BRUTALITY OF SHOW BUSINESS: 6/8: 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
⏱️ 7 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)
1921 LONDON CLARIDGE'S
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Scott Eamon. |
| 0:03.5 | The book is Charlie Chaplin versus America when arts, sex, and politics collided. |
| 0:08.6 | Hugh Act, the FBI, eventually the Truman administration pursuing Charlie Chaplin, but he's got a studio at La Brea and Sunset in L.A. |
| 0:17.7 | And he's making a movie that will be called Limelight. |
| 0:23.3 | It's a brilliant piece of construction having to do with his life. It's based on a story that he writes up as a novel, Calavero. |
| 0:30.9 | What's in the novel? You've studied it I haven't, Scott. What's in there that he makes a movie |
| 0:35.9 | out of? Because you can't use everything in a novel. |
| 0:39.0 | No, a lot of it is not, he never put it in the screenplay. |
| 0:43.4 | A lot of the novel was never even put in the screenplay. |
| 0:45.4 | It was, it's a very atmospheric memoir slash novel about the Edwardian theater as Chaplin found as a young man and what the life like. |
| 0:57.1 | What was life was like? |
| 0:58.5 | What the bars were like, what the backstage life and the theaters was like. |
| 1:03.4 | It's very rich and very nostalgic. |
| 1:06.4 | And I think what he was trying to do was immerse himself in his memories by constructing a fictional |
| 1:11.8 | narrative, which he then took and transposed by cutting a lot of the atmosphere and sticking |
| 1:19.6 | with the plot, but injecting as much atmosphere as he could get into the screenplay. Because he's |
| 1:25.1 | recapitulating his life. He's in a sense recapitulating his father's life |
| 1:29.2 | it's the story of an old musical comic who became an alcoholic and drank his career away |
| 1:35.1 | well that's not chaplain that's his father you know uh but on this on the same token by the same |
| 1:40.9 | token it's also he also injects his compulsive narrative about saving a |
| 1:46.3 | helpless young woman, which is, recurs over and over again in his films. Whether it's, |
| 1:53.5 | it's the kid or, or the gold rush, or the circus, city lights, modern times, they're all |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.