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Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided
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About This Book
The "shocking" (The Wall Street Journal), must-read story of Charlie Chaplin's years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film career, from bestselling biographer Scott Eyman.Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin's fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War II, Chaplin was criticized for being politically liberal and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the postwar Red Scare took hold. Politics aside, Chaplin had another his sexual interest in young women. He had been married three times and had had numerous affairs. In the 1940s, he was the subject of a paternity suit, which he lost, despite blood tests that proved he was not the father. His sexuality became a convenient way for those who opposed his politics to condemn him. Refused permission to return to the US after a trip abroad, he settled in Switzerland and made his last two films in London. In Charlie Chaplin vs. America, Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times. "One of the finest surveys of the man and the artist ever written" (Leonard Maltin) this book is "a sobering account of cancel culture in action." (The Economist).
Reviews
"A beautifully composed and unique look at how Chaplin was characterized as an immoral sexual deviant and Soviet-sympathizing subversive."
"It's fun to read and it adds detail to the story of Chaplin's spectacular peripeteia."
"Eyman gives the history a sense of urgency by highlighting the danger that government interference poses to artistic speech, and his account of how 'Chaplin's forced exile destroyed him as an artist' is affecting."
"Eyman approaches his subject with compassion, digging to explore the ordinary person beneath the veneer of celebrity."
"Eyman outlines a respectable argument for separating art from artist, while also carefully separating fact from fiction."
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