J. Edgar Hoover's FBI put together a dossier on Chaplin that reached almost 2,000 pages. Wrongly identifying him as "Israel Thonstein," a Jew passing for a gentile, the FBI found no evidence that he had ever belonged to the Communist Party or engaged in treasonous activity. In 1952, however, two days after Chaplin sailed for England to promote Limelight, Attorney General James McGranery revoked his re-entry permit. Loathing the witch-hunts and "moral pomposity" of the cold war U.S., and believing he had "lost the affections" of the American public, Chaplin settled with Oona and their family in Switzerland (where he died in 1977).

With the advent of the '60s and the Vietnam War, Chaplin's American fortunes turned. He orchestrated a festival of his films in New York in 1963. Amid the loudest and longest ovation in its history, he accepted a special Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1972. There were dissenters. Governor Ronald Reagan, for one, believed the government did the right thing in 1952. During the 1972 visit, Chaplin, at 83, said he'd long ago given up radical politics, a welcome remark in a nation where popular favor has often been synonymous with depoliticization. But the ravishing charm and brilliance of his films are inseparable from his convictions.

At the end of City Lights, when the heroine at last sees the man who has delivered her from blindness, we watch her romantic dreams die. "You?" she asks, incredulous. "Yes," the Tramp nods, his face, caught in extreme close-up, a map of pride, shame and devotion. It's the oldest story in show business — the last shall yet be, if not first, at least recognized, and perhaps even loved.

Ann Douglas is the author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s

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July 6, 1925	Feb. 9, 1931
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