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The resentments were deferred, not dismissed. In the palmy days of Hollywood, a story made the rounds. Actor: "How should I play this scene, Mr. Chaplin?" Reply: "Behind me and to the left." It was more than a critique of the star's egomania; it was also a comment on his politics. From the start, Chaplin was a fan of sentimental collectivism, of revolution seen through a scrim. He needed no Bolshevik primer on poverty. Charlie had risen from the darkest of London slums. His father was a drunk; his mother sewed blouses for 1½ pence per. He and his half brother Sydney had gone the rounds of London's forbidding schools for the destitute. Chaplin's great creation is a waif in the tradition of Pip and Oliver and David Copperfield. Like Dickens, Chaplin never forgot the wink of the pavement and the leer of the gutter. Also like Dickens, he was enchanted with radical politics —at a proper distance. In fact, despite his sponsorship of Soviet-American friendship meetings and loud avowal of Stalinist causes, Chaplin was the kind of political naif who would only fellow-travel in first class.
When the Hollywood Ten were exorcised from the film industry, Chaplin offered his voice to the choir of protest. Two years later, one of the ten, Alvah Bessie, called on Chaplin begging for a writing assignment. How about a movie on Don Quixote, Bessie spitballed, with you as Sancho Panza and Walter Huston as Don? "They'd crucify me," Chaplin told him crisply and offered a farewell handshake. When Bessie morosely withdrew, he found a folded hundred-dollar bill in his palm.
That was about the extent of Chaplin's Red menace. It was enough. By 1952 the sexual scandals had proliferated; he had been fingerprinted and tried for violation of the Mann Act (innocent) and in a paternity suit (guilty). More, the cold war had frozen the country's sense of humor. Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi fulminated against some socially conscious paintings. "I am sure," he said, "that some of them got into the home of Charles Chaplin, the perverted subject of Great Britain who has become notorious for his forcible seduction of white girls." Rankin was correct in one respect, and it was the one that irritated more enlightened legislators: Chaplin had resided in America for more than three decades, but he had never forsaken his British citizenship. Inevitably Chaplin was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was his chance to play David with the Philistines. Instead, he sent a brief wire: i AM NOT A COMMUNIST; NEITHER HAVE I EVER JOINED ANY POLITICAL
PARTY OR ORGANIZATION IN MY LIFE. I AM WHAT YOU CALL A
"PEACE-MONGER." I HOPE THIS WILL NOT OFFEND YOU.
The Government's response was a classic in xenophobia.
In 1952, Chaplin and his fourth wife Oona were in mid-Atlantic when they heard the news. Attorney General James P. McGranery had instructed immigration authorities to detain Chaplin on his return. "If assertions about Mr. Chaplin are true," said McGranery, "he is, in my judgment, an unsavory character . . . charged with making statements that indicate a leering, sneering attitude toward a country whose hospitality has enriched him."