Text retyped by David A. Gerstein
James Fay (Chaplin's Questioner): I'm objecting to your particular stand that you have no patriotic feelings about this country or any other country.
Charles Chaplin: I think you're . . .
JF: You've worked here, you've made your money here, you weren't around in the last war when you should have been serving Great Britain, you were selling bonds, so it stated in the papers that I read, and I think that you as a citizen here -- or rather a resident here -- taking our money should have done more.
CC: Well, that's another question of opinion. I say I think it's rather dictatorial on your part to say as how I should apply my patriotism. I have patriotism and I had patriotism in this way and I showed it and I did a great deal for the war effort but it was never advertised here. Now, whether you say that you object to me for not having patriotism is a qualified thing. I've been that way ever since I have been a young child. I cannot help it. I've travelled all over the world and my patriotism doesn't rest with one class. It rests with the whole world -- the pity of the whole world and the common people, and that includes those who object to my -- that sort of patriotism.
JF: Are you friends with Hanns Eisler?
CC: Yes, he is a personal friend, and I am very proud of the fact.
JF: Do you think Eisler is a Communist?
CC: I know he is a fine artist and a great musician and a very sympathetic friend.
JF: Would it make any difference if he were a Communist?
CC: No, it wouldn't.
JF: Or a Soviet agent?
Second inquisitioner (not named in my source): It seems to me that I am in the minority here, but Chaplin should have the right to think what he wishes. But you [Chaplin] have stopped being such a good comedian since your pictures have been bringing messages -- so-called.
CC: It is your privilege to think so.
SI: Are you going to make any more pictures for children -- that children like?
CC: I will make the pictures that I like, because if I like something -- I'm pretty commonplace -- then children ought to like it.
SI: Would you -- you have children -- would you let them see your picture?
At this point, the question was levelled as to whether profits from The Great Dictator were used "for the salvation of people in [French] D. P. camps, political refugees." Chaplin was very bewildered by this, and eventually a spokesman for United Artists halted this line of questioning. Then James Agee, representative of the Nation magazine, interrupted from his seat in the balcony.
James Agee: What are people who give a damn about freedom -- who really care for it -- think of a country and the people in it, who congratulate themselves upon this country as the finest on earth and as a "free country", when so many of the people in this country pry into what a man's citizensh is, try to tell him his business from hour to hour and from day to day and exert a public moral blackmail against him for not becoming an American citizen -- for his political views and for not entertaining troops in the manner -- in the way that they think he should. What is to be thought of a general country where those people are thought well of?
Text retyped by David A. Gerstein