BRUTALITY OF SHOW BUSINESS: 4/8: 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
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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)
1918 WWI 'THEY WON'T LET ME BE A DRILL SERGEANT!"
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelorskar-Iman. |
| 0:06.6 | The book is Charlie Chaplin versus America when our sex and politics collided. |
| 0:11.9 | Charlie's a great success with the great dictator. |
| 0:14.9 | He makes a speech. |
| 0:16.7 | Joseph Davies, the ambassador to the Soviet Union, cannot attend an event in San Francisco during |
| 0:22.1 | the Second War. And Second Front is the big story. Stalin wants a second front open. Eventually, |
| 0:28.6 | it will be. That's Normandy, 1944. But the push for the Second Front was widespread. The Soviets |
| 0:36.4 | at this point are counterattacking the Germans |
| 0:38.5 | are hard-pressed. The U.S. is keeping the Soviets in the field with Lend-Leese, but Charlie's |
| 0:44.0 | has to step in for Joseph Davies in San Francisco and makes a Charlie Chaplin speech, all for the |
| 0:49.4 | Second Front. That incident will become important because of what is about to happen to Charlie |
| 0:54.3 | with his libertarian libertine understanding of the world. |
| 1:00.1 | A young woman named Joan Barry, that's her one of her pseudonym, |
| 1:04.7 | comes crashing at his door one Christmas. |
| 1:07.5 | I believe it's 41, Scott. |
| 1:09.7 | I get lost here. |
| 1:14.7 | 1942. 42. And she has a pistol. Who is Joan Barry? |
| 1:23.5 | Joan Barry had been the mistress of Jay Paul Getty in Oklahoma. She thought it would be fun to be in the movies. |
| 1:28.1 | She got a letter of introduction that she could use generally. |
| 1:32.5 | She traveled to California, met a number of movie people, including Chaplin. |
| 1:34.1 | One thing led to another. |
| 1:36.1 | His relationship with Paul God was over. |
... |
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