BRUTALITY OF SHOW BUSINESS: 8/8: 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
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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)
1931
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel, with Scott. I'm in the new book is Charlie Chaplin versus America when |
| 0:04.3 | art, sex, and politics collided. Charlie's now living in Switzerland and at a house called |
| 0:09.2 | Manoir. His children are growing. Una is a heroine of heroine's very stable life. She found |
| 0:17.1 | Charlie the stability that she needed because of her unacceptable father, Eugene O'Neill. |
| 0:25.7 | But at the same time, Charlie was, as Scott tells us, not fully engaged the way he had been in Los Angeles or New York. |
| 0:34.0 | He has one more movie to make. |
| 0:36.0 | It's about a script that could have been a comedy and could have been successful back in the 1930s, could have been. |
| 0:43.4 | But for reasons that I cannot recover, Marlon Brando shows up as a hero. |
| 0:49.3 | How did that happen, Scott? |
| 0:51.3 | The film was financed by Universal. |
| 0:56.3 | And they had Brando in a contract. |
| 1:01.4 | And Chaplin originally had written the script in the 1930s for Gary Cooper and Paul at Goddard. |
| 1:02.4 | And if you recast the picture with Gary Cooper and Paul had Goddard in the 1930s, it might |
| 1:07.5 | have worked. |
| 1:09.3 | But it's 1966, and Universal has agreed to finance the picture generously, I might say. |
| 1:17.5 | And they got Brando under contract. |
| 1:20.0 | Chaplin wanted Sean Connery to play the part, because he liked the way Connery played James Bond. |
| 1:26.6 | But Universal didn't see any reason why they should |
| 1:28.6 | pay Sean Connery when they were already paying Marlon Brando. So Brando agreed, because he liked |
| 1:34.3 | Chaplin's films, Brando agreed to blow off one of his films he had to make for Universal |
| 1:42.2 | with the Chaplin picture. |
| 1:46.0 | Well, they didn't, |
... |
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