This is John Bachelor.

Happy Conversation with Bographer Scott Eamon.

His book, Charlie Chaplin versus America.

Fascinating. Charlie Chaplin was a genius.

And his book underlines what happens to geniuses in America if they cross

Edgar Hoover, the FBI, the paranoia of the early part of the 20th century about socialism,

communism, the Reds. a explains how the FBI opened a file on Charlie Chaplin, the comedian, the genius, in

1922 and continued to persecute him so much so that they drove him from America.

It's the story of Charlie Chaplin.

This is the first of two hours speaking with Scott Eamon

about this amazing detail of a genius. Here's Scott Aeman, Charlie Chaplin versus America.

Well, the FBI had opened a file on him, the predecessor of the FBI had opened a file on

Chaplin in 1922 because he'd been attending some socialist meetings

in Los Angeles with a friend of his name Rob Wagner who was a

socialist.

And they'd open a file on it, which went nowhere.

They just opened the file and mentioned that he was attending these meetings.

And he was not a fan of Will Hayes, who had been in a cabinet member in the Harding administration, and had somehow gotten

lucky and was hired to run the Motion Picture Association of America, thereby thereby avoiding the astonishing range of scandals of the Harding

administration.

And this was noted in the FBI file.

And then basically the FBI goes blank for a number of years and but picks up again in the late 1930s with the release of modern times and with chaplain's plans to make the great dictator. the

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