Charlie Chaplin prepares for return to United States after two decades
On this day in 1972 the great silent film actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin prepares for his first voyage to the United States since 1952 when he was denied a re-entry visa amid questions about his leftist politics.Born in Britain in 1889 Chaplin first became famous as the Little Tramp in Mack Sennetts Keystone comedy films.Over the course of his four decades in Hollywood Chaplin was one of the motion-picture industrys most accomplished figures writing producing directing and acting in such gems as The Gold Rush (1925) City Lights (1929) Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940).With Douglas Fairbanks Mary Pickford and D.W.
Griffith Chaplin founded United Artists the first major movie production company to be controlled by filmmakers instead of businessmen.Led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee anti-Communist hysteria had Hollywood in its grip by the end of the 1940s.Chaplin earned special scrutiny on account of his tumultuous private life (married several times to extremely young women he was also the target of a paternity suit in 1943 which he lost) and his public support of leftist political causes.In September 1952 Chaplin and his fourth wife Oona (the daughter of the playwright Eugene ONeill) were en route to London for that citys premiere of his latest film Limelight when they were informed by U.S.
immigration services that Chaplin would be denied a re-entry visa upon his return.Bitter and angry Chaplin vowed never to return to the United States.He moved with his family to Switzerland and never made another American film.Over the years anti-Communist fervor died down in the United States as did the animosity between Chaplin and the American government.
In 1972 Chaplin planned a return visit to America to accept an honorary Academy Award.He traveled first to the British overseas territory of Bermuda where he prepared on April 2 for his flight to the United States.The following day according to a report in The New York Times Chaplin arrived at New Yorks John F.
Kennedy International Airport on Eastern Airlines Flight 810 at three p.m.in the afternoon.As his wife guided him by the elbow to a waiting limousine Chaplin blew kisses to the nearly 100 people (most of them members of the press) who had gathered on the airfield some 200 other spectators watched from behind glass in the Eastern Airport Terminal.Chaplin spent four days in New York where the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored him in a tribute.
He then flew to Los Angeles for the 44th annual Academy Awards ceremony.The 82-year-old Chaplin received a 12-minute-long standing ovation from the audience in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that night and was visibly moved as he accepted the award which honored the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.
