When you think of iconic film makers of the early twentieth century few, if any, shine as brightly as Charlie Chaplin. The man was a comic genius and helped to define an art form. My personal favorite among his films is Modern Times. I consider it his masterpiece, but I am also very fond of The Gold Rush, City Lights, The Kid, and others. In addition, one of my favorite films of all time is Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. When I was living in Greece, I found a copy of Chaplin’s My Autobiography in a library and eagerly read it; later, I came across the door-stopper of a book Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson (my two-part review is here and here), which along with the autobiography supplied source material for Attenborough’s film.

For a time early in his career, Chaplin was the darling of the cinematic universe. Charlie Chaplin vs. America, though, deals with the time later on, in the early stages of America’s Red Scare, when Chaplin began to be investigated by the FBI and the State Department. Postwar America was a strange place; many people, especially politicians, became ultra-conservative and rabidly anti-communist, and Chaplin got caught in the crosshairs. As Eyman tells it: “Chaplin became the most prominent victim of what amounted to a cultural cold war – a place where art always loses.” This book clarifies that so-called “cancel culture” is nothing new. Public opinion shifts according to historical and political trends, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s Chaplin went from being one of the most popular movie stars ever to being ostracized as a cultural pariah. It all culminated when in September 1952, soon after embarking by ship on a trip to Europe, Chaplin was informed that his re-entry visa to the United States had been revoked.

For years Chaplin had been accused of being a communist; J. Edgar Hoover had a notorious grudge against him, and his FBI file ran to thousands of pages of material. However, amidst all of it, no agent ever found proof of the accusation. Chaplin himself professed to being apolitical; it’s true that he had attempted to help raise support for Russia during World War II, but this was a period when the Soviets were American allies, and Chaplin supposed that promoting Russia would help bring the war to a swifter close. And of course, Chaplin was not the only well-know public figure the FBI went after; a quick internet search shows that the FBI had files on Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Groucho Marx, Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Mickey Mantle, Michael Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – to name but a few.

Chaplin was also accused of being a sexual deviant. It’s true he had a penchant for younger women, but it was one case in particular that aroused the authorities. A woman named Joan Berry, who had been not only having an affair with Chaplin, but also seeing numerous other men, accused Chaplin of being the father of her infant daughter. The trial that resulted became notorious in its farcical ridiculousness. Blood tests proved without a doubt that Chaplin was not the father, but the ultra-conservative judge ruled that evidence inadmissible; he also did not allow Berry’s other affairs to be mentioned in court. Chaplin ended up paying support for a child that was not his, and the public took the findings of this absurd kangaroo court as fact.

Of course the persecution he was undergoing affected Chaplin’s filmmaking and his personal life. Eyman details Chaplin’s efforts to keep working despite the pressure he was experiencing; the movies he made during this period, such as Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, and later A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong, are drastic departures from his earlier work and reflect the changes he was going through. As for his personal life, in the midst of the confusion he met Oona O’Neal; his marriage to her, which endured and resulted in a family of eight children, provided stabilization in the midst of outward turmoil.

Once Chaplin was out of the country, journalists attacked him with outright lies; it reminded me of the disinformation that is rampant on the internet these days. Eventually, decades later, public opinion changed and when Chaplin returned to the United States to receive his honorary Oscar, he was met with great fanfare and adulation.

This strikes me as a profoundly contemporary story. In the media these days artists in music, film, literature, and other mediums have to face a barrage of commentary on social media, and fact-checking seems to be a thing of the past. I sometimes inadvertently, in the course of browsing the web, come across news of scandals and improprieties by this person or that, and it is often difficult to tell what’s true and what isn’t. The tendency seems to condemn first and verify later, if ever. This is a worthwhile story to read in the light of modern political and cultural realities. Recommended.