This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel. Continuing with the author Scott Eamon.

The book is Charlie Chaplin v. America, when arts, sex, and politics collided. The second war is over.

The catastrophe has happened. There are tens of millions of dead. There are war crimes tribunals in Europe

and then war crimes tribunals in Japan.

And Hollywood, like everywhere else in America, institutions,

trying to go back to work with the returning soldiers.

Charlie Chaplin's going back to work.

He's world famous and he wants to make movies. He's got his own studio and he has plenty of money, lots of money, although he's still

haunted by the poverty of his childhood. He can no longer be the tramp. He needs to deal with

speaking pictures, and in this instance, he comes across a plot, a story idea, given to him or suggested to him by Orson Wells.

It will eventually be called Monsieur Verdeau, a French name.

But it was, in Orson Welles' mind, has a serial killer, a bluebeard called Lady Killer.

Scott, this is a wonderful story to introduce Orson Wells. Orson Wells' idea, what was it based on and how did they see it as comedy? Good evening

to you. Thanks, John. Wells came to Chaplin a few months after Citizen Kane opened with this idea.

It was an idea that Wells wanted to direct and use Chaplin as the star to play a character based on Landreux,

who was a famous French serial killer who murdered a succession of wives, of his wives,

well-known in France, not very well known here at all.

Chaplin told Wells that he appreciated the author, but he didn't work for anybody else,

except himself, but he liked the idea and he wanted to buy it from Wells. So he bought the idea for $5,000 from Wells.

The interesting thing is Wells and Chaplin never really liked each other,

which, and I suspect the reason was because there wasn't enough room on Everest for two egos that size.

They both had outsized egos, and both were used to being autonomous,

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