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- [00:00]
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Dave Davies
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Charlie Chaplin is a legendary figure of American cinema, remembered for silent films such as Modern Times, about the alienation of factory work and the Great Dictator, a talking picture in which Chaplin satirized and imitated Adolf Hitler. But Chaplin also led a colorful and controversial life beyond his film career. Today we're going to listen to Terry's interview with writer Scott Eiman about his book Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided. It's now out in paperback. Eyman writes about Chaplin's affairs with younger women, a paternity suit in which he was falsely accused and the FBI's investigation into his alleged communist ties, among, among other things, when Chaplin went to England in 1952 to promote a film, his reentry papers were revoked, forcing him to spend the last 25 years of his life in exile. Scott Eyman is also the author of books about John Wayne, Cary Grant, John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille. Terry spoke to him last fall when his book Charlie Chaplin vs America was published in hardback.
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Terry Gross
Scott Eiman, welcome to FRESH air. I found this book really interesting. I didn't realize how controversial Chaplin was and how many different age agencies had investigated him, the FBI, the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Post Office, the House on American Activities Committee. So his most controversial film was the 1940 film the Great Dictator. This was a satire of Hitler. It was made a year before the US entered World War II. What was controversial about ridiculing Hitler?
- [02:00]
Scott Eyman
Well, he started shooting the film in September 1939. It came out in October 1940. At this point in history, America is an isolationist country, as is Congress. Hitler was not our problem. The Jews of Europe were not our problem. If Hitler took England, we would just have to make a separate peace and that would be the end of our problem. Chaplin believed otherwise, as did Franklin Roosevelt. As a matter of fact, Franklin Roosevelt was one of the few people in America that wanted the film made. Nobody in Hollywood wanted the film made because in the latter part of 1939, anti fascist films were very, very few on the ground, but he was basically bound and determined. There's a letter in the book from Jack Warner to Chaplin. Jack Warner had just had a meeting with Roosevelt in the Oval Office and Roosevelt had brought up Chaplin's this is.
- [02:56]
Terry Gross
The Jack Warner is in the Warner Brothers Company.
- [02:59]
Scott Eyman
Exactly. And Roosevelt had heard the mutterings about Chaplin making an anti Hitler satire. And he brought it up to Warner that he certainly hoped Chaplin was going to go ahead and make the film because he thought it would do a lot of good. And Warner wrote a letter to Chaplin reporting his conversation with the President and said, if President Roosevelt believes it'll do a lot of good, so do I. I hope you go and make it, Charlie. He didn't offer to help in any way, but he was passing along the story. He didn't really need to pass along the story. Chaplin was totally committed, but nobody wanted that film made. The British Foreign Office didn't want the film made because Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister and he was attempting to appease Hitler unsuccessfully. Obviously, the American Congress was totally isolationist. So it was a. And the industry, also the American film industry thought it was a dangerous film to make. But Chaplin basically ignored everybody. The Nazi representative in Los Angeles was a man named George Ging. And his job essentially, was to strong arm anybody that wanted to make an anti Nazi picture by writing a threatening letter or two or three. And he wrote a threatening letter to the head of the Motion Picture Association, a man named Joe Breen, inquiring as to Chaplin's plans to make this film about. Clearly, manifestly, about Hitler. And Breen reported back that he'd asked Chaplin about it. And Chaplin said, well, there's no script, there's no story, there's no nothing. And if indeed Breen did call him about this, Chaplin was lying through his teeth because three weeks later he started building sets to make the film. So he was. He was going to go ahead and make the film come hell or high water.
- [04:42]
Terry Gross
One of the reasons, I think, that his studio didn't want him to make the film is that they wanted it, all their films to play in Germany. In Germany was definitely not going to play an anti Hitler film. And also the Germans for a while thought that Chaplin was Jewish. Why did they think he was Jewish?
- [05:02]
Scott Eyman
They were obsessed with the idea that Chaplin was Jewish. That's a very good question because at one point there was a book published in Germany by a Jewish consortium that included Chaplin in a roster of famous show business Jews, which was erroneous. He wasn't Jewish, but he never denied the erroneous charge because he felt it would give aid and comfort to anti Semites. And besides that, he liked Jews. So he just went along with it. So most people went along with him because he hadn't bothered to deny it.
- [05:37]
Terry Gross
So what was the impact of the Great Dictator on Charlie Chaplin's life?
- [05:43]
Scott Eyman
The thing about Chaplin is that he was going to do what he thought was the right thing to do. He didn't listen to committees. He didn't listen to friends who told him, you're making a mistake. He had a very monotheistic view of his own career. The audience had always followed him wherever he led. They had followed him into feature motion pictures with the Kid and the Gold Rush. When people said that they didn't think he could pull off a feature because the character wasn't strong enough. They had followed him into the 1930s when he insisted on making silent pictures after silent pictures were dead and buried. But he made two silent pictures. One City Lights, the other was Modern Times. Both of which were huge critical and commercial successes. So he believed that the audience would follow him where he led because they always had before. So he didn't really have a lot of qualms about making the Great Dictator based on almost 30 years in show business and 25 years in the movie business. And, by God, the audience followed him.
- [06:54]
Terry Gross
So America enters World War II about a year after the Great Dictator is released and once we enter the war Chaplin starts talking about opening a second front on the Russian border. What would that have meant? Just on a technical level?
- [07:13]
Scott Eyman
He was completely unconcerned with that. He thought the only way for he didn't get into logistics. He believed that Hitler was a moral and religious and psychological and death threat to Western democracy and nothing else mattered except that he be defeated. Logistics and military personnel and everything else be damned. So he was speaking from the point of view of a concerned citizen, not a military strategist.
- [07:48]
Terry Gross
So what kind of trouble did this get Chaplin in? The idea of opening up a second front?
- [07:53]
Scott Eyman
The FBI began basically taking down dictation of all of his speeches. They shadowed him. They began surveilling his house to see if any known Communists showed up at his front door for a meeting. That was the approximate cause for a fair amount of the government surveillance over the next couple years. And that was amplified when he got hit with the paternity suit in 1942.
- [08:25]
Terry Gross
Yeah, we'll get into that. So there was a 1900 page FBI file on Chaplin. It's a lot of pages.
- [08:32]
Scott Eyman
It's a lot of pages.
- [08:34]
Terry Gross
What were some of the different chapters in it? What were some of the things they investigated about him over the years?
- [08:39]
Scott Eyman
You name it. It depends on the period you're talking about. Basically, at one time or another, he was the target of the entire security apparatus of the United States of America. They would bug his phones at some times, then they would back off on bugging his phones and they would set up perimeters outside of his house to see who showed up at his front door. They would open his mail. All this took place over a period of eight to 10 years, depending upon how excited J. Edgar Hoover was getting.
- [09:11]
Terry Gross
Did he know this was happening?
- [09:13]
Scott Eyman
I can't imagine he didn't know. But if he did know, he did not acknowledge it.
- [09:19]
Terry Gross
Did you get access or try to get access through the Freedom of Information act to the FBI files on Charlie Chaplin?
- [09:26]
Scott Eyman
Yes, they've been available for years.
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Terry Gross
Oh, I didn't realize that. So you read them?
- [09:30]
Scott Eyman
Uh huh. All 1900 pages. It's the very interesting thing is there was this disconnect between Hoover in Washington and the FBI office in Los Angeles. The FBI in Los Angeles was that were the men on the ground in terms of surveilling the motion picture industry. And the head of the FBI office in Los Angeles was a man named Richard Hood. And because Hoover seldom went to Los Angeles and every once in a while Hoover would yank Richard Hood's chain and say, I want you to do this and this and this regarding Charlie Chaplin and see about this and that. And at first Hood goes about his business and does what his boss tells him to do. But as the 40s wear on, hood begins to drag his feet. Because by 1946, 1947, the FBI had informers in the American Communist Party and they had the membership roster and they knew who everybody in the Communist Party, American Communist Party was. That's why in 1947 when they called the Hollywood 10 to Washington to be cross examined, everybody in the Hollywood 10 either had been a member of the Communist Party and quit or was currently a member of the Communist Party. That's because they had the membership roster. So they knew that Chaplin was not a member of the party, had never been a member of the party and never had given a dime to the party. And if they had thought about it for more than 20 minutes, they would have realized that anybody with Chaplin's autocratic leanings as an artist, a man who wouldn't, it's almost impossible for him to delegate anything, would never be privy or a member of a party with a top down autocratic drift because he could not possibly have done what anybody else wanted him to do because Chaplin had never done what anybody else had wanted him to do.
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Terry Gross
Well, it sounds like he was a man who didn't like to belong to things. I mean, he liked to make his own films and to lead everybody. But he didn't like to belong to groups or parties or anything like that.
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Scott Eyman
He belonged to the Catalina Yacht Club.
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Terry Gross
I was their ideology.
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Scott Eyman
There you go. He belonged to the Lambs Club in New York, acting a bunch of actors. He never joined the Director's Guild. He never joined the Screen Actors Guild. No, he was absolutely not a joiner. Stuff like that had zero interest for him and it meant nothing to him.
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Terry Gross
Okay. So despite the fact that he was never a member of the Communist Party he did have friends who were members. And you call him the most prominent victim of the red scare. In 1950, he becomes a target of Senator Joe McCarthy the senator most responsible for creating hysteria surrounding people alleged to have Communist ties. And you write that this turned McCarthy from a backbencher with a drinking problem into a political star. What were the allegations he made against Chaplin?
- [12:32]
Scott Eyman
That he was a termite eating away at the foundation of America and sooner or later the House is going to collapse. Essentially the same charge that the investigators at the House Committee of UN American Activities were making against all the people they were investigating.
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Terry Gross
So what became of that?
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Scott Eyman
Nothing. Basically, because Chaplin had never been a member of the Party and he'd never actually was called before Congress. They kept threatening to call him before Congress, but they didn't. And I suspect that's largely because they had all the authentic Communists that they could call before Communists or former Communists that they could call before Congress. Whereas Chaplin had never been in the Party. So what exactly were they going to ask him?
- [13:13]
Terry Gross
Right. And the FBI found nothing too, in spite of those 1900 pages. Did people know that because smears tend to stick with you, it's hard to wash them off? So did the charges. Did the allegations stay with him even though nobody ever found anything?
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Scott Eyman
Yes. Yes, because they were consistently spread and respread and respread again for a period of over 10 years. 12, 14 years. And it was a classic campaign of disinformation that had no, in most cases, had zero relation to reality. There were some hilariously lunatic stories that hit the public prints of the things that Charlie Chaplin was supposedly involved in. At one point, there was a story. This is in the late 1940s when the British and the Irgun were fighting the war in Palestine. And it was said that Chaplin was aiding the Irgun in slaughtering British soldiers. Helping slaughter British soldiers. Well, he had nothing. He'd never been involved with the Irgun in any way. My favorite of these lunatic disinformation stories came actually after he'd been kicked out of the country when it was printed that he was going to adopt the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had just been put to death, you know, and again, a complete lunacy. But there was this steady drip, drip, drip of lunatic disinformation. And gradually the people that were prone to believe it, believed it, and the people that were not prone to believe it gradually began to think, well, maybe so.
- [14:58]
Terry Gross
Let's start with the sexual allegations that surrounded Charlie Chaplin. One of the things he got into trouble with was his affairs with young women. And you trace this interest in people much younger to when he was 18 and he was infatuated with a 12 year old. And when he was like 52 or 53, he had an affair with Joan Berry when she was 22. And she is somebody who had an affair with J. Paul Getty, who was very, very wealthy. This is the kind of age gap, 53 or 52 versus 22, that still makes many people very uncomfortable today. And I'm wondering if you want to compare the reaction then to the kind of reaction you think it would get now.
- [15:55]
Scott Eyman
Well, it would cause trouble now. No question. Would cause trouble now. I think even people are even more sensitive about it now than they were then. At the time, he was going to trial in the paternity suit involving Joan Berry. Just as the trial was getting underway, he married Una O'Neill, the daughter of Eugene O'Neill, and she was 18 years old and he was 53. So his marriage seemed to confirm everything that the Hearst press and the Los Angeles Times press and the Chicago Tribune press, all the right wing newspaper chains were printing about him, that he was a roue, that he was a degenerate, blah, blah, blah, blah. As it happened, he was married to Uno O'Neill for the rest of his life, very happily. They had eight children together. But it seemed to confirm to the public at large that he was what the prosecution said he was.
- [16:47]
Terry Gross
I want to ask you about the paternity suit filed against him. And this was filed by Joan Berry, the woman who was 22 when he was about 52, and she was asking for a lot of money. In this paternity suit, the blood test showed he wasn't the father. But before the blood test, Berry went to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who already didn't like Chaplin. Tell us a little bit about Hedda Hopper and her relationship with Chaplin. Like, you know, Berry went to the right person because if she wanted to smear Chaplin, Hedda Hopper was the person to do it.
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Scott Eyman
Hedda Hopper loathed Chaplin for reasons both political and sexual. Hedda Hopper was extremely conservative. Hedda Hopper was one of the founders of the right wing motion picture group that fomented the house un American Active. And she had also been abandoned by an older ruay husband as a young woman who left her high and dry with a young son. Her young son became William Hopper, who played Paul Drake on the Perry Mason TV series. So this chaplain rang all these alarm bells in her head for reasons both political and sexual. And Hedda Hopper, this was a story Hedda Hopper had been waiting for her entire journalistic career. So she called another friend of hers who was a columnist for the New York Daily News based in Hollywood, and they got interviews with Joan Berry and they began flooding the prince with interviews with Joan Berry about how she'd been used, cast aside, impregnated, et cetera, et cetera, by Charlie Chaplin. The feds got interested and he was prosecuted on the Mann Act. The Mann act involved transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes and was originally passed decades before to stamp out prostitution. Well, chaplain hired Jerry Geissler as his defender, his defense attorney, and the jury deliberated for an hour and found him not guilty. Well, that was the end of the man act prosecution. And then came the paternity suit. And there were three blood tests administered by three different sets of doctors. Two of the blood tests proved the chaplain was not the father. The other blood test was ambivalent. So the evidence was certainly on his side. But blood tests were not dispositive in California courts for a number of years at this point. We're now talking 1943. And he was found guilty by the jury not because of the evidence, but because of who he was and his past history and the fact that he had an affair with a 22 year old girl even though he was not the father of the child. So he took this rather amiss.
- [19:41]
Terry Gross
How did he respond?
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Scott Eyman
Grudgingly. He wanted to appeal. The courts turned down his appeals, so that was the end of it. So he not only had to pay child support for 18 years for a child that wasn't his, he had to pay the fee of the attorney who got him convicted.
- [20:03]
Dave Davies
Scott Eiman speaking last year with Terry Gross. Eyman's book Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided is now out in paperback. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. And Justin Chang will review the movies Wicked and Gladiator 2. I'm Dave Davies and this is FRESH AIR.
- [20:23]
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- [21:33]
Terry Gross
Some of our favorite planets aren't even real, but could they be? Here on shortwave, we journey to other planets, distant galaxies in our universe and in our favorite works of science fiction. Listen now to the shortwave podcast from npr.
- [21:53]
Dave Davies
This is FRESH air. I'm Dave Davies. We're listening to the interview Terry Gross recorded last fall with author Scott Eyman about his book on the remarkable life of actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. His book, Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided, is now out in paperback.
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Terry Gross
I want to talk with you about when Charlie Chaplin was banned from returning home to the U.S. i mean, he was born in England and spent his childhood there, but he spent majority of his life in the US he had gone to England in 1952 to promote his latest film, Limelight. And right before he left, Hedda Hopper wrote an item in her gossip column saying that he was planning this trip. And then she writes to Richard Nixon, who at the time was a senator from California. What does she write to him?
- [22:49]
Scott Eyman
She tells him that something needs to be done and that he's the one to do it. She had been a cheerleader for Nixon ever since he got elected to Congress in later the Senate. And his papers are full of letters from Hedda Hopper encouraging him, excoriating him, nagging him when he didn't answer her letters. She was categorized as high maintenance by any correspondent. She was, she was a real, a real piece of work, as my grandmother would say. And she was basically trying to foment government action using Richard Nixon as the battering ram.
- [23:29]
Terry Gross
So she wants a government action against Chaplin?
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Scott Eyman
Absolutely.
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Terry Gross
Okay. So does Nixon take action on her letter or just file it with the other letters that she's written him.
- [23:40]
Scott Eyman
He writes her a placating letter saying, yes, you're absolutely right. I couldn't agree with you more. And then he changes the subject because by this time he's running for vice president on the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower. And he's got bigger fish to fry than Charlie Chaplin or Het Hopper. And evidently he does absolutely nothing. There's nothing in Richard Nixon's papers to indicate he took any action whatever or was involved in the revocation of Chaplin's reentry permit.
- [24:06]
Terry Gross
But meanwhile, the Attorney General gets the Immigration and Nationalization Service to open an investigation that leads to Chaplin being banned from returning to the US after his trip to England. What reasons do they give for banning him?
- [24:22]
Scott Eyman
The reasons were vague. The document, a press conference that the Attorney General gave a week after the revocation mentioned Chaplin's leering, sneering attitude towards the United States. Mentioned his lack of citizenship, things like that. What was not stated and what Chaplin did not know was that if he had turned around and come back and demanded a hearing to get back his reentry permit, they would have had to give it to him. And he would. They would have had to let him back into the country because. Because he'd never been. He'd never been convicted of a crime. He had never been convicted of a crime. And that was the way that they deported various people that they didn't want in America, like Mafiosi. They would get a Mafiosi convicted on income tax evasion and deport him to Italy because he'd been convicted of income tax evasion. They couldn't get him on anything more lethal than that. But that was enough to have him deported. They could have done the same thing with Chaplin, except he'd never been convicted of anything, including income tax evasion. And believe me, they had gone over his corporate income taxes, his personal income taxes with fine tooth combs for a decade and they couldn't find a dime that he'd underpaid. So they actually had no legal justification for excluding him from coming back to the country.
- [25:43]
Terry Gross
Why didn't he ever become an American citizen?
- [25:46]
Scott Eyman
Because one of his core beliefs was that nationalism was a lethal disease. And it led to things like Adolf Hitler and Nazism and World War II. A friend of his named Max Eastman, who knew him quite well over a 40 year period, a good writer who started out as a socialist and ended up writing for William F. Buckley's National Review said that what people didn't understand about Charlie was that he was born in England and made his fortune in America. And if the reverse had been true and he'd been born in America and made his fortune in England, he never would have become an English citizen either. He simply didn't believe in the kind of patriotism that is knee jerk in most countries. He didn't partake of it. He considered himself. His phrase was, I'm a citizen of the world.
- [26:39]
Terry Gross
You said had he fought the ban on his returning to the US he would have been allowed in because they didn't really have anything on him. But he didn't fight it. Why didn't he?
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Scott Eyman
He got his back up. He was enraged. He was furious. And he didn't want to be a guest at the party if he was.
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Terry Gross
Disinvited and he felt he had been smeared for so many years.
- [27:03]
Scott Eyman
Oh, God, yes. Yes. Would he have done this on his own? No, I don't think there's any scenario under which he would have left America on his own. He had a wife. He had four young children at this point with Una. They were all under the age of, I believe, eight. They were all, you know, going to school. He had an infrastructure. He had his own studio on La Brea Avenue. He was part owner of United Artists, a major releasing organization. And he was 63 years old and he figured he probably had 10 more years. You know, he was not about to leave. He lived in one house in California for his entire life. He'd been in one house for 30 odd years. He was not a guy who pulled up stakes quickly or easily or hopped around. So he was going to be a lifer in Southern California. The fact that that choice was taken away from him just enraged him. And it's never really been obvious how enraged he was until you read the letters that I found in the Chaplin archives that he wrote to friends like James Agee, where he does vent. And he's clearly carrying around a load of anger verging on rage about what was done to him.
- [28:15]
Terry Gross
Soon after he was banned from returning to the US There was a campaign to ban his films from theaters. The American Legion passed a resolution urging American movie theaters to boycott his latest film, Limelight, and every movie in which he appeared. And in their magazine, they published a story about Chaplin saying his films were a sustained assault on democratic ideals and that Chaplin had long used film as a propaganda medium. And they said Modern Times is one of the few non Soviet films constantly shown in exhibition in the Soviet orbit. That was totally false, right?
- [28:52]
Scott Eyman
Totally false. None of his films were shown in the Soviet Union. Until the Gorbachev era. Because the Soviet Union wouldn't pay the money that Chaplin thought they should to rent the films and he wasn't going to give them to him for free.
- [29:06]
Terry Gross
So how successful was the campaign to ban Chaplin movies from theaters?
- [29:11]
Scott Eyman
Extremely successful. Extremely successful. Limelight was a huge hit in Europe, actually. It made more money than any other Chaplin film in terms of European grosses. But it. Only. A lot of places in America never saw it because the American Legion would show up and picket it and tell people going in that they were, you know, being un American by going to see an un American picture by an un American artist. It's a love story, basically, about the theater. There's no political orientation to it whatsoever. But they were. They were. They were a.
- [29:45]
Terry Gross
Limelight was.
- [29:47]
Scott Eyman
Limelight was a completely apolitical picture. But they were reacting to. They were still reacting to the Great Dictator. They were still reacting to Modern times and the idea of modern times being anti capitalist. I don't know if you remember Modern Times, but it opens with the factory workers flooding into the factory in the morning and the production line getting going and the assembly line moving faster and faster and everybody trying to keep up. And then we cut to the president of the corporation who's working a jigsaw puzzle at his desk. That's as close to. That's as close to a criticism of capitalism as it went. But that was Chaplin's worldview. He didn't see the. He didn't see society at large as evil or as vampirish. He saw it as indifferent. He. He didn't see. He didn't think society at large was genuine. Had had a limited interest in the life of the underclass. And it wasn't. It wasn't a character flaw. It wasn't based on money. It was just based on human nature.
- [30:49]
Terry Gross
So by the time Chaplin is banned from returning to the United States, few theaters can actually even show his movies.
- [30:55]
Scott Eyman
True. Absolutely true. And so he had them pulled from release in America for how long? Until 1964.
- [31:03]
Terry Gross
Wow.
- [31:04]
Scott Eyman
So it was 12 years. Was. The Chaplin films didn't play in America until 1964. And then when they did, it was because he had written his memoir and it was coming out in about a year and they decided to see if the temperature had cooled. So they booked a season of Chaplin films in New York. And it turned into the great event of 1964. It played for nine, 10 months, all the films in repertory. And as it turned out, the memoir was a huge bestseller as well. So his enemies had died or gone to earth or simply a new generation had taken over and decided that whatever had happened in 1939 and 1942 and 1945 had no relevance in the 60s.
- [31:52]
Dave Davies
Scott Eiman speaking with Terry Gross. Eyman's book Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided, is now out in paperback. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH air.
- [32:05]
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- [32:36]
Scott Eyman
This is Ira Glass of this American Life. Each week on our show we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right.
- [32:43]
E
I'm just going to stop right there.
- [32:44]
Scott Eyman
You're listening to an NPR podcast. Chances are you know our show.
- [32:48]
E
So instead I'm going to tell you.
- [32:50]
Scott Eyman
We'Ve just been on a run of.
- [32:52]
E
Really good shows lately, some big, epic.
- [32:54]
Scott Eyman
Emotional stories and some weird, funny stuff, too. Download us this American Live.
- [33:01]
Dave Davies
This is FRESH air. And we're listening to the interview Terry Gross recorded last fall with author Scott Eiman about his book Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided. It's now out in paperback.
- [33:14]
Terry Gross
So after Chaplin decides not to challenge the ban against him returning to the US he moves to Switzerland. He has a really good home life with his wife, Una, and their many children. But you say it ruined him as an artist, how the two films he.
- [33:31]
Scott Eyman
Made after he moved to Switzerland are grossly inferior to the films he'd made. Amongst all the tumult and controversy in Hollywood in the 30s, 40s and even into limelight in 1952, was Switzerland responsible or was age catching up with him? He wasn't that old. He was 63 when he got kicked out of the country, and he was 68 when he made a king of New York and 78 when he made Counts from Hong Kong. So that's getting up there. But good films have been made by directors in their 60s and 70s. So whether it was just a lessening of stimulus, a certain passivity in the environment that he found in Switzerland, all of his letters from this period, he talks about how restful it is and how serene it is and blah, blah, blah, blah. In one of Una's Letters, she says quite the opposite, that he would get claustrophobic with all the snow and he'd talk about going to Marrakech just to get to see the sun again. So I think it was a double edged sword. I think on one end, Switzerland gave him the serenity that he probably needed after 15 years of enduring character assassination. On the other hand, it put him out of touch with what was going on in the world around him and what was going on in America. And there's only so much you can get by reading newspapers.
- [34:52]
Terry Gross
Chaplin grew up very poor. His father was an alcoholic. His mother had mental health problems and was institutionalized. He lived in a rooming house with his father and his father's mistress. And then his father died young and Chaplin was sent to a workhouse as an indigent child. Just briefly describe what a workhouse was.
- [35:15]
Scott Eyman
A workhouse was basically a state run orphanage for children whose parents were either dead or rendered insane or institutionalized themselves or in jail. And they had no other adult supervision. So the state took them over. And Chaplin remembered it as a period not so much of abuse as utter humiliation. He was there for about two years. His brother was also there for a while. Sidney was older by two years. And Sidney was very, very close with Charlie and vice versa. Chaplin allowed very few people in intimately. He was not a man who glad handed. He was not a man who had a lot of people close to him. He kept himself for himself. And I think that was a function of his childhood. When he early learned the hard way that whatever society says it's going to do, or pretends it's going to do, essentially you're on your own. Especially in Victorian England with a alcoholic father who dies at the age of 37 and a mother who's insane and infected by syphilis. So he was very quickly responsible for his own. After childhood, he was responsible for his own recognizance, his own meals, his own roof over his head. And sometimes he had a roof over his head, other times he didn't. There were times when he lived on the streets.
- [36:48]
Terry Gross
After the Immigration and Nationalization Service banned Charlie Chaplin from returning to the US and he refused to fight it because he felt he'd been so mistreated in the U.S. and so smeared, he never returned to the U.S. right. That was it.
- [37:06]
Scott Eyman
He came back to get his Honorary Oscar in 1972. Oh, on his terms. His films were being reissued all over America, all over the world. He signed a deal for his film library and his films were being reissued and they Gave him an honorary Oscar to make up for the fact that in 1952, basically the entire movie industry had turned the other cheek and ignored the fact that the most famous comedian in town had just been driven out of the country. When he got kicked out of the country, three people in Hollywood stood up publicly and said this was a terrible mistake. You know who they were?
- [37:43]
Terry Gross
Who?
- [37:43]
Scott Eyman
Sam Goldwyn, Cary Grant and William Wyler. Everybody else shut up.
- [37:51]
Terry Gross
What did Charlie Chaplin say in his acceptance speech?
- [37:55]
Scott Eyman
He was overwhelmed. It was a 12 minute ovation. It was the longest ovation in the history of the Oscars. Old age is beginning to have its way with him. When you look at it on YouTube, he's older, he's frail, he just kind of shakes his head and he can't believe it that after all these years. You know, the funny thing was his son Sidney, wonderful man, gone now. But I had a long interview with Sidney, oh, 20 years ago probably. And he said, the thing that you have to understand about before father was he didn't care about the Oscar, he didn't care about awards. Those meant nothing to him. He said my father's image of himself was as a workman. To show up every day and work on the script until it's as good as you can make it, to show up on the set every day until the scene is as good as you can make it. He said it wasn't about awards, it wasn't even about money. It was about being a good workman, putting in your time. He said that's why he hated to go on vacation. You know, they had eight kids in the house and Una would get restless in the house, so the kids would get restless in Charlie, let's go to Ireland. Let's do this, let's do that. And he really didn't want to go. He would grudgingly, but he really wanted to stay and work on whatever his project was. He was a compulsive workman. That was his identity. But he came back because it was a business deal and he was making a lot of money and they were going to give him an Academy Award. And ultimately he was overwhelmed. He was overwhelmed by the response. He was overwhelmed by the love that the audience projected at him for those 12 and 15 minutes compared to the obloquy that he'd had to endure all those years at the end of his Hollywood period. It's a very moving scene when you watch it on YouTube. Very moving. So it was a closing of a circle. It really was a perfect closing of a circle. He died five years later.
- [39:55]
Terry Gross
Scott Eiman, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [39:59]
Scott Eyman
Thank you, Terry. It's been a lot of fun.
- [40:02]
Dave Davies
Scott Eyman speaking with Terry Gross recorded last fall. Eyman's book Charlie Chaplin vs When Art, Sex and Politics Collided is now out in paperback. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the movies Wicked and Gladiator 2. This is FRESH AIR.
- [40:18]
Scott Eyman
If you listen on the regular to the Fresh Air podcast, then I know you'll love some of the other NPR podcasts too. Here's why NPR is worth your time and money. You get perks like sponsor free listening bonus episodes, early access shop discounts and more for over 20 different NPR podcasts like this one. Support what you love and stop hearing promos like this one@plus.npr.org hey, it's Peter.
- [40:47]
Dave Davies
Sagal, the host of Wait Wait, don't tell Me Now.
- [40:48]
Scott Eyman
If you like Wait Wait and you're.
- [40:50]
Dave Davies
Looking for another podcast where the hosts.
- [40:53]
Scott Eyman
Take self deprecating jabs at themselves and.
- [40:55]
Dave Davies
Invite important guests on who have no business being there, then you should check.
- [40:59]
Scott Eyman
Out NPR's how to Do Everything.
- [41:01]
Dave Davies
It's hosted by two of the minds.
- [41:02]
Scott Eyman
Behind Wait Wait, who literally sometimes put words in my mouth.
- [41:06]
Dave Davies
Find the how to Do Everything podcast wherever you are currently listening to me.
- [41:10]
Scott Eyman
Go on about it.
- [41:12]
Dave Davies
This is FRESH air. This pre Thanksgiving week sees the release of two much anticipated studio movies. Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington star in Gladiator 2, the sequel to the Oscar winning Roman epic Gladiator, while Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande star in Wicked, an adaptation of the Broadway musical fantasy featuring characters from the wizard of Oz. Our film critic Justin Chang has seen both Wicked and Gladiator two. Here's his take.
- [41:41]
E
Some moviegoers are already referring to Gladiator 2 and wicked as this year's Barbenheimer. I believe Glicked is the portmanteau of choice. We'll see if the comparison holds up. Both these lavish spectacles are set to be huge hits, but unlike Barbie and Oppenheimer, they're essentially known quantities rooted in stories and characters that the audience knows well. Wicked was adapted from the long running Broadway musical which was itself inspired by Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel. But you should know going in that this 2 hour and 40 minute movie is just part one and there will be a year long intermission before Part two. The director, John M. Chu of in the Heights and Crazy Rich Asians takes a glossy maximalist approach to this origin story for the Wicked Witch of the west, the villain so Memorably played by Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 classic the wizard of Oz. In this telling, the witch's name is Elphaba, and as played by a quietly commanding Cynthia Erivo, she's brave, brilliant and grievously misunderstood, mainly on account of her green skin. Much of the movie takes place at a school of sorcery, basically Hogwarts with Munchkins, where Elphaba impresses the powerful headmistress, an imperious Michelle Yeoh. It's here that Elphaba becomes rivals with a smug queen bee named Galinda, the future Good Witch of the North. She's played with delightful comic brio by the pop superstar Ariana Grande, but in time, the two become genuine friends. In this scene set to one of Stephen Schwartz's better musical numbers, Glinda decides to give Elphaba a makeover.
- [43:33]
Scott Eyman
Popular, you're gonna be popular. I'll teach you the proper boys when you talk to boys the wave to blow. I'll show you what shoes to wear, how to fix your hair Everything that really counts. To be popular. I'll help you be popular.
- [43:53]
Terry Gross
You'll hang with the right cohort.
- [43:55]
Scott Eyman
You'll be good at sports.
- [43:57]
Dave Davies
Know the slang you've got to know from that start.
- [44:00]
Scott Eyman
Cause you've got an awfully long way to go.
- [44:06]
E
Wicked handles the boarding school comedy with a pleasingly light touch. There's also a hint of a romantic triangle involving a handsome prince. A very good Jonathan Bailey, who, like a lot of things here, foreshadows future wizard of Oz developments. In time we get Jeff Goldblum, nicely cast as the wizard himself, who turns out to be less wonderful than he appears. This sets the stage for Elphaba to harness her full magical strength and become Oz's public enemy number one. Wicked Part one does build to a doozy of a gravity defying Emerald City climax. But much of the movie is too lumbering, too obvious and frankly, too digitally slick to cast a spell. I hate to say this about a movie that teaches us not to judge based on appearances, but I do wish Wicked looked better. Where Oz has winged monkeys, Ancient Rome has deranged baboons. Early on in Gladiator 2, Lucius, a warrior played by Paul Mescal, must prove his mettle by defeating a very scary simian in the Colosseum arena. Sixteen years have passed since the events of the first Gladiator. And like that movie's slain hero, Maximus, indelibly played by Russell Crowe, Lucius is a prisoner scarred by personal tragedy and bent on revenge. His hatred, though, isn't just aimed at one person, Lucius wants to burn the whole rotten empire to the ground. The director Ridley Scott has reunited with some of his key collaborators from that first film, including the actor Connie Nielsen, making a regal return as Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Most of the cast, however, is new. Pedro Pascal plays a formidable general with whom Lucius has a score to settle, while Joseph Quinn and Fred Heschinger romp up a storm as a pair of twin brother tyrants who are driving Rome to ruin. And Denzel Washington, unsurprisingly, gets the juiciest role as Macrinus, a sly and somewhat inscrutable slave owner who sends Lucius into the arena. It's fun to watch Washington go over the top, but his scene stealing is typical of Gladiator 2 as a whole. It's a lot of flash to very little purpose. Meskell, best known for his sensitive, melancholy work in the series Normal People and films like after sun, gives an intensely physical performance, but his lucius never lays claim to your sympathies as commandingly as Maximus did. And when the characters start talking laboriously about the downfall of Rome and the hope of a glorious rebirth, the movie rapidly loses steam. It's like watching an extended WWE SmackDown suddenly interrupted by a civics lesson. Still, the smackdown itself is pretty satisfying. In Gladiator 2's wildest action sequence, the Colosseum arena becomes a giant saltwater tank, complete with dueling warships and bloodthirsty sharks. It's an utterly outlandish spectacle, but Ridley Scott, who's now 86, doesn't sweat the logistics. The first Gladiator asked, are you not entertained? And in these moments, at least, we are.
- [47:31]
Dave Davies
Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed Wicked and Gladiator 2. On Monday's show, we speak with Marine Corps veteran Bailey Williams about her experiences as a woman in the military and the pressure she felt to prove her strength and push her body to dangerous extremes, running for hours a day, starving herself, binging and purging. Her book is A Memoir of My Body in the Marines. I hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on InstagramPresHair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorok. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Adam Staniszewski, Joyce Lieberman and Julian Hertzfeld. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Faya Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly CV Nesper and Sabrina Siewert with Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley. I'm Dave Davies.
- [48:48]
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- [49:25]
Scott Eyman
The following message come from arm. In their podcast, Tech Unherd, ARM CEO Rene Haas and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discuss innovation in a rapidly transforming landscape.
- [49:36]
Terry Gross
Available on all podcast platforms.