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The John Batchelor Show

BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A LAUGH THANKS TO THE LITTLE TRAMP. 7/8: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A LAUGH THANKS TO THE LITTLE TRAMP. 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)

1919 DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, MARY PICKFOR, CHSRLIE CHAPLIN, D..W. GRIFFITH

Transcript

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0:00.0

Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island?

0:04.0

Jane Gaskin did exactly that, trading in the family home to begin a new life in the

0:09.1

tropics.

0:10.1

But she soon discovers that Paradise has its secrets.

0:13.4

I'm Alice Levine, and this is the price of Paradise,

0:18.0

the island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder.

0:23.0

Wish you were here.

0:24.0

Follow the price of Paradise Now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

0:30.0

This is CBS I in the world.

0:32.0

I'm John Barcher. I'm with Scott Eimman. The book is Charlie Chaplin versus America.

0:37.0

When art, sex and politics collide, I recommend the book. I picked it up. I didn't know anything. Now I didn't know anything now I don't know anything plus I know what

0:45.4

Scott has guided me to learn more about which is early Hollywood when men and

0:51.4

women invented an art form that dominates the solar system and will forever,

0:56.0

the idea of telling a magical story on a stage that moves.

1:00.0

We're going now to a success of Limelight and Charlie Chaplin's decision with his

1:06.6

growing family and his devoted wife, Una, they're going to travel to London and Europe in order to enjoy the opening of

1:18.5

limelight in London and then tour some with his young family, including Geraldine Chaplin, who will become a movie

1:26.3

star on her own once in the future.

1:30.2

We're looking at, though, a days when you needed a visa to come back to the country after leaving

1:37.2

it and in order to get that Charlie

1:49.6

Charlie rushed up against the INS. It's important now to establish that this

1:47.0

wouldn't have been the first occasion that Charlie rushed up against the INS.

...

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