Oona said that when she heard all this, whatever attachment she had for the house was severed then and there. Even the tears of Helen, our maid, who wept when Oona left, had little effect but to hasten her departure.
Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a nonconformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. This, of course, has offended many, including the American Legion. I am not opposed to that organization in its true constructive sense; such measures as the G.I. Bill of Rights and other benefits for ex-soldiers and the needy children of veterans are excellent and humanitarian. But when the legionnaires go beyond their legitimate rights, and under the guise of patriotism use their power to encroach upon others, then they commit an offence against the fundamental structure of the American Government. Such super-patriots could be the cells to turn America into a fascist state.
Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities – a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority one.
Thirdly, I have never attempted to become an American citizen. Yet scores of Americans earning their living in England have never attempted to become British subjects; for example, an American executive of M.G.M. earning in dollars a four-figure salary a week has lived and worked in England for over thirty-five years without becoming a British subject, and the English have never bothered about it.
This explanation is not an apology. When I began this book I asked myself the reason for writing it. There are many reasons but apology is not one of them. In summing up my situation, I would say that in an atmosphere of powerful cliques and invisible governments I engendered a nation’s antagonism and unfortunately lost the affection of the American public.
*
Limelight was booked to open at the Odeon in Leicester Square. I was uneasy as to what the reception would be, as it was not the usual Chaplin comedy. Before the première we had a preview for the Press. Time had sufficiently removed me from the film to view it objectively, and I must say I was moved by it. This was not being narcissistic, for I can enjoy certain sequences in my films and loathe others. However, I never wept as some snide reporter said I did – and even if I had, so what? If the author does not feel emotional about his work he can hardly expect the public to. Frankly I enjoy my comedies even more than the audience.
The première of Limelight was for charity, and Princess Margaret attended. The next day it opened to the general public. Although the reviews were lukewarm it broke world records, and in spite of the fact that it was boycotted in America it grossed more money than any picture I have ever made.
Before leaving London for Paris, Oona and I were the guests of Lord Strabolgi at a dinner in the House of Lords. I sat next to Herbert Morrison and was surprised to hear that as a socialist he supported the policy of atomic defence. I told him that no matter how much we increased our atomic piles, England would always be a vulnerable target; she was a small island, and retaliation would be little consolation after we had been reduced to ashes. I am convinced that the soundest strategy for England’s defence is absolute neutrality, for in an atomic era I doubt that absolute neutrality would be violated. But my views were by no means in accord with Morrison’s.
I am surprised how many intelligent people talk in favour of atomic weapons. At another house I met Lord Salisbury, who was of the same opinion as Morrison, and in expressing my abhorrence of nuclear defence I felt that I did not stand in good stead with his Lordship.
At this juncture, I think it appropriate to sum up the state of the world as I see it today. The accumulating complexities of modern life, the kinetic invasion of the twentieth century finds the individual hemmed in by gigantic institutions that threaten from all sides, politically, scientifically and economically. We are becoming the victims of soul-conditioning, of sanctions and permits.
This matrix into which we have allowed ourselves to be cast is due to a lack of cultural insight. We have gone blindly into ugliness and congestion and have lost our appreciation of the aesthetic. Our living sense has been blunted by profit, power and monopoly. We have permitted these forces to envelop us with an utter disregard of the ominous consequences.
Science, without thoughtful direction or sense of responsibility, has delivered up to politicians and the militaire weapons of such destruction that they hold in their hands the destiny of every living thing on this earth.
This plethora of power given into the hands of men whose moral responsibility and intellectual competence are to say the least not infallible, and in many cases questionable, could end in a war of extermination of all life on earth. Yet we go blindly on.
As Dr Robert Oppenheimer once told me: ‘Man is driven by a compulsion to know.’ Well and good – but in many cases with a disregard of the consequences. With this the Doctor agreed. Some scientists are like religious fanatics. They rush ahead, believing that what they discover is always for good and that their credo to know is a moral one.
Man is an
