MAGICIAN: 5/8: 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
⏱️ 11 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.
1919 MANITOBA CANADA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS, I on the World, I'm John Batcheuk, continuing with the author Scott Eiman. |
| 0:05.8 | The book is Charlie Chaplin versus America when art, sex and politics collided. |
| 0:10.9 | The second war is over, the catastrophe has happened. There are tens of millions of dead. |
| 0:16.0 | There are war crimes tribunals in Europe and then war crimes tribunals in Japan. |
| 0:21.0 | And Hollywood, like everywhere else in America, institutions, trying to go back to |
| 0:26.0 | work with the returning soldiers. Charlie Chaplin's going back to work. He's world famous, and he wants to make movies. He's got his own studio and he has plenty of money, lots of money, although he's still haunted by the poverty of his childhood. He can no longer be the tramp, he needs to deal with speaking |
| 0:48.0 | pictures, and in this instance he comes across a plot, a story idea, given to him or suggested to him by Orson Wells. |
| 0:58.0 | It will eventually be called Monsieur Verdo, a French name, but it was in Orson Wells' mind as a serial killer, a blue beard |
| 1:09.2 | called Lady Killer. Scott, this is a wonderful story to introduce Orson Welles. |
| 1:15.0 | Orson Welles's idea. What was it based on and how did they see it as comedy? |
| 1:20.0 | Good evening to you. |
| 1:21.0 | Thanks, John. |
| 1:24.0 | Wells came to Chaplin a few months after Citizen Kane opened with this idea. |
| 1:29.0 | It was an idea that Wells wanted to direct and use Chaplin as the star to play a character based on Landrieu, who was a famous |
| 1:37.4 | French serial killer who murdered a succession of wives, of his wives. |
| 1:44.0 | Well known in France, not very well known here at all. |
| 1:50.0 | Chaplin told Wells that he appreciated the author but he didn't work for anybody else except himself |
| 1:58.0 | but he liked the idea and he wanted to buy it from Wells so he bought the idea for five thousand dollars from Wells. So he bought the idea for $5,000 from Wells. |
| 2:04.5 | The interesting thing is Wells and Chaplin never really liked each other. |
| 2:09.5 | And I suspect the reason was because there wasn't enough room on Everest for two egos that size. |
| 2:17.2 | They both had outsized egos and both were used to being autonomous and neither one of them was used to |
| 2:26.3 | collaborating meaningfully with anybody else. An Orson Well's movie is an Orson Well's |
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