Chaplin Returns
The revival of Chaplin's City Lights must have refreshed a few hundred thousand memories, but what is it that keeps him fresh in the minds of millions ? Many in the crowds which have been following him and crying out " Good old Charlie ! " were infants when he was here before and know him only from early short comedies revived at children's cinema-clubs. Yet their welcome has a warmth and an absence of partisanship which show that even without Mr. McGranery's curiously furtive action "Charlie " would have been just as loudly cheered. Only the Communists could gain from treating the Chaplin case as a threat to good relations with the United States, and Chaplin himself seems aware of this, for he-is being cautious in talking about his re-entry permit. He made his most telling point when he said : " I have millions and millions of friends in the United States and only a few enemies." That was getting down towards the real roots of the anti-Chaplin campaign which has been raging with few lulls for thirty years Or more. The Hearst papers, some Senators and a few Hollywood rivals are among the deadliest enemiesiwho have done so much to fan up the hate, but it would be over-indulgent to pretend that Chaplin has not sometimes been his own enemy, even making allowances for the feverish and odd way of life in Hollywood. It is a bad sign of bad times that questions of liberty and morality should arise from the movements of a film comedian. It is the shadow of that international chauvinism which is as great a threat to civilisation as the atomic or any other bomb. The gagging and binding of artists is best left to the East.
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