charlie chaplin paternity scandal

Star Wars Episode XI: Charlie Chaplin by Karina Longworth

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

The most successful film of Charlie Chaplin’s career was also the most controversial: in The Great Dictator, Chaplin viciously satirized Hitler before the US entered World War II, and the comedy helped rally a previously war-shy American public. We’ll explore the connections between Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, and explain why most of Hollywood tried to stop The Great Dictator from being made. Then we’ll switch gears to discuss how Chapin’s wartime activism and his troubled personal life collided to benefit J. Edgar Hoover, who spent thirty years trying to prove that Chaplin was dangerously un-American. 

Show Notes:

The impetus for this episode was a documentary produced and aired by TCM, which I first saw about a year ago, called The Tramp and the Dictator. The film was co-directed by Michael Kloft and the great silent film historian Kevin Brownlow (if you haven't seen his series Hollywood, on the silent era, find it and watch it post haste), and it tells the story of how and why Chaplin made The Great Dictator, using previously unseen material shot on the set of the film. I thought it would be interesting to contrast this aspect of Chaplin's war experience with the section of City of Nets in which Otto Friedrich describes Chaplin's personal life and the scandals it caused during the war years as a kind of prelude to the legal issues that would get him thrown out of the US a few years later. 

 

Additional Bibliography:

Chaplin's War Trilogy: An Evolving Lens in Three Dark Comedies, 1918-1947 by Wes D. Gehring

Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics  By Steven J. Ross

CharlieChaplin: Jewish or Goyish?

Audio excerpts from The Tramp and The Dictator and The Great Dictator via YouTube

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Wonder Cycle by Chris Zabriskie

Benbient by Canton

Exlibris by Kosta T

Gagool by Kevin MacLeod

Devastation and Revenge by Kevin MacLeod

I Need to Start Writing Things Down by Chris Zabriskie

Out of the Skies, Under the Earth by Chris Zabriskie

Ghost Dance by Kevin MacLeod

I Know a Guy by Kevin MacLeod

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