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The film was largely directed against Anglo-American puritanism, always a source of fecund satire for Chaplin, and particularly so in this case since his divorce from Mildred Harris had unleashed a flood of scurrilous stories concerning him, which had even extended to the recent arrival of his mother in California.
Though Chaplin's early and close devotion to his mother had naturally been changed through his long-continued absence from England, he had never failed to surround her with every luxury his now comfortably large purse could buy, to make up for the lean and terrible years of his boyhood, when she had nearly died under the struggle. When he decided, for the sake of her health, to bring her to California, he was subjected to more of the calumny he had grown to expect from certain sections of the press.
It was said that he had refused to pay the expenses of her journey, so that she had been obliged to travel steerage. She was, therefore, so it was reported, interned on Ellis Island and refused admission to America, being without visible means of support. And it was only upon the intervention of a lawyer that her unworthy son, against his will, sent just enough money to release her.
The facts were exactly opposite. Hannah Chaplin had travelled luxuriously, with a nurse and a companion in constant attendance. Her meeting with her son was made more moving because she did not realize at all he was a world-famous figure; and to the day of her death she did not know of his world-conquest.
He had bought for her a most beautiful house at Santa Monica, facing the sea, and there installed her with her nurse and companion, and every luxury and comfort an invalid could desire or need. He was adversely criticised when these facts were made known, because he continued to live in his own house, while Syd occupied one beside the studio on La Brea Avenue. The press clearly felt cheated of a charming family picture.
Chaplin suffered acutely under this barrage, which overwhelmed him at a time of anxiety and preoccupation. He was intensely worried about his mother's health, since it was clear that she was failing. At the same time he was absorbed in plans to establish the United Artists Corporation, an independent company he intended to form with his old friends Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffiths. This was his final effort to secure absolute independence in his work, as in that of those who were associated with him. Some part of the originality of his film work has been due to his foresight in securing total independence before the American film industry turned into a vast factory.
His anxieties, domestic and business, were relieved by the arrival in