BRUTALITY OF SHOW BUSINESS: 3/8: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
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)
1917 THE ADVENTURER
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Dutch with Scott Eamann. |
| 0:07.3 | The book is Charlie Chaplin v. America, when art, sex, and politics collided. |
| 0:13.7 | Charlie Chaplin is a hugely successful Hollywood star. |
| 0:17.6 | It's the 1920s. |
| 0:19.2 | He's been twice married, and then he makes a movie with |
| 0:23.0 | Pollitt Goddard and falls in love with her, though I learned from Scott there's no marriage |
| 0:27.5 | license to ever found, but they're married. That's the third marriage. And Charlie Chaplin has |
| 0:33.5 | concepts that he picks up in a world tour in 31 to 32. I believe Paulette Goddard went along with him. |
| 0:43.3 | And that becomes the movie Modern Times. Scott, what did Charlie see about the world with Paulette |
| 0:49.0 | Goddard? And I believe there was one or more trips to Bali. What did he make of it? |
| 0:54.8 | Goddard was not with him on that tour. |
| 0:56.6 | He met her right after he came back from the tour. |
| 1:00.2 | What he saw was the worldwide depression. |
| 1:03.1 | Even in the midst of the depression in America, Hollywood functioned. |
| 1:09.8 | I mean, times were tough. You had two movie studios basically go into Chapter 11, Paramount and RKO, |
| 1:15.6 | but people were still working. |
| 1:17.6 | It was not bread lines and soup kitchens as it was in New York City or Chicago, for instance. |
| 1:25.6 | So the people that lived in Hollywood were sort of insulated from the worst aspects of the |
| 1:31.0 | Depression. |
| 1:31.9 | But when Chaplin took an 18-month tour around the world in 1931-32, he saw the worst aspects |
| 1:39.3 | of the Depression, and he was absolutely stunned and appalled. |
| 1:43.2 | It transcended even his own experiences in Victorian London because what he saw was hopelessness |
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