MAGICIAN: 2/8: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2024
⏱️ 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.
1905 HIPPODROME
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batcher with the new book Charlie Chaplin versus America by Scott |
| 0:09.0 | Aeman. |
| 0:10.6 | When Arts, Sex and Politics collided, Charlie Chaplin arrives in America with the Carno Group. |
| 0:16.0 | My notes say 1910 and 1913. |
| 0:20.0 | At first, America overwhelms him. He comes to New York and the vaudeville halls, |
| 0:25.6 | but he comes to love it and travels with the burlesque, |
| 0:30.6 | the vaudeville, including the Marx Brothers and Stan Laurel as mentioned. |
| 0:34.7 | Stan Laurel knew Charlie in London at the time. |
| 0:37.9 | This is the Laurel and Hardy. |
| 0:40.0 | What did he make of him? |
| 0:40.9 | What was his opinion of the young Charlie Chaplin? |
| 0:44.2 | Laurel thought Chaplin was prodigiously talented |
| 0:48.4 | and studied him carefully on stage. |
| 0:50.7 | He thought Chaplin was strange as a human being. He wasn't like the other vaudevilians. He didn't mingle particularly with the other vaudeviliants. He didn't go out, you know, scouting around for girls after the show. He'd stick around and read books. |
| 1:04.2 | And his professional habits were bizarre. |
| 1:06.3 | You know, you're supposed to be there a half hour |
| 1:08.5 | before curtain if you're a performer. |
| 1:10.4 | And Chaplin wouldn't be there, |
| 1:11.9 | and there'd be five minutes before curtain. everybody's panic where's Charlie's not here and Charlie was the star of the show by this time and Laurel was Chaplin's understudy so they tell him to get his makeup on and get ready to go on at which |
| 1:24.0 | point chaplain would breeze in a few minutes before curtain slap his makeup on |
| 1:28.2 | take his position the curtain would rise and chaplain would slay the audience |
| 1:31.9 | reliably and this drove Laurel crazy because a he didn't get a chance to perform |
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