Charlie Chaplin was once one of the most famous actors in Hollywood. But despite his fame, he was forced into exile and expelled from the United States by the government.
That’s because he was an early target of FBI operations against left-wing political influence in Hollywood.
FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover was personally obsessed with Chaplin from the 1920s to the infamous HUAC hearings and the “Hollywood Blacklist”—a pamphlet that circulated names of 151 entertainment industry professionals who they were claimed to be communists.
Studio heads such as Jack Warner and Walt Disney spoke of the “red influence” in the industry, and Chaplin was regularly featured by influential gossip columnists for all the wrong reasons.
But he was not the only actor affected by the so-called “red scare”. Dozens of writers and actors have seen careers decline and families break up.
There was also a concerted effort by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals to oppose the ways in which those stories were being told – looking out for anything they deemed “un-American”.
