7/8: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
7/8: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Scott-Eyman/dp/1982176350
Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin’s fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War II, Chaplin was criticized for being politically liberal and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the postwar Red Scare took hold.
Politics aside, Chaplin had another problem: his sexual interest in young women. He had been married three times and had had numerous affairs. In the 1940s, he was the subject of a paternity suit, which he lost, despite blood tests that proved he was not the father. His sexuality became a convenient way for those who opposed his politics to condemn him. Refused permission to return to the US after a trip abroad, he settled in Switzerland and made his last two films in London.
In Charlie Chaplin vs. America, Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times. “One of the finest surveys of the man and the artist ever written” (Leonard Maltin) this book is “a sobering account of cancel culture in action.” (The Economist)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS I in the world. I'm John Bouchta. I'm with Scott Eimman. The book is Charlie Chaplin versus America. |
| 0:09.0 | When art, sex and politics collide, I recommend the book, I picked it up. I didn't know anything. |
| 0:15.0 | Now I don't know anything. Plus, I know what Scott has guided me to learn more about, which is early Hollywood, |
| 0:22.0 | when men and women invented an art form that dominates |
| 0:26.1 | the solar system and will forever, the idea of telling a magical story on a stage that moves. We're going now to a success of Limelight and Charlie Chaplin's |
| 0:37.0 | decision with his growing family and his devoted wife, Una, they're going to travel to London and Europe in order to enjoy |
| 0:49.0 | the opening of Limelight in London and then tour some with his young family including Geraldine |
| 0:55.7 | Chaplin who will become a movie star on her own once in the future. |
| 1:01.2 | We're looking at though a days when you needed a visa to come back to the country after leaving |
| 1:08.0 | it. And in order to get that you had to apply for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the INS. |
| 1:16.0 | It's important now to establish that this wouldn't have been the first occasion that Charlie |
| 1:20.2 | rushed up against the INS. |
| 1:21.8 | Remember, the FBI's been tracking him since 22 with nothing. |
| 1:26.5 | Heather Hopper and Ed Sullivan whom I will never celebrate again have been hectoring him for decades for unknown reasons of their own, perhaps their own |
| 1:37.4 | personalities but for no evidence whatsoever that Charlie Chaplin did anything wrong. |
| 1:42.4 | However, at one point, I believe it's April of 48. |
| 1:46.2 | A man named Boyd at the INS interviews Charlie Chaplin and the INS is now part of the decision |
| 1:52.3 | making. The idea is if Charlie Chaplin |
| 1:55.5 | leaves we won't let him come back. Whose idea was it Scott? Who came up with this |
| 1:59.5 | genius smear? It appears to have been James McGranery, the attorney |
| 2:04.6 | general, Harry Truman's attorney general as a matter of fact. |
| 2:07.9 | McGranery was an art and Catholic and he was deeply offended by Chaplin's |
... |
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