Chaplin, Charlie, and the Political Left

Beginning as early as the 1920s, rumors that Charles Chaplin was a Communist or Bolshevik sympathizer were shrugged off at first and, in the character of Charlie, even satirized. The power of the icon was such that, even though Chaplin was fairly liberal, the types of witch-hunters who would destroy all but themselves were unable to squelch his fame or destroy him personally. It was upon attempting to fuse a new unity between his icon and his rather disparate self, in The Great Dictator, that Chaplin opened a rift between himself and his audience. After that film, by removing the Tramp (or, finally, barber) as the most important image of himself, Chaplin left bigots easily able to twist misrememberings of his pleas for the common man into anti-American attitudes, his pledges of allegiance to international citizenship into false pro-foreigner zealotry. I will claim that it was only when the power of the icon faded that such character-based attacks were made possible.

Chaplin was questioned quite early on about his political views. During a 1921 trip to Europe, he was asked twice by interested fans if he were "a Bolshevik" (Robinson 1985: 277):

"No," he replied.

"Then why are you going to Europe?"

"For a holiday."

"What holiday?"

At this point he changed the subject, doing it sooner the second time: "I am an artist, not a politician." The same excuse was used in 1927: when Chaplin was pursued for tax evasion, he pointed out that no political motive was involved (although a political cartoon parodied the situation anyway). In the 1930s, a trip to Germany to promote City Lights, during which the picture at left was taken, saw Nazi leaders castigating the general population for acclaiming the "Jewish" comedian. It was an era, however, of conflict between the right and the left, before Nazi power was completely consolidated, so a group of unemployed cinema workers was able to assemble without consequence outside Chaplin's hotel. Robinson recounts how the band threatened a mob demonstration if they didn't get an audience with Chaplin; as a result, he let a few in and admitted he was sorry for their plight, "but there were 75,000 unemployed in Hollywood also. An hour later, the Berlin Communist daily newspaper was out with a report that Chaplin had received a delegation of its editors and had expressed deep sympathy with the Communist cause." (Robinson 1985: 430)

A few years later Chaplin produced Modern Times (1936), which if one was really searching for socialism, one might interpret as an assault on capitalism. Personally, the present author shares the view of critics he has read in finding it more a comment on the machine age in general; Chaplin's character has been described as anarchic (1985: 459), but not in a realistic, politically aware sense. Charlie's environment, which forces Charlie to live, breathe, and even eat machines (an automatic feeder forces grommets down his throat) with him completely out of control, is less realistic than an example in which he might have retained some control. How revolutionary Chaplin might have been at the time can be gauged by his employ of Alf Reeves to work on the ensuing Great Dictator; Reeves suspected that because "I was a declared Communist . . . my background and political preoccupations would keep me from selling him out for money" (1985: 488). In general, Chaplin seemed willing to tolerate Communism, but only because he supported humanity in general. "The Communists are no different from anyone else," he said in 1942; "when [the Communist mother] receives the tragic news that her sons will not return, she weeps as other mothers weep" (1985: 515). One can only applaud such an honest statement.

Trouble started in earnest when Chaplin was producing Monsieur Verdoux (1947) a few years later, a film which raised censorial ire for having its main character (not the icon Charlie, in this case) liken his murder of rich widows to "the authorized operation of murder as a business by the state, in the form of war" (Robinson 1984: 141). False accusations of impregnation had been fired at Chaplin by Joan Barry a few years before; as Hitler had it, if you tell enough lies, people are bound to believe at least a few of them, and now the ill-will generated by that event (and related ones), together with the lingering fascist attitudes that had caused opposition to The Great Dictator, mixed with the Verdoux outrage and led to Chaplin's first questionings for un-American activities. It was, as Michel de Certeau would have it, a classic power relationship of strong and weak, exploiter and exploited (De Certeau 1984: 34).

In these situations, Chaplin found that anything he said could be used against him, much as in the casual 1921 interview quoted above. His statements that he had never "belonged to any political party" and never voted simply told jingoistic James W. Fay (of the Catholic War Veterans) that, if not necessarily the enemy, he certainly wasn't "patriotic" enough. Fay even attacked Chaplin for having sold American war bonds a few years earlier rather than having fought for Britain (where he was still officially a citizen) on European soil. Finally, a specific enemy was identified whom, it was suspected, Chaplin was involved in suspicious activity with: he had, it was said, attempted to prevent the deportation of Hanns Eisler (a friend of Chaplin's who was indeed a communist). De Certeau points out how in politics, "each party dervices its credibility from what it believes and makes others believe about its . . . adversary" (1984: 188): Fay and others gained power, De Certeau might say, by ravaging "the enemy," and when there wasn't one, forcing an innocent (due to his social, not political, acts of less-than-innocence) to fit the mold. It would not have been surprising had Fay brought in as evidence a scene from Modern Times in which Charlie sees a red flag fall from a truck and, by attempting to carry it back to its owner, inadvertantly causes a labor union to fall into step behind him!

Where, indeed, was Charlie as this hubbub began to break out? After The Great Dictator, the Tramp had been retired for some years, and it had not worked well on Chaplin's public image to have the icon's most potent era behind. Chaplin by himself was never an icon, never sacrosanct unless the lucky star he had devised was in his heaven as well. The 1947 questioners -- and Red-baiting film journalist Hedda Hopper -- suggested what route Chaplin might have taken to get out of the mess had he been less an experimenter in film: "Was he going to make more pictures with the tramp," the group asked, "or more pictures with a message?" One can feel the implicity threat of the last statement, blasting through the shield that a powerful icon once afforded. And in 1953, while on a trip to Europe to join the premiere celebrations of his latest film Limelight, Chaplin was officially barred from reentry to the United States. Referring to "powerful reactionary groups," Chaplin clearly understood what had gone on, but it was unfortunately too late to do anything about it (Cotes and Niklaus 1965: 83).

When the country got over its Red Scare and, decades later, Chaplin returned to the United States to receive a special Academy Award, it was once again the ineffable power of the icon that enabled him to return: while jingoism fell in upon itself over the Vietnam War, the accusations against Chaplin softened, poor receptions accorded his last films (released as imports here) vanished along with recollections of those films, and, once again, the famous Tramp stood out as the Chaplin everyone remembered, everyone knew. It is as if a single figure stood out, waiting for the tumult and the shouting to die so that he could make himself known again with his antics, his thoughts, and his humanism. Waiting for years. Icons are like that.

-- David Gerstein

(For some parts of Chaplin's 1947 questioning, click here.)