the US authorities barred his re-entry into the United States, on account of his “moral turpitude and communist sympathies”. He’d sailed to England with his fourth wife, Oona (daughter of the American playwright Eugene O’Neill) to show her his childhood home – the mean streets of south London where he was born and raised (and almost starved).

Mid-Atlantic he was informed that he could not return to America, his adopted home for the past 40 years until he’d answered these trumped-up charges. The US attorney general called him “an unsavoury character” with a “leering and sneering attitude”. Doubtful that he’d receive a fair hearing, Chaplin decided to relocate to Switzerland. He lived in the Manoir de Ban for 25 years, until he died, aged 88.