LOS ANGELES — Sydney Chaplin, second son of Charlie Chaplin and himself a Tony-winning actor who starred on Broadway opposite Judy Holliday in “Bells Are Ringing” and Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl,” has died at age 82.
Chaplin died Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, longtime family friend Jerry Bodie said Thursday. He said Chaplin had recently suffered a stroke.
“He was one of those guys who just sort of trooped through history,” Bodie said of Chaplin. He recalled his friend as a gregarious man who struck up friendships with everyone from Albert Einstein to Frank Sinatra.
Chaplin appeared in two of his father’s later films, “Limelight” (1952) and “The Countess from Hong Kong” (1967). But he never achieved the success in Hollywood that he enjoyed in New York’s musical theater.
He won his Tony for “Bells Are Ringing,” the 1956 Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical about a telephone answering service operator (Holliday) who falls in love with a customer (Chaplin). New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr wrote that the actor “doubles the evening’s warmth by the simple expedient of believing in its love story.”
His best-remembered show, though, was the 1964 smash “Funny Girl” as Nicky Arnstein, the gambler who woos Streisand in her star-making role. The show brought him another Tony nomination, but he departed in June 1965, citing unspecified differences with producer Ray Stark.
When it came time to make the movie, Omar Sharif was cast opposite Streisand. Chaplin, who was also bypassed in the film version of “Bells Are Ringing,” said he wasn’t disappointed.
“I never had the burning desire for recognition and respect that had driven my father,” he explained.
He was the second son born to Charlie Chaplin’s second wife, Lita Grey. The other son, Charles Chaplin Jr., died in 1968.
Lita Grey was 16 when she married the 35-year-old Chaplin in 1924. Sydney was born two years later, and his parents divorced a year after that.
