Dan Snow's History Hit - Charlie Chaplin

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

The Golden Age of Hollywood was a place of pioneers, storytellers, ideas, westward expansion, money, politics and scandal- the story of Hollywood is the story of America itself. At the turn of the 20th century, Hollywood in Los Angeles was a dusty country hamlet, but soon bright young things came from across the country and even the Atlantic to seek fame and fortune. One of them was Charlie Chaplin who became famous for his iconic Little Tramp character with his baggy trousers, bending cane and toothbrush moustache. In a lot of ways The Tramp was a mirror of Chaplin’s own life- born into abject poverty in London, looking for something better, standing up for those without a voice. But Chaplin was of course a more complicated, darker character- his personal life was controversial and troubling- he had a number of relationships and marriages with teenagers whom he often met as children starring in his films. At the height of his fame, he was on the FBI's most wanted list under instruction from J Edgar Hoover and was eventually exiled from the USA, where he'd made his name.It’s a long and complicated life and to help Dan untangle it is Paul Duncan, author of ‘The Charlie Chaplin Archives’. He's one of very few whose ever been granted full access to the archives of the Chaplin estate in Paris and Switzerland...Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

The golden age of Hollywood was a frontier of technology, creativity and celebrity. A place of pioneers, storytellers, ideas, westward expansion, money, politics, scandal. The story of Hollywood is the story of America itself. Rudimentary movie making in the US was largely on the east coast until filmmakers realised California on the west coast offered almost year-round sunshine, long days for filming and a number of dramatic landscapes and vistas to make the most of. The other big advantage was they could escape the strict patent enforcement by the Thomas Edison Motion Pictures

Patents Company, who'd take legal action against anyone coming up with their own similar technology to make motion pictures. Hollywood, at the turn of the 20th century, was just a country hamlet founded by an ardent prohibitionist and a devout Episcopalian. Living there was a community that despised gambling, liquor and popular entertainment. In 1913, a fledgling director by the name of Cecil B. DeMille rented land on a lemon farm and set up dressing rooms in a horse barn and shot what would become a western epic, The Squaw Man, to great commercial success. Soon others moved in. Dust roads and parcels of land were sold off to build movie plots and studios by new filmmakers like W.G. Griffiths, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Meyer popped up. Bright young things

came from across the country and even the Atlantic Ocean to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. One of them was Charlie Chaplin, who became famous for his iconic little tramp character with his baggy trousers, bending cane and toothbrush moustache. The moustache won urban myth incorrectly, says was the inspiration for Hitler's. In those now iconic movies of the silent era, audiences laughed and gasped as the tramp, a plucky underdog, gamed the system, just out of reach of authority, managing to triumph over the big guy. The Tramp, brought to life by Chaplin's incredibly deft physical comedy, existed outside of the law, but always acted with compassion to those who were deserving, the poor, children, stray dogs. In a lot of ways, the Tramp was a mirror of Chaplin's own life, born into abject poverty in London, looking for something better, standing up for those without a voice. But Chaplin was of course a more complicated, darker character. His personal life was controversial and troubling. He had a number of relationships and marriages with teenagers, whom he often met as children starring in his films. whom he often met as children starring in his films.

His second wife, Lita Grey, whom he seduced when she was just 15, filed for divorce in a court case that revealed details that shocked and scandalised his fans. She was awarded over $800,000, the biggest divorce settlement in the world at the time. The scandal of the relationship was supposedly the inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. His tumultuous private life, combined with the overt social critique of his films like Modern Times and The Great Dictator, added fuel to the fire of conservatives who accused Chaplin of being both a moral threat and having communist sympathies. He ended up on J. Edgar Hoover's most wanted list as a public enemy, eventually being exiled from the country where he'd made his name and put Hollywood on the map. It's a long and complicated life, and to help me untangle it, I'm joined by Paul Duncan, an author on popular culture and film.

He wrote the Charlie Chaplin Archives, where he was given full access to the archives of the Chaplin estate in Paris and Switzerland. A pretty rare thing. Charlie Chaplin on Dan Snow's history hit. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Paul, great to have you on the podcast. It's great to be here. Now, I don't think many people realise that Charlie Chaplin is actually a Brit. Tell me about his birth and upbringing. Well, the thing is that even his family know very little about his birth and upbringing

nobody really knows his origins and if you like all his life he's been trying to find out who he is where he comes from what his origins are so in reality what we know is that he was born in 1899. He may or may not have been born in Birmingham or his family came from Birmingham. His mother and father were entertainers. His mother and father were always traveling around. But as entertainers in Victorian Britain, they couldn't really support themselves. They couldn't really look after themselves. And they fell into poverty. And it ended up that Charlie and his brother then went into a workhouse, into care, when they were very young.

And that's really how they grew up. Their mother would visit them on occasion. Their mother was ill, perhaps mentally ill, and the father disappeared. He then passed away. He was a singer, also named Charlie Chaplin. He had this very uncertain childhood where he never knew from day to day where the next piece of food was coming from. And really, that was his, if you like, early life. That was him and his brother as two against the world, if you like. Both father and mother, though, the performers, so somehow he learned from them or he had the same skill set as them and started performing as well? Yeah, well, I mean, there is a story. I mean, we can't verify a lot of these stories. I mean, I've been looking through all the old newspapers to try and find tracings of the parents, etc. And they do turn up around the country. You will find that.

But there is a story where his mother basically was on stage, had stage fright or croaked up or lost her voice or something. And then Charlie comes on as a tiny little boy, and he starts singing a little song, and all the crowds start singing along with him. This is a sort of like a beautiful little story. How true it is or not, I don't know, but it's often repeated. So it's become part of the myth of Charlie Chaplin. And really, from a very early age, from the workhouse, his brother came out, but through their connections, he was in a thing called the eight Lancashire lads who were singers and dancers and he started to

have this little career growing up as a child he would travel around the country around Brigham as part of the eight Lancashire Lads. And that developed over time. He had little parts in theatre. He played Billy in Sherlock Holmes. He played different types of comedy. So where he would not only be puns, if you like, or just straight comedy, but also clowning, where it was all physical comedy. And he sort of developed this over the years. But he was still a kid, teenager, doing all these things. Now, his brother, Sid, actually became a top comedian at Carno. Kano were the big, big troupe. If you like, they had a group of Kano performers performing different skits or routines. So there was a story that would be written out, and that would be performed by the Kano troupe. And they didn't have radio television at that time.

So obviously, this story was a unique item that needed to be distributed around the country and abroad. And Carnot had this great idea of training up all these different troupes to do the same thing. So you could be in Aldershot and you could be in Birmingham and you could be in Edinburgh on the same night with three different troops doing this routine. And that's what Carnot invented. He industrialized the whole process of comedy in the UK. And they would go abroad to America and on the continent

and around the world, in fact. So he's travelling around Britain as a child. God knows who he's vulnerable to, and he's performing in venues, and he's just moving on to the next town. I mean, this is precarious. We talk now about safeguarding. I mean, God knows what he would have experienced. Yeah, well, there's never been any stories of abuse or maltreatment, really, which is interesting because you've got to remember a lot of these people who travel around, right? They are in a precarious situation themselves. And there's a great sense of community among these people

looking after each other. The show must go on. This whole idea of the show must go on. We must complete it. We must do it. A circus thing, an entertainment thing. But that creates a great sense of community as well. And in fact, if we jump forward a few decades and Chaplin, he has his own studio, he's rich, he's making his own art, if you like. He is helping people, performers who are down on their luck, are not getting the jobs, et cetera. Although Chaplin has a reputation and probably truth of being a bit stingy with money, which is understandable considering his background, he would actually help entertain us. And there's one of his, if you like, great rivals, Billy Reeves, who also performed as a tramp. He passed away and Charlie took on his widow as his seamstress. And he would often

do this sort of thing. If he'd meet these guys who were passing through, people he'd known from the old times, certainly he was very helpful. Not in any way, you know, bragging about it or I'm a big man or whatever. You just quietly help people. This all comes back from their days as a troupe. Now, Charlie, his brother, Sidney, was a big guy in Carno because Sidney was not only a performer as a comedian, and within a troupe you would have a top comedian, the headline act if you like, and all these other people supporting them. So Sydney was one of those. But Sydney was even more precious to Carno because Sydney was a writer.

So Sydney could write De Hydro and other stories that were set in certain places. So De Hydro was set in a spa, which was seen as not a class thing and a new thing that was happening at that time. So Sydney was great. And as a favor, Carno took on his little brother, Charlie, as one of the small guys, you know, as one of the comedians, as one of the second guys that would be in the troupe. Now, the thing is, within a Kano troop, everybody was extremely competitive. These were people who had to scrape a living in order to survive. And they knew that if they got the top spot, that's where all the fat is. That's where all the money is.

That's where all the claim is. That's where all the food is, in effect. So everybody, the routines, the skits that they were doing, they were tight in terms of plot, but they were very thin in terms of character. And so it was up to the performers to bring what they had into the roles. And so it became a thing that all the secondary players were trying to upstage in order to get the laughs, right, in order to suck the laughs out of the lead performer. Yeah. So this is happening on the stage. And so each performance is going to be different because somebody may have come up with an idea. And so you have to roll with it.

You have to be in the moment. You have to be spontaneous. Famously for Chaplin, there was one like pantomime he did when he was younger because he was so young, he was small. He was small naturally because of, I assume, malnourishment. He was like a cat or a dog. And he's coming on this sort of Christmas pantomime and he cocks his leg up by a tree. He's one of many, but he's the only one who cocks his leg up.

Right. And that gets an enormous laugh. So that's what he was like. And he applied this same idea to his work at Kano. And he became a lead comedian through doing this. Now, they would all have routines. The whole idea of, if you like, the tramp in musical in the UK was everywhere. Everybody played a tramp. It wasn't a unique character. It was something that was expected. And they all had their own ways of playing the tramp. So what you see later on with Chaplin and his tramp, that's not only Chaplin applying himself, his own ideas to the role. It's also these little techniques like running around the corner with his one leg up. This was a way to stretch out time on a stage.

So when you're on a stage, you have to pretend there are corners or you're going around the corner on the stage. And you have to slow the moment down in order to show people that you're going around the corner. And so Chaplin and other performers developed this idea of coming to the corner, hopping on one leg and putting the other leg up in order to show that idea of going around the corner, of smoking a cigarette, flicking it and then kicking it off the back heel. These are all tiny little touches that they all found during their performances. tiny little touches that they all found during their performances. And this observation as well, they would see people, they would meet people, and they would copy them, they observe from life. And so he has this sort of break, he's with the Kano troop, the Kano travel to the US. And that's when things really start to take off for him. Yeah. I mean, incredibly, people turn down the idea of going to America.

And he's a lead comedian in the UK having his own troupe. And he goes across. Alf Reeves was his manager, the guy that looked after the troupe. So he collected all the people to go off to America, including a young Stan Jefferson, who would later be known as Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy, was part of Chatelaine's troop going off to America. And what they did there was they started off in America and they would do a few places in New York and then they would travel around the country up to Canada as well. And basically, they found that some of their routines just didn't translate in America. So they went in with

these brand new ideas about secret societies, the hydro and other routines, which they had practiced, but they just didn't work in America. So they were constantly switching their routines for their audience. And they traveled across America. And I mean everywhere. I was just flying across America a few days ago. I was over the Rocky Mountains, and I could actually see Boot, Montana. In 1913, 1912, that was a mining camp.

It was not unheard of for shootouts and fights, et cetera. And Chaplin and his troop were there. And they went to the Continental Divide and had a few photos taken, et cetera. But these were rough places. They weren't necessarily rich places. They were really surviving hand to mouth, going from place to place. And Chaplin was the lead. Now, his story, the thing that he became known for when he was in America

as part of Carnot, was for playing the drunk. There was a show called The Night, a show where essentially the stage is a stage. On either side, you see boxes, the boxes where the audience would be. In the middle, there'd be a stage. And Chaplin was one of the people in the boxes, something like the two old guys in The Muppets

would be up there and they'd be commenting and saying, this is horrible and ha ha ha and all that sort of stuff. Well, Chaplin was that original guy, but as a drunk, as this old drunk guy who, as the performers came on and did their pieces, he would comment on them and then interfere with the whole performance and come on stage, etc. So this was almost like meta-theatre. The other element of that, which is really important, is to understand that Carnot had this idea of being wistful. Now, what he meant by that is that all these performers, all these people who are making you laugh, also had another dimension to them, so that there was a sadness or a regret to the characters.

So all of a sudden, the characters became real. And if you like, this, rather than the industrialization of comedy around the country, it was this element which was truly unique about Carmel. And it was this element that Chaplin eventually understood was his USP in cinema. in cinema. And how do you make that jump from a British touring comedy routine to cinema, Hollywood? Quite simply, Max Sennett and Mabel Normand, two people from Keystone, Max Sennett was Keystone, Mabel Normand was the lead actress in many of the comedies, they saw him perform as the drunk. And their lead performer at that time decided, oh, I can make more money elsewhere. And he left. So they needed somebody to replace him. And basically they said, oh, we remember seeing this guy. He came to Los Angeles or San Francisco last year. I wonder where he is and what he's doing.

So Charlie basically got a telegram, met some guys, and they said, yeah, we'll pay for you. And they were paying far more than Carno. That's right. Well, that's how it works, right? Money talks. I mean, Hollywood's less than 10 years old. Hollywood, as we know it, is kind of less than 10 years old at this point.

What's the state of filmmaking in California? Basically, it's a lot of white boys, a lot of salesmen, a lot of people who are just making things up as they went along. Effectively, Hollywood, as we know it now, didn't really exist. What happened was that all the film had originally been based in New York and around that sort of East Coast. And then in order to avoid copyright and patents, a lot of people had gone across to the West and the other side of America as far away as they could get from the lawyers in order to set up their own little companies to make movies. Now, movies at this stage is just 10 minutes,

20 minutes. It's not the feature films we know now. The technology is very raw. The whole idea of editing, moving the camera, all very raw, all being discovered for the first time, how to use it, how to tell stories. And basically, what you have is filmed plays. It's very static. In terms of the comedy, they're actually trying to adapt spoken comedy to cinema, to silent cinema. There's no sound. You can't hear what people are saying. In the theatre, you've got a guy with an organ playing music. He can play whatever he likes, you know, and they all have their standard bits for comedy, whatever. He may not have even seen the movie, so he's just playing along without any idea what's going to happen next. Chaplin goes there, and it's a

complete madhouse. He's at Keystone. There are multiple performers. You've got multiple stages. Everybody's shouting because it's not like me now having to make sure that everything is quiet elsewhere because you can hear me, right? There's got people constructing sets, people playing music on the set because sometimes they were playing music for the rhythm of a scene, people shouting, et cetera. None of this could be heard. It was complete chaos on the set because they're filming multiple films at the same time. And then some of the performers say, oh, today,

let's go off to the beach. Let's go to the beach and film something there. Let's just make something up. It's complete chaos. Oh, what character shall I perform today? You know, some of the leads, if you like, will have like a standard character, but everybody else, they would just make stuff up as they went along. So Chaplin was in that sort of environment,

an environment where anything goes, and he knew nothing, zero, about cinema. So if you like, as soon as he joined Keystone, he's on a steep learning curve. The first characters he plays are with top hat, a big moustache, a swanky kind of masher, as they were called. This is like the equivalent, I suppose, of the white boys or spivs that we would have had in the UK. Basically, this reputable gentleman who basically are only

interested in romancing the women and stealing money. So his first characters are like that in the early ones. And then at a certain point, they needed a different type of character. And he decides to make up this tramp character where he's stolen the clothes. This character has stolen clothes. So his trousers are baggy. They're way too big for him to be tied together. The waistcoat and top is too small for him, so it's really tight. The enormous shoes with the cane and the bowler hat, the little moustache. This was a character, if you like, created by Chaplin, but he acts like the masher. The character isn't there, but the, if you like, the outside appearance is there in his first movies. He made several of these little 10 minute things. And the first one to be shown to an audience,

right, is they had races where they had a local event. This is a thing that Keystone used to do. a local event. This is a thing that Keystone used to do. They would have a local event. There were people, kids riding these like soap carts and everybody was coming along to see it. So Keystone basically turned up that day and just made stuff up, including Chaplin in his gear, looking at the camera. They actually had the story. Cameramen were filming this, and he is somebody from the crowd coming up and wanting the attention. So he's always looking in the camera, and they're always shooing him away, which is an extension, the meta idea, the extension of him being a member of the audience, being like the audience. And this character became a hit, the audience being like the audience. And this character became a hit, but he was still a horrible guy in effect. And then over a year, Chaplin learns everything about cinema that he can from

Keystone. He learns about the camera, the camera position. He learns about the characters. He learns about directing. He starts writing and directing his own movies in that year. And he becomes famous. He's allowed to do this because when the figures come in, they see that his films are way, way more popular than anybody else's movies. He is making a ton of money for Keystone. So if he wants to do something, they allow him to do it. You listened to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come. On American History Hit, we ride the wild Oregon Trail, delve deep beneath Central Park, and fight the forgotten war of 1812. Join me, Don Wildman, and my expert guests as we uncover the stories that have shaped America in all its endless complexity. We'll follow John Wilkes Booth as he shoots President Lincoln and goes on the run. And we'll walk under the stars with Harriet Tubman as she finds her way to freedom. Follow America's story from the first Native people to footprints on the moon. On American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit, with new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. To be continued... popes who were rarely the best of friends murder rebellions and crusades find out who we really were by subscribing to gone medieval from history hit wherever you get your podcasts so the kid is a star he's had an incredibly turbulent life he's now unbelievably famous

he's propelled to the front of this new industry don't you know his personality what effects does have on him because he's a controversial figure he's obviously loved and celebrated at the time but hugely problematic in his relationship with women and girls and often at the centre of scandals. What kind of man is he now? The man is still a boy, right, in my personal opinion on this, because I think that he never really had an opportunity to grow up. He's never had a normal home life. He's never had a steadying influence. He's never had a moral compass, if you like. He's never had any idea other than being the center of attention, of being a diva in that there's a certain point where he becomes

such a perfectionist that he only wants things done his way. And so I am sure he was completely insufferable in many ways. He was part of the Hollywood elite as the top performer, along with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, director like D.W. Griffith. At one point, they joined together to make United Artists in order to protect themselves as performers. So he not only becomes a director, owns his own studio, but he owns the distributor as well. So the only performer, writer, director, actor, editor,

composer of music in order to own his own distribution network in the history of cinema. All right. So he is completely insufferable, but he doesn't forget his roots. He still remembers being poor. And repeatedly, he talks about in his autobiography and other writings and interviews, the idea of meeting people that had once been these great men of the stage, actors, as well as comedians, who are down on the look, they have nothing. And he always sees himself as going to be that guy, you know, a few years down the line. As a person, I think he is opaque and unknowable because he never really shows his true side to people. He's always performing. When I was looking at interviews, doing all the research, you would see most of the interviews, he's putting on a performance.

Oh, I'll do this interview in a bath. I'll do this interview in a shower. I'll put on a song and dance. I'll make a routine out of spontaneously doing this, being in the moment, because that's what he knows people expect of him. process. He'll show what he's thinking, that he's actually thinking about his next movie. And the subjects he's talking about are those subjects which are in his mind. But he never tells you who he is as a person. He talks about his politics, doesn't he? Let's move on to that. The 1930s, the difficult 1930s, where people were forced and being forced to take sides and speak out as the far left and far right grew ever more powerful and present around the world, but also in America and Britain. Was he quite unambiguous about this? Basically, he stood for people. His view was that he stood

for human beings. So anything that was for the people who are essentially his audience, cynically, you could say he was standing up for the working man, the people who are essentially his audience. Cynically, you could say he was standing up for the working man, the people who was making him rich. But I think it's more to do with his background, his upbringing in poverty, and understanding that people had it hard. In the 1930s, you're talking about the Depression, where the whole financial markets had broken down and everybody was dirt poor. People were living hand to mouth. Food was too expensive. Everything was too expensive.

Nobody could afford to live. And so how do you make the world good again? How do you make it so that everybody can live? Now, at that time, Chaplin was friends with people like Sinclair Lewis, the novelist, and Max Eastman. And these were all left-leaning people, people who wanted something where the community would come together, the government would come together, the government would come together and to help the community. So it's about communal help. And communism, yes. These ideas were very prevalent in Hollywood in the 1930s and accepted as perhaps a solution to the problems that we have. He was supporter of the New Deal at the time,

which was this idea of the government helping everybody through infrastructure. And he appeared on radio broadcasts. And this is the same throughout the 1930s. Now, as a Hollywood elite, everybody of importance around the world wanted to meet him. around the world wanted to meet him. So prime ministers, royalty, the rich, they all wanted him at their parties. They wanted him to perform, to do his routines, with the two buns from Gold Rush, where he does the little ballet with the two buns on the forks. All these routines from his movies, he was doing at parties all around America and around the world. He traveled the world as well.

And this gave him a new appreciation of what it was like around the world. He understood that this was his audience, that everyone was his audience. It wasn't just people in London or the people in the US that he may have seen. And in fact, somebody did calculations to say that with the number of copies of his movies going around the world, because he's a silent comedian, therefore he could communicate with everybody around the world, that there were at least

18 million people per night watching his movies. He understood that, and he wanted better lives for them all. It's as simple as that. So he would stand up, he would be on radio broadcasts for the New Deal, for example, and he would promote the idea that we all needed to help each other in order to make the world a better place. And that brings us possibly to his most famous scene or the most enduring scene is the great dictator speech, which I remember someone showed me for the first time 10 years ago. I'd never even heard of it. That speech blew my mind. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.

The hate of men will pass and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were.

By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. It's incredible, isn't it? I mean, I think the interesting thing about that speech in The Great Dictator is that Chaplin has broken character in that in the movie, he's playing two different characters, a dictator and a Jewish barber. And I think that it's supposed to be the Jewish barber up there talking and having this cry out for world peace, if you like, to let people to live, to have freedom. Well, in effect, it's Chaplin talking.

And so I think it is his most important statement. Now, I have to say, Chaplin actually planned out this movie after Hitler came to power, but before World War II had started. So he'd actually planned it much earlier. It took a few years for it to come out. When it was played in the UK, it was when the UK was at its lowest during the Blitz, et cetera, and America were not in the war. This was seen as an incredible rallying call, an incredible call to arms, an incredible

sign of support that there are other people around the world who will support the UK. I mean, it was incredibly successful as a movie in the UK. In America, it was incredibly divisive because many Americans did not want to enter World War II. And Chaplin was considered a sort of pariah in America. And this, I think, if you want to look at Chaplin as a personality, this is the point of really where he's losing his audience in America, because his politics were really saying one thing. He was declaring himself, if you like. And a lot of people, a lot of the rich people that he was associated with, really that was not the message that they wanted to hear. So that's a sad reflection of one that feels quite contemporary as well. So he gives this

speech as a beautiful moving attack on insane dictators and a defense of kind of democracy and liberalism. And you're saying that actually that lost him a portion of the US electric. Great. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the same on, he grew up in the age of industrialization, And it's the same on, he grew up in the age of industrialization, right? He understood what industrialization, he had seen it as a kid going around the UK and he understood he was often staying in places, in farms, in little places and seeing miners coming back and having to bathe in the bathtub after a hard day's 10, 14 hours underground. bathtub after a hard day's 10, 14 hours underground. So he grew up in that working class environment. When he goes to America, he understands about industrialization. He talks to intellectuals about this, like Sinclair Lewis, like Max Eastman, and many others.

Everybody wanted to meet Chaplin. everybody wanted to meet Chaplin. Einstein wanted to meet Chaplin and talk about music because Chaplin played cello, Einstein played violin, and basically they played music, sweet music together. So he had all of those connections, those intellectual connections, and that resulted in modern times, which is a story where literally the machinery chews up people. There's a famous scene where Chaplin is dragged because he needs to get his work done. He's dragged into the machine and he goes round the cogs. He becomes part of the cogs of the machinery,

which is an incredibly visual metaphor for the world we live in. But he was doing it with humour. He was bringing up all these social problems with humour. And the kid, which is this ode to children and to family, is all based on his own life. It is all based on the poverty that he grew up with. In fact, he even recreated the places he lived in on the Hollywood studio, his studio. So this is, I think, always you've got to look at where he came from dictated the person he became. And then the times in which he lived dictated the government response.

He found himself caught up in the 1950s in the kind of crazy McCarthyism, the Red Scare. He attracted Hoover's interest, J. Edgar Hoover, the famous FBI boss. Talk to me about that. It all got a bit hectic for Charlie Chaplin in the 50s and 60s. boss. Talk to me about that. It all got a bit hectic for Charlie Chaplin in the 50s and 60s. The reality was that Chaplin, because he went his own way, like a lot of Hollywood liberals, I suppose you would say at that time, he attracted the interest of J.K. Hoover, the head of the FBI, as you say. Generally, from the 1930s, when he was against something, when he stood up for people's rights, the FBI, they would make note of these things. I've actually been through the FBI file for Charlie Chaplin. And it shows that I think 1941, before

America entered the war, Chaplin and a lot of other people like John Garfield, et cetera, would go to rallies in support of Russia during the war. Because essentially, if America was not part of the war, who was going to join with Britain in order to win against Hitler and the Nazis? At the beginning, Russia had a pact with Germany, so they weren't involved. And then there's a point at which they were in the war against Germany. So it was really Britain and Russia against Germany. Chaplin went to New York and he stood up and he had this impassioned speech about supporting Russia, of sending aid to Russia. Since America as a country were not going to help the war effort, then let's get together and send money, food, whatever's needed in order to support this. And that's really when he gets big time.

He's on the FBI's radar. And you can see in the files that that's continued, that surveillance. Every time he pops up in connection with the Russians, there's a note on the file. They're monitoring the press. He does an interview. They annotate it. The Russians praise his movies, they translate it,

and it's in the file. Now, there's a certain point a couple of years later when there's a paternity suit against Chaplin. John Barry said that in 1943. So still, it's during the war. 1943. So still, it's during the war. America have joined the war at this point. And Hoover is effectively helping this paternity suit against Chaplin. So they're on the side of John Barry and supplying information to Barry's side in order to suppress Chaplin. So this was like an ongoing war that Hoover basically had marked Chaplin out as somebody he didn't want in America. There's even at one point, can you believe this? There was a bill raised by a senator against Chaplin in order to get Chaplin out of America. I mean, it doesn't go any further, but there is a bill raised, and it's still there if you have a look in the records. So all this adverse publicity for Chaplin

means that his popularity is waning in America. And also the subjects that he's choosing to make as movies, they're not in tune with what's happening in America. And then eventually in the 1950s, early 1950s, he makes Limelight, which is his ode to beauty as he sees it. This idea of wistfulness, this idea of a beautiful soul, of love for another and self-sacrifice for another, which was his definition of beauty, which you see at the end of City Lights, probably his best movie, and is also in limelight. The idea of the older male performer loving this ballerina and wanting to support her.

He makes that movie and then goes off to the UK in order to visit the UK again. And while he's on the ship going from America to the UK, a telegram arrived saying that his visa was revoked because he'd never become a citizen of America. In other words, he would have to sit through interviews and prove to people why he should be allowed back in America. Luckily, he had his whole family with him. But essentially, from that moment on, he was exiled from America. And this is all Hoover's revenge after all these years of trying to get rid of Chaplin. He at last had this opportunity and he grabbed it. And from that moment on, until he was called back in 1977 to receive an honorary Oscar, he never set foot in America again over 20 years.

So he lives in Switzerland, as you say, visiting America to pick up an Oscar in 1972. And he dies in the late 70s. He lived a pretty long life, didn't he? Yeah. And I think what's great for him is that he did find some sort of joy and serenity. He found a partner, Una O'Neill, who he was in sync with.

He had this large family. They lived in Switzerland in Vevey near Lausanne. And it was sort of an idyllic life. He made a couple of more movies in the UK. Ironically, he made all these movies in America about Britain, and when he's not allowed in America again, the movies he makes are really about Americans. And then he writes his autobiography, and he's fated.

He's this famous man all his life. He was incredibly, incredibly famous and known throughout the world and he loved that and whenever anybody visited he would put on a performance you can see in all his home movies his brother would visit and they would do old routines and he was basically just like a big kid living out his life well i think we covered we covered it, Paul. That was fantastic. Okay, thank you. you