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art, found a "mysticism" in the artist's personal character. Max Eastman, who has known Chaplin since 1919, writes, "His life is filled to the brim with what most lives consist of yearning after — wealth and fame and creative play and oeautiful women — but he does not know how to enjoy any one of the four ..." and is "in the depths of his heart humble, a poor boy who had no opportunities and is eager to learn." Eastman also feels that he has fallen short of his potentialities; he would have gone much further could he have let himself go intellectually, poetically, and financially.
Alexander Woollcott rhapsodized over Chaplin as "the_ foremost artist of the world. . . . His like has not passed this way before and~we~shall not see his like again." Even Winston Churchill, calling the silent movies "everybody's language," referred glowingly to several Chaplin films and analyzed his pantomimic art. And the greatest playwright of our time, the late Bernard Shaw, named Chaplin "the only genius developed in motion pictures."
More recent critics have continued to heap adulation upon Chaplin. There are some who feel that this adulation from the intellectuals has had an adverse effect on Chaplin — turned him from comedy and emotion to fields beyond his depth. Chaplin had once characterized himself as "only a little nickel comedian. . . . All I ask is to make people laugh." Later, however, he began to see himself as an intellectual, a thinker able to help change the world.
Chaplin has been vehemently attacked for his so-called politics and his private life. But he is indifferent to criticism and ignores it. As Burke observes, "He does^qat sermjiie press or critics. He serves the people." Hence he has never bothered to explain his views or actions — even why he has never become a citizen of the country which alone could have given him such wealth.