If you care to read 2060 pages of files from the FBI H.Q. in Washington you can get the real goods on the FBI's smear campaign. That is if you can imagine this actor as a ';threat to National Security'; without laughing....as a basic intro, I suggest you take a look at this:
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/chaplin鈥?/a>Can someone explain the FBI's smearing campaign on Chaplin?
Chaplin refused to cooperate with the infamous blacklist and so drew the wrath of the Republican establishment. When he left the country he, as a Citizen of the UK, was refused a visa to return. Many foreign artists left the USA either by force or voluntarily in this period. The playwright/Poet Bertolt Brecht is another example. It was not a proud period in history.
Chaplin's political sympathies always lay with the left. His politics seem tame by modern standards, but in the 1940s his views (in conjunction with his influence, fame, and status in the United States as a resident foreigner) were seen by many as communistic. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. In at least one of those speeches, according to a contemporary account in the Daily Worker, he intimated that Communism might sweep the world after World War II and equated it with human progress.
Apart from the controversial 1942 speeches, Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of WWII he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry (see below). After the war, the critical view towards what he regarded as capitalism in his 1947 black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux led to increased hostility, with the film being the subject of protests in many US cities. As a result, Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier. After this film, Chaplin lost interest in making overt political statements, later saying that comedians and clowns should be ';above politics';.
[edit] McCarthy era
Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States and was a resident from 1914 to 1952, he always retained his British nationality. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of ';un-American activities'; as a suspected communist sympathizer and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive secret files on him, tried to end his United States residency. FBI pressure on Chaplin grew after his 1942 campaign for a second European front in the war and reached a critical level in the late 1940s, when Congressional figures threatened to call him as a witness in hearings. This was never done, probably from fear of Chaplin's ability to lampoon the investigators.[5] This was probably a wise decision, as Chaplin later stated that, if called, he wanted to appear dressed in his Tramp costume.[citation needed]
In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. Hoover learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit. Chaplin decided not to re-enter the United States, writing; ';.....Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.';[6]
Chaplin then made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and was welcomed warmly.
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