>> what do you think about, using the state department -- wh you think about communists in the state department? >> i think the committees in congre on the house side and senate side should investigate the chargesf communism within

the state department and that the president should cooperate with them by turning over information regarding the loyalty ecks that have been made bthat branch of the govement. they should take that initiative and not refused to do is they have done in the past or turnover the information to congress so congress can investigate and present the facts to the american people. peter: scott eyman, that was gossip columnist and then representative richard dixon on the head hopper show, talking about communists. you opened your book "charlie chaplin vs. erica" by saying, personally, i hope he goes and never comes back, he is

as bad a citizen as we have in this country, as you well know. why was she writing to a u.s. senator about charlie chaplin? scott: she wrote a lot of letters to richard nixon. there are a number of files in the nixon library that contain nothing but mrs. to inform her. they had an interesng relationship. she had been a longtime supporter. she was constantly haranguing him via email about one problem or another that she saw was crucial to the survival of the republic. generally he would write back asserting he agreed with everything she said and wished there were more citizens like her but then he would do absolutely nothing about what she wanted him to do. he treated her basically like an annoying aunt at thanksgiving who tells you how to dress and

vote and what shows to watch and rather than get into a long conversation that will only end with bad feelings, you acquiesce to her and then go about your business because she will not be there. he would say yes, you are absolutely right, and the nothing would happen. and she seems to not notice that often. on the other hand, he did not really want to antagonize her because she had a vast readership through the l.a. times syndicate and radio and television appearances so he had to keep her on his side, as it were, and he did. she never really wavered in her support for him publicly. privately, she would complain mightily when her letters and concerns were not dealt with. but it was an interesting relationship for the way he adeptly handled a temperamental woman. peter: you describe charlie

chaplin is the most prominent victim of the red scare. why do you say that? scott: most of the people who got blacklisted were screenwriters, a few producers, and occasional director. no one in hollywood has ever cared about screenwriters. producers and direct there's more so because they make more money. but charlie chaplin was more than a producer, screenwriter, or director, he was all three and also an autonomous filmmaker who produced his own films and financed his own films and directed and compose the music scores for his own films. a one man picture. he did not produce a lot, one picture every four or five years but the fact remains he was a very peculiar denizen of hollywood in that he was not part of the studio system, he

was part of a charlie chaplin system which was a factory of one. he was outside and inside the system. he was highly respected but no one really knew him, he did not go to a lot of parties, he was extraordinarily shy all his life, and he warmed up to very few people and needed very few people so he was simultaneously part of the mill should pick sure industry -- motion picture industry and part -- a part of that. peter: he left the u.s. for 20 years. set the stage for us. what was going on in the world in 1952? scott: in retrospect, it was the height of the blacklisting era, which began in 1947 with the congressional hearing into a hollywood group of screenwriters

, directors, producers. congress knew, put a call to constitute it because the fbi had the roster of the communist party. so they knew who was in it. all the people who were components of the hollywood 10 were all currently in the party as of 1947 or had been in the party and later resigned. so they could easily spring on them the question, are you now or have you ever been, when they knew the question in advance. by 1952 most of the people who had been prosecuted or persecuted were either unemployed in new york city, mexico, some had gone to london to find work to survive. but they were not working in the hollywood film industry. charlie chaplin was still working on his own picture and

they had not been able to touch him politically because they had the roster and knew he had never been a member of the communist party and was not in fact a communist. that said, they still regarded him as a threat to the republic so in 1952 he applied for a reentry permit because he was not a citizen, he was a resident alien. whenever he left the country he had to apply for reentry permits. he was given the reentry permit by the ins and he and his wife and their children not on board the queen elizabeth in 1952 to go to london. he had not been out of the country in 20 years and never really had a vacation in 20 years and he had a film opening, the last one he made in america, and he wanted to take his wife to show her the london where he had grown up in the 1890's and

early 1900s. after the opening of the show in london they were going to go to paris for the opening and then take one or two months to sightsee around europe and then returned to america. they got on board the queen elizabeth in september 1952, one day out of new york he got a telegram informing him his reentry permit had been revoked and that if you wanted to get back into the united states, he would have two face an investigation upon return in new york city. this was a shock he did not see coming. everything he owned was in america, california, his stocks and bonds, studio, his film library, which was the most valuable thing he owned, his house, everything. and he was in the middle of the atlantic.

so it was a logistical crisis, a political crisis, emotional crisis for chaplin. so that basically is what happened. it took 10 years to come to fruition for the precedent that was established before they finally made a move to revoke reentry. peter: we will get into details in a minute but the fbi had opened a file on him 30 years earlier, in 1922. why? scott: he was regarded as insufficiently friendly, he had attended socialist meetings and very good friends with ans ceent writer, eastman who was a socialist. he gradually migrated to the center and then write -- right

but he and chaplin were friends so partially it was guilt by association, partly it was chaplin had insufficient enthusiasm for the first production czar of hollywood made sense and ship -- censorship difficult. in the early 1920's there was a series of scandals in hollywood. the arbuckle case, taylor murder , drug issues, drug addiction issues, so the industry felt they had to clean house and what could be better than to bring on a public figure of great respect , so they hired will hayes from

the harding administration. at six figures a year at a time when no one was making six figures a year, he was a figure of clean up your act and censorship and chaplin did not make films that generally required sensors, they were beyond reproach, but he did not like the idea of a government or corporate mandated censorship of the film industry, he considered himself an artist and felt art should be free. peter: you write that he would frequently claim to be in an archivist, not in the bo throwing sense, but in a dislike of rul and preference for as much liberty as the law allowed, and maybe just a bit more. scott: emphatically.

emphatically, yes. he -- to understand charlie chaplin you have to understand his childhood, which took place in london in a theatrical background. his father was a singer who drank himself to death that 37. his mother was a less renowned performer diagnosed with synthesis -- syphilis and eventually went insane. chaplin and his half-brother sidney were brought up essentially in workhouses and taught to read and write their. he had the equivalent of a fourth-grade education and by -- and by that time he lived on the streets so essentially chaplin had come to the heart knowledge that he could not depend on anyone other than himself and his brother. he did not trust a lot of people.

he was not emotionally close with a lot of people. he simply held himself aloof from the normal camaraderie that took place in show business circles in england or america. he did not really trust a lot of people. you could count on one hand the number of people who trusted. peter: scott eyman, throughout your book "charlie chaplin vs. america" you reference how the poverty of his youth affected him throughout his life. scott: as i said, you cannot understand chaplin, he is an incredibly complex human being. his vision of his lost paradise with his childhood with his mother. his father was gone very early. his mother, he adored. everything about her.

even the truth about her. he knew she was schizophrenic, had syphilis, none of it made any difference, whether she contracted the disease from her husband, we have no way of knowing. but to her, he was the ballast, gravity. so the sudden obliteration of that by her madness was a terribly destructive act and as a result, he was in a sense, his emotional maturation was cut off very early and he held himself aloof from what would be regarded as normal friendships and relationships. peter: you quote chaplin is

saying to judge the morals of all the family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water. scott eyman come out when he arrived in america in 1910, he was the most stunning rise of any 20th-century performer. how did he achieve success so early? scott: i do not know that he ever fully understood it because by the time he was 21 years old, he was very successful in theater, but his mental image of himself and focus of his emotional life was about the deprivation of his childhood. so he had this weird duality about consciousness. on the one hand he became extraordinarily famous and wealthy. on the other, he thought of himself as a deprived child. i am sure a psychologist would

nod their head and say that is exactly what happens with someone who has that kind of childhood and uses it as fuel and motivation to achieve, to get out of squalor. but i do not know that he ever had the distance a professional psychologist would. to him, he struggled with it basically the first half of his life, i think, until his last and successful marriage. which gave him the security and emotional foundation that he had always needed and desperately wanted. peter: and that was to own a chaplin. how did the little trap character evolves and what did it represent -- little tramp character evolves and what did

it represent? scott: he made a good living in the theater in vaudeville and played basically a comic drunk in theater, it was his most famous act and he was extremely successful. stan laurel was his understudy. they roomed together for several years. and laurel said people thought he was strange later on. he was strange then. he did not really mingle with the other actors, the other comedians. he was off by himself reading books. he would not show up for the half hour before performance and 10 minutes before the curtain rose when they realized chaplin's not here, where is charlie, stan, put on your makeup, laurel would slap on his makeup and a couple minutes before curtain, chaplin would

saunter in without a care in the world, put on his makeup, take his position, the curtain would rise. he had absolute self-confidence in his professional skills. he did not sweat, going to be good tonight, will they love me? he did not have the usual performers anxiety. he understood that on some level he had access to the audience in a way most doctors don't. -- most actors do not. he was very successful in vaudeville. in 1912, max saw him on stage and thought he was hilarious and made a mental note that the next time he needed a lead comedian, he would hire chaplin and the next year he did for $475 a month, really good money in 1930. initially the contract -- 1913. initially the contract on offer was for a year but with a preview so that he could be let

go with two weeks notice. peer chaplin rejected that contract and held out for a one year and no cut contract which was begrudgingly signed. so even at age 23, he was very sure of himself, his skill set, of what that skill set could earn him as a professional. he went to work for senate and he was stunned because i stage he -- because on stage he played much older than he was. he walked on studio, he was young and quite handsome. he was told to put on plenty of makeup and throw something together. as chaplin stole -- told the story, he went into the proper room and put together a costume for the tramp in 45 minutes.

the derby hat, a little mustache, to make him look older. oversized shoes. he made everything a contradiction. the coat was too tight, the shoes were too large, the hat almost fit, he just sort of threw it together and went on stage and they were shooting the film and people started to laugh and that was it. he stuck with the character for the next 30 years. peter: his fame grew so fast he was able during world war i to sell bonds, he founded united artists with douglas fairbanks, mary pickler -- mary pickford. you many movies had he made at that point? scott: his first year at keystone he had made several movies but they were shorts. just shorts until 1921.

he made the kid, his first feature, in 1921. everyone told him not to do it, you can make a couple of shorts a year but a feature will take you much longer and there is much more weight placed on it and what if it flops, you will go to a crashing heart. but he always followed his instincts. he placed great trust in instinct. he thought he needed to grow and he could not wear the character without deepening the narratives , deepening the situations in which the tramp is placed. in the kid he basically put him with a small child and gave him responsibility for raising the small child. it is the key transitional film of his career because up until then the tramp is kind of a two legged to society in general.

he is not above pinching girls, aggression, damage, kind of the creature from the it, actually. with the kid where he is forced to care for a human being, when he cares about more than himself, the character enters a transition and there is a huge difference between the post kid tramp and pre-kid tramp. post kid is much more concerned about saving other people that he is saving himself. pre-k had, he is more concerned about saving himself. peter: in 1940, the great dictator movie came. high watermark for charlie chaplin. for your book, for years, chaplihabeen reading about hitler, watching nsreels about him, wondering about the resemblance. they were the same size, had the

same mustache, and let's face it, a similar world power. besides that, they were born only four days apart. is the great dictator and anti-nazi film? scott: overtly from the moment he considered it. he would not have made it otherwise. it was an act of great political and psychological courage on his part. no one what the film made. hollywood did not want it made. they started filming in september 1939. hollywood did not start producing anti-nazi films for another year. the american public was isolationist in 1939, as was congress, and they would continue to be isolationist until the japanese bombed pearl harbor in december. so he was swimming against the tide.

the british foreign office did not want it made. neville chamberlain in the prime minister's office was trying to placate hitler politically and psychologically. it was not working. chaplin believed that you cannot negotiate with an authoritarian psychotic, you can only defeat them or put them down with a bad dog. the weapons he had to work with -- those of the weapons he chose to use. peter: at the end of the film charlie chaplin broke character and gave a little speech. charlie chaplin: i am sorry. i do not want to rule or conquer anyone. i shall like to help everyone if possible, black men, whites. we all want to help one another.

we want to live by happiness, not misery. we do not want to hate and despise one another. in this room there is -- in this world there is room for everyone in the good earth is rich. the way of life can be free and beautiful. and yet greed has poisoned men's souls, filled the world with hate, step doesn't to misery and blood shall -- bloodshed. peter: scott eyman, what was the impact of that moment in the film? scott: it was the first time the audience had heard charlie chaplin speak. he made a silent film in 1936, and everyone thought he was crazy, because it was 10 years after silent films were dead. he sang a song at the end of the movie, modern times, but no one had heard him speak. in the great dictator there was

a great deal of public fascination with what charlie chaplin sounded like. he got over it very quickly because he plays two parts in the film, a leader and a jewish barber. as the jewish barber he only speaks in monosyllables. he does not really articulate. as the leader, it is babbling and doubletalk all the time, dramatic doubletalk. so at the end of the movie when he drops the veil and steps basically out of character as the jewish barber and speaks as charlie chaplin, it was a moment of thunderous drama because he was speaking not as an after, he was speaking as a universally

regarded figure of morality, and he labeled over the speech. it was always going to end with a speech and he had been working on that speech basically since he worked on the film. he put it off and put it off, shooting his speech, until very close to the end of production. and he shot it quickly, at six or eight takes over two days and that was it. peter: fdr reached out to him after the film, right? scott: fdr reached out to him before the film. because there was a great deal of back and forth about should chaplin make the film, would he, etc.. there is a letter in the book from jack warner to chaplin. warner had just come out of a meeting in the oval office with

roosevelt and roosevelt had brought up chaplin's film about dictators. because there was publicity in the papers about if or not he would make it, should he make it or not. the president told jack warner he certainly hoped the film was made and that he believed it would do a great deal of good and warner in the letter rights to chaplin and tells him, if the president thinks it is a good idea, i certainly hope you go ahead with the movie. he did not offer to finance it or distribute it, but the warner bros. were there this time one of the few companies that were actively engaged in making antifascist films, so for a brief moment in hollywood, they were on the same page as chaplain. hence the support of letter. peter: scott eyman was the great

dictator a commercial success? scott: a great commercial success all over the world, remarkably so, because most of europe was already fastest at that point. france was gone, italy, austria, germany of course. all that was left of europe was england. the film was extraordinarily successful in america and england. peter: was charlie chaplin jewish? scott: no, but he was often accused of being jewish by anti-semite and he never denied it because he thought that by denying it, he would be giving aid and comfort to the enemy by the application that it was something not to embrace. so he would simply let the charges pass. but no. peter: the subtitle of your book

is when arts, sex, and politics collide. it was in the 1940's that he met a woman named joan barry. who was she? scott: she was 823-year-old who was previously a mistress and she got it into her head that she should be in movie so she got a letter of introduction, went to hollywood, met a few people, one of them was charlie chaplin, they struck up a relationship. it lasted slightly more than a year. chaplin thought she had dramatic possibilities and signed her to a contract. her behavior became increasingly erratic. she did not show up for acting lessons, he had signed her up for drama school in hollywood and she began cutting class. chaplin was very serious about

work. you had to do the job. you had to learn your trade. that put him off as well as some of her erratic behavior. they split up once, twice, finally she went back to oklahoma for a time and then came back to hollywood and said she was pregnant and he was the father. chaplin did the math. he realized he could not possibly be the father. so he refused to make a settlement on her. she went to hopper, who blew the story wide open, basically treating the pregnancy as a state a complete for chaplin. chaplin knew it was not true. the government began a prosecution based on a law passed in the early part of the century banning taken women across state lines for immoral

purposes, basically to stamp out prussic -- illegal prostitution. then came the paternity trial. he willingly took a blood test that proved he was not the father and the jury found against him. the reason was at that point in california, 1943, a blood test was not dispositive. five years later, the case would have been dismissed but in 1943 the jury found against him largely because of the portrayal of chaplin in the media by people like hopper and ed sullivan and other conservative columnists as an out-of-control

libertine. so he lost the case. he appealed and the appeal was turned down. so for the next 18 years he had to pay child support for a child that was not his. at the same time the paterty suit was getting underway, he married thhter of eugene o'neill. she was 18, he was 54. they had eight children together. at the time it seemed to be unspoken confirmation of him as a libertine and it probably worked against him in terms of the jury's decision to make him the father of that child. peter: the fact that joan barry reportedly had two abortions as well, did that play a role in the diminishment of his

reputation? scott: it was not widely printed. it never came up in the trial because for it to come up in the trial it would've opened up sexual history and her lawyers did not want her sexual history examined closely so it did not come up in the trial. it did come up in terms of the fbi's examination of her and she claimed she had two abortions that chaplin paid for but they never prosecuted her on that for reasons i can only guess. it simply did not come up at the trial. i have no doubt it was a factor in the deliberations about what to do with charlie chaplin because they took her at her word, even though she later recanted all most all of her later testimony, all of her testimony 5, 6, 7 years later. peter: was j edgar hoover

following charlie chaplin's reputation and progress? ott: like a bloodhound. hoover had obsession is too strong a word but let's say he had a very refined interest in charlie chaplin. his mo regarding chaplin was there would be a flurry of telegrams from hoover to the l.a. fbi office, please check out charlie chaplin. and l.a. office was basically due what -- would basically do what they asked him to do and then it would be quiet for a year and then it would start all over and l.a. office would check charlie chaplin again. after world war ii the l.a.

office started dragging their feet because they had, by 1947, basically the entire security apparatus of the u.s. had at one time or another gone to charlie chaplin. his mail was open, surveillance on his house, employees interviewed, his taxes both corporate and personal had been gone over, basically looking for anything they could get him for and they did not find anything. his taxes, he paid than his -- he paid more than his fair share. he never had any flaming radicals to the house, or very few, they came up with nothing. so the office began dragging their heels because here we go again.

and then hoover would snap the leash. richard hood ran the office and was very good and well connected with the movie industry. his main source was settled be demille, one of hood's special informants within hollywood. and he had been quizzed about chaplin and the interesting thing about demille's comments about chaplin's he said chaplin is an artist, regarded as cheap, he is not part of the hollywood community, he is off by himself all the time. but he and chaplin were not friends, they did not go to parties together or anything like that, but demille had lent

to chaplin his weekend getaway place, outside of l.a. on a couple of occasions. so they clearly knew each other and were friendly and demille did not tell hood this. interesting. but hood basically began paying less and less attention to charlie chaplin because there were all of these other authentic communists in california they could easily get goods on. chaplin essentially was not a communist, which at that point was the focus of hoover's investigation. peter: so hopper, ed sullivan, american legion, cardinal spellman, were they able to impact charlie chaplin's commercial success and reputation? scott: without question. when you are looking at 10 years

of disinformation, misinformation on a weekly or monthly basis, and most of which chaplin did not respond, could not have responded to because it was a ploy, he was pilloried for not being a citizen? america was full of people who were not citizens living in new york, los angeles, especially in the movie industry. a lot of them were successful, they were english, but no one pilloried them. he was convenient because he was regarded as politically dicey, sexually dangerous, so he was singled out for the fact that he never became a citizen whereas others know where was ever said about them. peter: you quote chaplin in your book, i juslike being told who

toill and what to die for and all in the name of patriotism. the fact is, i am no patriot. not for moral or intellectual reasons alone, but because i have no feeling for it. how can one tolerate patriotism when 6 million jews were murdered in its name? some might say that was in germany, but nevertheless, murderous cells lie dormant in every nation. scott: yes. his frien eastman made a very gt. he said, chaplin was born in england and became rich and famous in america. and he never became a citizen. what the people who hated him did not understand was that if he had been born in america and become rich and famous in england, he would not have taken

english citizenship, either. as far as he was concerned, nation of origin just happens to be where you are when your mother gives birth. certain kinds of food, the atmosphere of the land he grew up, he was sentimental about certain kind of things but in terms of things like the monarchy, he was anti-monarchist from the word go. he talked about once when he was a child he could not cross the street because some royal person in a carriage was driving by so they were holding all the pedestrian traffic and he talked about how that enraged him, that someone would have the right of way on ordinary people were not able to walk across the street. that carried over. he was antimonarchist in england and anti-knee-jerk patriotism in

america. that is just the way he was constructed psychologically. peter: let's return to 1952. a quote, truman's attorney general james the granaries action was a culmination of years of a concerted campai targeting the private sexual behavior and public political sympathies of the most dangerous brand of dissident, a beloved, popular artist. wh did the attorney general do? scott: it was hoover's support [inaudible] what chaplin did not know at the time was he was in the middle of the atlantic after he had the telegram was that a week after the reentry permit was canceled the ins had a meeting and came to the firm conclusion that if chaplin came back and contested,

they would have to let him in the country because he had never been convicted of a misdemeanor, nothing. generally that was the vehicle by which the fbi would get rid of mafiosi they did not want, they had to convict al capone on tax evasion, then they could support them but they had to be convicted of a felony. chaplin had never been convicted of anything. so they did not have legal justification, forget moral justification, they had no legal justification to kick him out of the country and if he had come back and forced a hearing, they would have had to let him back in. but chaplin was furious. he was infuriated, livid for years about the banishment. the last thing he was going to do was knock on the door and asked to be invited back to a

party he had been thrown out of. so he got to england, opened his film that was a enormous hit all over europe and had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. no small decision when you are 63 years old. he probably figured he had another 10 or so years to go. as it happened, she live to age 88. he thought about moving to italy, thought about england, and his brother sidney who he adored and trusted, he wa close to two men in his life, sidney and douglas fairbanks senior, who had died young in 1939 and chaplin never really had a best friend after doug fairbanks died, his closest male friend was his brother sidney had sidney suggested switzerland or france. sidney lived in nice.

he said switzerland for tax reasons because sidney was paranoid about money at always coming up with wild schemes to avoid paying taxes. he suggested switzerland and chaplin had not really thought about it. he knew the country slightly but he had never given any serious thought to moving anywhere other than hollywood. so he thought about it and thought about itnd five months after the banishment, he bought a manor house and lived there for the rest of his life with his family. peter: after he left the u.s. and 1952, what happened to his studio and holdings? scott: his money, tax, bonds, one of the things i love to find taken by research in the chaplin archives was a roster of his investments in 1952, his stock and bond portfolio.

it confirmed my suspicions it was the stock and bond portfolio a wall street trader would have had in 1952. peter: stops at at&t, kodak, bank of america, woolworths, etc.. scott: yes. trueblue patriotic portfolio that would kick up 3% or 4% a year reliably. professionally assembled portfolio. and tobacco companies, and chaplin did not smoke. [laughter] the idea of him as a radical leftist with a stock portfolio with that is hilarious. anyway, everything he owned was in california.

luckily his wife oona was a native born american so she went back and closed out the investment account and brought them back with her, some of the money of course could be wired, some could be wired to europe. his brother basically handled the sale of the studio and the hardware within the studio, the cameras, all the hardware you need to make movies, sidney handled that. sidney when not living in nice would live sometimes in palm springs, sometimes in florida, he had a trailer and would travel around to wherever it was sunny. he was a sun worshiper and ardent nudist. a genuine eccentric. by comparison, charlie was straight down the middle. sidney was a fringe character in many respects.

it was a process that took some years. in 1955, the irs came after him for back taxes based on earnings . he had been kicked out of the country and september 1952 and they taxed him for money through 1954 which i think takes a certain amount of gall. [laughter] and he settled. he wrote a check for the taxes because he did not want it hanging over him. all this is going on while he is resettling in switzerland. the propaganda, the anti-chaplain propaganda continued and lies were published. astonishing stories. my favorites were that she was conspiring in palestine with the

jewish radicals helping to found israel, to kill british soldiers in palestine in 1947 when israel was founded. the most insane one came after he was -- after he left the country after it was claimed he was going to adopt the children of a couple who had been put to death for spying for russia. there was another story, typical examples of propaganda, anti-chaplain propaganda, another story was printed in a sunday magazine nationally that she -- that he fired all the

employees of his studio without severance. it was not true. he put out $80,000 in severance. it was like being caught in a hurricane and being transported to oz. the propaganda had very little relation to who he was as a man or artist. peter: at the height of the cold world -- cold war, he toured russia. scott: he never went to russia in his life. he met khrushchev, but never nt to rush and his life. peter: you quote him as saying i am not a communist but i feel outo say i feel procommunist. i do not want radical change, i

want evolutionary change. i do not want to go back to the days of 1929 or a sick and crazy world like the one we had and which produced hitler and hitler him. -- kittler -- hitlerism. scott: in 1939 he left london to promote the city lights and then he was gone for 18 months and he went around the world several times, places he had never been and would never go again, he went to bali, out-of-the-way places, and it was a transcendent experience for him because he experienced completely different populations , totally different cultures, but almost everywhere he went he saw the results of the deprivation of the depression, which was two and three years old, he did not come back until

19 33, he was gone for 18 months so the depression was well under way at this point and it was not close to coming out of it, the depression did not start easing until 1935. he saw it at its worst and he turned up his feelings about nationalism and economies and what people should have in times of deprivation. essentially he had a kind of utopian socialist bent. he thought poor people should be able to walk into a store, pick up the food he -- they needed, and walk out. after he lefthountry he would stop in england to visit friends every once in a while and graham greene, a novelist who reviewed his films, they knew each other slightly and

green, whose politics were fairly left, would walk out because he could not stand to hear chaplain talk such ridiculous utopian rubbish. it would never happen on the face of the earth where poor people can walk and disc stores and walked out with what they want and he felt chaplin was being naïve, which he was, but that is what i get returning to chaplain's childhood, that was what his grudge against the english social welfare system had led him. peter: 20 years after he left america, he returned. here he is april 10, 1972. >> thank you for the honor of inviting me here.

you are wonderful, sweet people. thank you. [applause] peter: scott eyman what are we seeing? scott: that is his acceptance speech for his honorary academy award in 1972. when he was kicked out of the country in 1952, three people stood up to -- stood up for him publicly. assembled one, william wilde, cary grant were the only three people -- sam wilder, william wilde, cary grant were the only ones. no one else wanted to be associated with him or stand up for him so essentially it was a

time of great moral cowardice because no one wanted to be printed as being sympathetic to someone who was regarded as un-american in 1952. peter: 20 years later, when it was safe, they all realize, made a slight error in judgmt. so they gave h an honorary academy award because basically it was a way of saying we are sorry and he agreed to accept it. he named his son sidney after his brother. his son sidney told me he did not care about awards. he never had. awards meant nothing to him. he cared about working on a script until it was as good as you can possibly make it, working on a scene until it was as good as you can possibly make it, working on a film until it was as good as you can possibly make it. it was all about being a good

worker bee, that was his identity. it was not some guy on a mountaintop dispensing wisdom. it was the deadliness of being a good worker and he said he did not really care about awards. but the ovation, the fact that coming back to california that he had not seen in 20 years and was a huge change, it was nothing but banks. peter: in 1972, richard nixon was the president of the united states. scott: hopper was dead by then and he did not have to worry about being harangued by her. peter: how long did chaplain stay in the country? scott: one week. he came to new york, first he

came to the bahamas to get used to the time change because at this point he is 84 years old and old age is beginning to have its effect on him. he is not the same person he was in 1952. he has slowed down considerably so he had to be handled carefully, they went to the bahamas for a couple days to get used to the time change and then new york for a couple of days and then l.a. for the oscar ceremony. then he went back home and never came back to america. peter: partial filmography of night -- of charlie chaplin, the trailp -- the trail him -- t ramp. if you were to recommend one of

the movies to get a sense of charlie chaplin, which one? scott: one movie? modern times. the essence of chaplain is his connection to the real world. there are a lot of comedians who want to take the audience away from the real world. especially in that time. but he was connected to the real world that people saw walking to the theater. they sell poor people, stores, factories -- they saw poor people, stores, factories. modern times is his take on that reality that was pandemic in the 1930's and it has not changed and he accepted his more so now than it was in 1936 so it is a film that is eternally relevant, as is the great dictator. peter: you have written about cary grant, it says will, john

wayne, mary pickford, and others. it sounds like you got pretty good cooperation from the chaplin family. scott: they gave me free reign. they asked for no permissions. they never saw the manuscript. i wrote based on what i found. i was very pleased. i expected them to hover more than they did. there was no hovering whatsoever. they gave me permission to do my research in their archives without holding anything back and to write what i chose. peter: scott eyman, thank you for spending an hour discussing it with us. scott: thank you. take care now. >> all q&a programs are

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