Fade to Black Magazine Presents:

The Chaplin Files: A Guide

As noted above, the Chaplin files relate largely to two investigations: the Joan Barry case and investigations of Chaplin's politics. The Joan Barry material was concentrated largely between 1943 and 1945, yet includes more pages, running from page 813 to the end of the files, page 2063. The investigations into Chaplin's politics, which begin in 1922 and continue until after his death, run from the start through page 812. 

Heed this warning: the files contain considerable repetition, especially in the reports. The FBI prepared more than one report on each case, and some of the information is simply repeated verbatim from one report to the next. For someone interested just in dipping into the files, here are a few particularly interesting places to look: 

1. Report from Ladd (LA Office) to Hoover, August 6, 1947 (pp. 71-94) on Chaplin's political activities. It's the first report after Hoover requested one, and it serves as the basis for some other reports. 
2. Another report from the LA Office to Hoover, July 5, 1949 (pp. 226--261). Especially interesting is the transcript of the interview Chaplin had with INS officials on April 17, 1948, about his political views (pp. 236-262).
3. FBI Memo from September 30, 1952--about a week after the Attorney General revoked Chaplin's reentry permit. The memo makes it clear that the INS didn't have any evidence that would keep Chaplin from reentering the country (pp. 279-82; see especially p. 380). Files after this show that neither the INS nor the FBI could that fall or winter locate an informant willing to testify and provide damaging evidence against Chaplin on this matter. 
4. The longest report on Chaplin's politics, LA Office to Hoover, October 14, 1952 (pp. 420-538). This report has a table of contents (pp. 422-23) for readers interested in being directed to particular topics.  
5. The last official documents in the Cold War investigations of Chaplin as a domestic security risk are Hoover's letter (p. 716) suggesting the case be closed and the LA Office's brief final report of July 10, 1953 (pp. 724-26). Yet readers may also be interested to know that the FBI kept occasional track of Chaplin, clipping a newspaper article headlined "Chaplin Outshines [U.S. Secretary of State Dean] Rusk at Oxford," when the two received honorary degrees at the British University in 1962 (p. 767) and even a bizarre memo (p. 810) reporting on a call the Portland, Maine, FBI Office received about a psychic who was trying to guess where Chaplin's body was after it had been disinterred!  
6. The Barry case is detailed primarily in two long reports, the first of February 25, 1944 (pp. 1207-1273) and the second, nearly book-length, report of May 4, 1944 (pp. 1434-1818). These reports were being prepared to try to provide information for the Justice Department's federal cases against Chaplin (the Mann Act and the civil rights charges), which explains the concentration in a short period of time. The reports contain some of the same information, but the second contains a table of contents that help a reader navigate through it (pp. 1436-39).  
7. For those interested in how the press played up the Chaplin-Barry trials, the FBI includes a clipping file of newspaper articles related to the case (pp. 1867-2062). One gets a sense from these various articles how Chaplin was becoming an ideological pawn--more conservative publications treating him negatively as a lecher and leftist publications treating him as a victim. One can see from these pieces (most from 1943 to 1945) that even before the Cold War set in, Chaplin's public reputation was starting to suffer. 

There's much else of interest contained in the files, but I hope these observations help readers navigate through this fascinating, although often disturbing, confrontation between the FBI and Charlie Chaplin.

[NOTE: Readers interested in delving more deeply into the FBI files can consult two books which provide more information than I could in this short introduction. The first book came out shortly after the Freedom of Information Act was passed and files started appearing: Ann Mari Buitrago and Leon Andrew Immerman, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been in the FBI Files?: How to Secure and Interpret Your FBI Files (Grove Press, 1981). The second is a more academic book, Gerald K. Haines and David A. Langbart, Unlocking the Files of the FBI: A guide to Its Records and Classification System (Scholarly Resources, 1993).] 

Next Page