Charlie Chaplin (1951)

Record Details:

Title:
Charlie Chaplin
Date:
1951
Publisher:
New York : Henry Schuman, Inc.
Volume:
Charlie Chaplin
Leaf #:
000387
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
{"Media History Digital Library","Richard Koszarski","Jeff Joseph"}
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
March 21, 2024
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XXX Chaplin and politics Chaplin has often been attacked on political grounds. As early as 1921 reporters were asking him if he was a "Bolshevik." Twenty years later he was denounced in Washington for his "communistic connections." To this Chaplin has made several public denials that he is a communist. What are the facts? Let us examine the actor's own statements and activities and the statements of those intimately associated with him. Having seen poverty in his own childhood, Chaplin was naturally interested in any plans for social betterment. A rebel and non-conformist in private life, he was drawn to any doctrine which seemed to promise or vaguely connote "freedom." Max Eastman appears to have been the first political intellectual to influence him. Eastman, when he met Chaplin in 1919, was a radical poet and editor of the Liberator, a left-wing magazine. Today Eastman is an editor of Reader's Digest and his writing is anti-communist and anti-Soviet. At that time, however, he was, in his own words, "the only Socialist agitator who opposed the World War and supported the Russian revolution, and yet managed to stay out of jail." Chaplin, who heard him in the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles, admired his "restraint." Through Rob Wagner he later met the speaker. Personable and not much older than Chaplin, Eastman hit it off well with Chaplin.