Chaplin and the Red Scare
The Red Scare
During the Second World War, Chaplin was to unwittingly start a chain of events that would be the start of his downfall in the US. In 1943, Chaplin was invited by the Russian War Relief to give a speech at an “Arts for Russia” dinner. Naively he accepted and gave an address by the title of “Salute to our Russian ally.” In his speech he praised the Russian soldiers for their bravery and claimed that they “the Communists” were just as human as anyone else. He later recorded the speech at the Soviet consul for subsequent broadcast in Russia.
Following the Second World War, paranoia was whipped up in the American public over the possibility of subversive communists in their midst by the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In 1947, Chaplin was called to account by the media for his communist sympathies during the Second World War. Chaplin refused to change his former position and stated that he still owed his thanks to Russia for its help during the war and did not consider communists to be his enemy. To add further insult to injury, when quizzed about why he had never taken US citizenship and hadn’t declared himself a “patriot,” he explained that he considered himself to be merely a “paying guest” and a “man without a country.” The media were outraged and the Los Angeles Herald Express demanded that Chaplin be taken at his word and denied residency in the US.
Later that same year,
the Representative for Mississippi, who was also a member of the HUAC, told the House:
I am here today demanding that Attorney-General Tom Clark institute proceedings to deport Charlie Chaplin. He has refused to become an American citizen. His very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America. In that way he can be kept off the American screen, and his loathsome pictures can be kept from before the eyes of the American youth. He should be deported and gotten rid of at once.
One month later, the newspapers learned from Representative Thomas that HUAC now intended to issue a subpoena requiring Chaplin to testify before them. Chaplin did not wait for the subpoena but sent a reply by telegram to Thomas:
From your publicity I note that I am to be quizzed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington in September. I understand I am to be your single ‘guest’ at the expense of the taxpayers. Forgive me for this premature acceptance of your headline’s newspaper invitation. You have been quoted as saying you wish to ask me if I am a Communist. You sojourned for ten days in Hollywood not long ago…and could have asked me the question at that time, effecting something of an economy, or you could telephone me now—collect…While you are preparing your engraved subpoena I will give you a hint on where I stand. I am not a Communist. I am a peacemonger.
In an atmosphere of growing fear, some of Chaplin’s best friends in Hollywood felt that he should shut up and not make unnecessary enemies. However, Chaplin always maintained that, “A democracy is a place where you can express your ideas freely—or it isn’t a democracy.” In the opinion of his son Charles, “He always felt he belonged here in America, with its promise of freedom in thought and belief and its emphasis on the importance of the individual.” Chaplin later described how he imagined he would behave if he were called before the Committee:
I’d have turned up in my tramp outfit— baggy pants, bowler hat and cane—and when I was questioned I’d have used all sorts of comic business to make a laughing stock of the inquisitors. I almost wish I could have testified—if I had, the whole Un-American Activities thing would have been laughed out of existence in front of the millions of viewers who watched the interrogations on TV.
It is tempting to speculate that this could have well turned out to have been one of the greatest and most memorable performances of his life.
However, in reality he was subpoenaed three times and each time the date was postponed until eventually he received a surprisingly courteous reply to his telegram, saying (without any given reason) that his appearance would not be necessary and that he could consider the matter closed.
