Archive, 1952: Charlie Chaplin returns to England after 21 years in the US
Fleet Street, Tuesday“Good old Charlie” is still the cry with which his countrymen greet Charles Chaplin. It was heard a great deal this morning at Waterloo station when he arrived from Southampton. There is always a crowd at Waterloo and it would be too much to say that the hundreds who milled around on Platform 11 as the train came in were there specially. If any political demonstration was expected it did not take place, or was swamped by the simple goodwill of people who were obviously pleased to see “Charlie.”
“Who is Charlie?” a little girl asked insistently of her father. “He’s the greatest comic there ever was,” the man replied. Was he right? That is, perhaps, a matter of medium, a question of whether the screen can in the end maintain a man’s position as the “greatest comic.” But whatever the degree of greatness, there can be no doubt of Chaplin’s popularity.
People who had caught a glance of his widely grinning face turned away smiling to themselves, or even laughing, as if they might be coming out of a cinema showing one of his best comedies. Even the ranks of cameramen (sometimes a dour race) could scarce forbear to cheer.
One of them, perched on top of a car, followed the limousine across Waterloo Bridge and up the Strand to the Savoy shooting into the back window where Mr and Mrs Chaplin sat together, still laughing and smiling from their warm welcome. “Somebody making a film?” my taxi-driver said through his sliding window. “No, it’s Charlie.” He did not bother to ask “Charlie who?” but accelerated to draw up beside the Daimler and have a look himself. Several People peered into the car, recognised Chaplin, and waved. In the hotel courtyard a small crowd was hanging about. It grew quickly as the car turned in, and ran to the entrance, taking up the laughing and the cry of “Good old Charlie.”
Excited at welcomeLater Mr Chaplin held a press reception. He came into the room with his wife, his son, and Miss Claire Bloom, who is at present playing Juliet at the Old Vic. After a photographic session he addressed the press from a platform through a microphone which at first would not work. He said he felt excited, emotional, and deeply moved by his Cockney welcome.
He repeated what he had already said – that he was no revolutionary, no Communist in any sense. Everything he had done was for the service of “our allies in the war.” He was asked to speak for Russian war relief and “like us all” he did. “But now the war is over. Hitler is dead, thank God – and let’s get on with it.” That was all he had to say about his political misadventures.
The rest was about how different London looks, how disappointing the new Waterloo Bridge, how heartening the view of Westminster. He said nothing about the new film he is thought to have in mind. If, as reported from Cherbourg, it is to be about a European immigrant arriving in New York and his adventures there, it is bound to remind those who study his work of a 1917 film called The Immigrant. Into this, according to Theodore Huff’s catalogue, Chaplin for the first time “infected sentiment and social satire.”
“At not time (according to the film historians Bardèche and Brasillach) is either the comedy or the sentiment presented ‘straight,’ and it is one of the first films in which this subtlety appears. Some of the incidents are really startling, as, for instance the glimpse of the Statue of Liberty immediately followed by the brutal examination of immigrants. The injection of satire and of sentiment into this film gives it a curious perfection.”
Mr Chaplin would give no direct answer when asked about his plans if he were excluded from the United States. “I’m sure American democracy will function,” was all his comment. Presently be excused himself, saying he had to see a doctor about his eyes. He had seemed on the whole less elated than at Waterloo Station – but it was seven hours on, and he explained that he had not slept for twenty-four hours.