No Place for Peace-Mongers: Charlie Chaplin, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and Czechoslovak Communist Propaganda. more

XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Vol. 29, No. 3, September 2009, 271–292 NO PLACE FOR PEACE-MONGERS: CHARLIE 5 CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST COLD WAR PROPAGANDA ´ ´ ˇˇ Jindriska Blahova 10 15 During the escalation of the Cold War, Hollywood stars were framed in Czechoslovak communist propaganda as possessing two qualities. Firstly, they were perceived in this most Western Soviet satellite as envoys of the cultural imperialism of the United States. Secondly, they were viewed as the puppets of Wall Street bankers and thus as foot soldiers of the looming third world war. A 1950 July issue of the state-controlled film magazine Kino eloquently summarized this position in the following way: Dressed in highly persuasive promotion, Hollywood stars paved the way for American films to flood European cinemas; behind the mysterious looks of Greta Garbo, the seductive gestures of Marlene Dietrich, dance performances of Ginger Rogers and love songs of Jeannette MacDonald and behind the manly charm of Robert Taylor, Clark Gable and Gary Cooper came—oblivious to the general public—powerful Wall Street bankers whose loans fuelled the international operations of the US military. Behind them came the soldiers . . .1 There was, however, one star, that never fell out of favour with the Communist Czechoslovak film authorities. That star was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was, without exaggeration, the favourite Hollywood star of Czechoslovak Communists after the Second World War. Czechoslovak Communists, who were in charge of the film industry immediately after its nationalization in August 1945, were highly interested in obtaining Chaplin’s films for distribution. The famous anti-fascist satire The Great ˇˇ ´ ´ Correspondence: Jindriska Blahova, School of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR2 2RL, UK. E-mail: j.blahova@uea.ac.uk ISSN 0143-9685 (print)/ISSN 1465-3451 (online)/09/030271–22 ß 2009 IAMHIST & Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01439680903145546 20 25 XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 272 30 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 Dictator (1940) topped the list of American films that Czechoslovak Communists sought to acquire after the Second World War.2 The Great Dictator was eventually purchased in 1947 from the independent US distributor Miles Sherover, who had bought the rights from United Artists to distribute the film behind the Iron Curtain. Czechoslovaks paid a staggering $50,000 for the film at a time when prices for individual films ranged from $3000 to $10,000.3 The Great Dictator was released theatrically in Czechoslovakia in October 1947. The same year the state-run film monopoly bought six of Chaplin’s short comedies, which were distributed under the title Charlie Chaplin Festival.4 It was, nevertheless, Chaplin’s next film, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) that was most important for the propaganda intentions of Czechoslovak Communists. Monsieur Verdoux had been produced, directed and written by Chaplin who had also starred as the titular serial killing bigamist gold-digger. The film received its European premiere ´ ´ in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1947 at the Film Festival in the town of Marianske ´ ˇ lazne; much to the satisfaction of Czechoslovak film authorities who briskly assigned this wider action political significance. The film was one of the most discussed features of the festival. This preceded the extensive media coverage of the film that accompanied and followed its theatrical release. When Monsieur Verdoux was put on general release in June 1948, it attracted more press attention and initiated more discussion than any other movie that was shown in the country in the second half of the 1940s. Tens of articles examined it in terms of its style and its ideological messages. The creative aspects of the film were discussed but debates were dominated by discussions of the film’s allegorical engagement of the contemporaneous geopolitical landscape. In particular Chaplin’s position in the battle between two antagonistic political systems—socialism and capitalism—were prevalent. Chaplin had been renowned and celebrated in Czechoslovakia for the humanist messages and the socially conscious themes of his films. After he had subtly criticized capitalism in Modern Times (1936), he satirized fascism in The Great Dictator. Denouncing mass armament, the atomic bomb and mechanized killing on a massive scale, Monsieur Verdoux pushed Chaplin’s social and political criticism to another level.5 The Czechoslovak media’s focus on the extent to which Chaplin had contributed to the socialist cause transformed Monsieur Verdoux into a cultural and political phenomenon. The critical success of Monsieur Verdoux in Czechoslovakia stood in marked contrast to its reception in the United States. In America, the comedy-drama received a critical lambasting. Much of this hostility had focused on Chaplin himself, his supposedly ‘un-American’ personal politics, his morals and his controversial decision not to take up US citizenship. The persecution of Chaplin in the United States and the thematic content of Monsieur Verdoux provided Czechoslovak Communists, who seized power in the country in the coup in February 1948, with invaluable propaganda material. The release and reception of Monsieur Verdoux was at the heart of an orchestrated campaign that was conducted by Czechoslovak Communists through the nation’s press to employ Chaplin’s star persona for propagandistic purposes. An important tenet of this strategy was the depiction of Hollywood as a hotbed of fascistic warmongering. Drawing upon popular press and archival documents, this study examines the role of Charlie Chaplin and of Hollywood in Czechoslovak Communist propaganda of the late 1940s and early 1950s.6 It explores the ways that, against the backdrop of the XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 273 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 escalating Cold War, the country’s regime engaged with and interpreted Chaplin’s star persona, his work and his off-screen life. It shows that Chaplin was presented to the Czechoslovak public as an outcast and a progressive artist and that these two main tropes served as a platform upon which general tensions between capitalism and socialism could be articulated and various anti-American narratives could be constructed. The primary purpose of this strategy, I argue, was to convey to Czechoslovak citizens the fundamental flaws of a degenerate American society and its corrupt capitalist system and to reaffirm the superiority of socialism. By examining the appropriation of Chaplin and his star persona by Czechoslovak communists for propaganda intentions this study contributes to the fledgling debates about the various roles that US popular culture played behind the Iron Curtain. The few existing studies in English have largely focused on the notion of the Americanization of indigenous cultures and of the reconciliation of American popular culture with national identities. Uta G. Poiger, for instance, documents the contribution of American cultural products, particularly jazz and rock music, to the construction of national identities in East and West Germany.7 Reinhold Wangleitner in his book Coca-Colonization and the Cold War examines US cultural policy towards post-war Austria with references to the Soviet zone in Vienna.8 Concerning ˇ Czechoslovakia, Petr Mares briefly covers media debates about American films and the reasons for their absence from Czechoslovak movie theatres immediately after the Second World War. He positions these issues within the context of a series of first post-war negotiations that were conducted between the Czechoslovak film monopoly and the Motion Picture Export Association (MPEA), an export cartel representing major Hollywood studios, over the importation of Hollywood films into Czechoslovakia.9 Elsewhere I have focused on the second post-war negotiations between Czechoslovakia and Hollywood and outlined the responses of the local film industry to the presence on the Czechoslovak market of Hollywood films.10 Pavel Skopal looks into the ways the US State Department read and anticipated the Czechoslovak audience after the Second World War.11 The interaction between US popular culture and Czechoslovak culture, society and politics is, however, an on-going project that requires further scholarly attention from cultural, social and political historians. This study takes a different approach from the invaluable works outlined above by exploring the ways American popular culture was used by a communist government to communicate ideological messages. In doing so, it expands our understanding of how the Cold War was fought on the cultural front in the Eastern Bloc. Charlie Chaplin and Cold War politics 115 120 Czechoslovak Communists were not the only agents to have co-opted Chaplin’s star persona for political and ideological purposes. He had also been of great interest to the American political establishment during the Red Scare period in the second half of the 1940s. As Charles J. Maland and others have documented, Chaplin’s pro-Soviet sympathies during the Second World War, his so-called radical personal politics and his decision not to become an American citizen meant that he was perceived as politically and morally subversive, a leftist, and, by many, as a communist; XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 274 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 Chaplin was even closely monitored by the FBI for many years.12 Moral watchdogs such as the American Legion and political bodies like the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) used Chaplin to make their political case against the evils of Communism. Indeed, HUAC threatened to call Chaplin to testify in 1947. These attacks against the star intensified after the 1947 US release of Monsieur Verdoux and escalated in 1952 when Attorney General James P. McGranery barred Chaplin from re-entry into the United States.13 Because he was persecuted in America, Chaplin provided ideal material for communist propagandists and their extensive anti-American and anti-capitalist campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is, however, important to note here that the socio-political and economic conditions in post-war Czechoslovakia meant that Czechoslovak Communists did not fully exploit Chaplin’s star persona for propagandistic purposes until late 1947/early 1948. In order to understand the reasons behind this initial hesitancy a brief outline of the political and economic situation in Czechoslovakia is necessary. After the war, Czechoslovakia became part of the Soviet sphere of influence but was still reliant on US financial aid. Economic necessity partly explains why the state’s anti-American and anti-capitalist policies initially developed at a slow pace before their high profile implementation in 1950. Czechoslovakia’s democratic coalition government, which included the Communist party, sought to strengthen its ties with the Soviets. This policy dramatically intensified after the coup of February 1948 when the Communist party seized full power. Indeed, even before the coup the USSR was widely considered an important ally that was capable of reducing Czechoslovakia’s dependency on its traditional political/economic partners in the West. While the cultivation of contacts with the USSR was a crucial tenet of Czechoslovak post-war policy, the traditional contacts with the West, including the US, were maintained. Diplomatic and economic relations with America were particularly important. Like most other European countries in the post-war years, Czechoslovakia needed US economic support.14 This came in the form of loans. These loans were designed to stabilize the Czechoslovak economy. Thus, from 1945 to about mid-1949, Czechoslovakia strove to maintain relations with the United States. Surprisingly, this policy continued in a slightly different form even after the coup of 1948 and ended in the second half of 1949 when the Soviet communist model was imposed on Czechoslovakia. The increased dependency on the USSR profoundly affected the foreign and cultural policies of Communist Czechoslovakia. Central to my examination of the exploitation of Chaplin in Czechoslovak Communist propaganda is a combination of two facts—the situation on the Czechoslovak film market and the political developments in the country. Firstly, the Czechoslovak film industry was initially dependent on American film product. Thus, even though the film industry was controlled by the Communist party the vigorous attacks against Hollywood were postponed until second half of 1948. While the average pre-war annual domestic production of 30–40 films made the Czechoslovak film industry partially self-sufficient, the film imports played in important role in maintaining the economic viability of the country’s distribution circuit. Germany and the United States had been the biggest film exporters to Czechoslovakia before the Second World War.15 In addition, French and British films had been heavily imported. The situation after the Second World War XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 275 170 175 180 185 190 195 200 205 210 changed significantly. US films were needed to save the distribution circuit from collapse following a boycott on German films and the decimation of the British and French film industries during the war.16 A solution was eventually reached by a film importation contract that was signed by Czechoslovakia and the Motion Picture Export Association (MPEA) in September 1946. This agreement resulted in the distribution of a total of 80 Hollywood films in Czechoslovakia in 1946 and 1947. Czechoslovak film historians called 1947 the year of American cinema. This statement refers to both the number of US films that were imported into the country and the high audience interest in these films.17 Czechoslovak audiences had been deprived of American films since 1941, when their importation had been forbidden under legislation that had been enforced by the German authorities during the Nazi occupation of the country (1939–1945). Thus, the Czechoslovak film monopoly was interested in Chaplin’s films for both economic and ideological reasons. Chaplin’s slapstick comedies and his later features drew large numbers of local moviegoers during the 1930s. According to a report in the Motion Picture Herald in 1937, Chaplin was amongst an elite group of stars that ‘would induce audience to go to the theatre any time’.18 The popularity of Chaplin’s new films, in line with this logic, was seen as being potentially even higher after the Second World War. The commercial success of Chaplin’s older films, in conjunction with the increased general interest of Czechoslovak audiences in American films, ensured that Chaplin’s subsequent releases stood a strong chance of becoming sure-fire hits. With the limited financial resources of the Czechoslovak film monopoly, the selection of films that were potentially attractive for the audience was crucial. During 1947, pictures of Hollywood stars frequently featured on the covers of magazines while the articles inside discussed their glamorous lifestyles.19 This situation, however, did not last long. The coup of 1948 signalled the end of this short period of relative prosperity for Hollywood in Czechoslovakia. The situation further deteriorated in the summer of 1949 when the Soviets successfully tested an atomic bomb and then imposed their political model on Czechoslovakia in the following autumn.20 As geopolitical tensions grew, Hollywood films gradually turned in communist rhetoric into ‘poison’ and ‘kitsch’, they disappeared from Czechoslovak theatres and Hollywood stars vanished from the front pages of the magazines and were lambasted as co-culprits of American imperialism.21 The exception to this rule was Charlie Chaplin. The Czechoslovak film authorities closely followed Chaplin’s American story in the second half of the 1940s. Information was obtained through various channels including ´ ´ the Czechoslovak ambassador in Washington, Czechoslovak emigres in Hollywood and by delegations who had visited Hollywood.22 Immense interest of Czechoslovak communists in Charlie Chaplin is, for instance, demonstrated by the actions of ´ Lubomır Linhart, a communist party member and one of the leading figures in the Communist-controlled Czechoslovak film industry. In September of 1946, Linhart, who was called by The Los Angeles Times ‘the No.1 motion-picture magnate of Czechoslovakia’ and ‘Czech tycoon of films’23, visited Los Angeles.24 He was invited by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to tour its member studios’ lots. While admiring ‘the pitch at which the American film industry works’, Linhart strongly hoped to be able to meet Chaplin. Linhart’s stay in Hollywood did ultimately culminate in a meeting with Chaplin and his wife Oona O’Neil at a party given XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 276 215 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 220 225 230 235 240 245 250 255 260 by the scriptwriter Clifford Odets.25 Highlighting the political tensions of the era, the arrangement was held under the watchful eyes of the FBI. The encounter between Linhart and Chaplin, that allegedly lasted five hours,26 was celebrated in the Czechoslovak press as a ‘sensation’.27 The meeting with the director of the Czechoslovak film monopoly and Chaplin, who was a part of leftist anti-Nazi circles in Hollywood, hinted at the star’s longstanding private relationships with considerably more high-profile Communists.28 In the 1930s, Chaplin was a friend of the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. A decade later, he met with Michail Kolotozov, a leading figure in the state controlled Soviet film industry29 and frequently visited functions given by Soviet diplomats in Los Angeles. Chaplin’s affinity to Soviet Communists had been a result of his well-documented leftist political views.30 During the Second World War, Chaplin had passionately advocated the opening of the second front in Europe as a way of helping Russia defeat Hitler’s armies. As the war drew to an end, Chaplin was a prominent speaker at the American–Soviet rally held at Madison Square Garden in 1944.31 ‘I am not a Communist, but I feel pretty pro-Communist’, declared Chaplin during a speech in which he addressed the audience as ‘comrades’.32 Meeting with Czechoslovak representatives was therefore a natural extension of Chaplin’s wartime activities and his political philosophy. At the time, Czechoslovakia was of significant importance in geo-political debates because it was located at the border of allied-controlled Western Europe and the emerging Eastern Bloc that fell under the jurisdiction of the USSR. Soviet Communists were more than happy to entertain Chaplin because they liked the fact that he had articulated pro-communist positions. Similarly, they also admired his films for their humanistic themes and appreciated Chaplin’s interest in various social and political issues that resonated with socialist ideology. Chaplin had been embraced as a ‘people’s author’ by the Soviet officials and received in absentia a prestigious award from Josef Stalin in 1944.33 This admiration continued after the end of the war. During the beginning and the escalation of the Cold War, the Soviet Communists’ fondness for Chaplin, however, was overtaken by their desire to use the star in political propaganda. As this study shows, the USSR was not the only Eastern Bloc country that praised and eventually appropriated Chaplin’s work and his iconic star persona for propaganda purposes. Numerous articles and cartoons that chronicled Chaplin’s career appeared in the Czechoslovak popular press as early as 1946. While these early articles mostly covered Chaplin’s career, focusing on his emergence and heyday during the silent era and stressing the actor/director’s privileged position in US film culture, in 1947 emphasis was increasingly put on his artistic and political struggles. HUAC’s interest in Chaplin was of crucial importance to these narratives. In December 1947, for example, Kino portrayed Chaplin as a matador in a bullring holding the red cloak of his films to gaud the bull that represented the committee. The cover on the bull’s back reads ‘HUAC’ while the cloak in Chaplin’s hands reads ‘My films’. The symbol for the US dollar that appears as the bull’s tail links HUAC to American capitalism and Wall Street bankers (Figure 1). The connection between Wall Street, politics and Hollywood was a re-emerging trope in Czechoslovak communist propaganda in the late 1940s.34 What is particularly significant in this cartoon is the depiction of HUAC attacking the star. As will be seen later, for Czechoslovak Communists the attacks against Chaplin and XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 277 FIGURE 1 Anti-HUAC cartoon published in Kino, 26 December 1947. The bull of HUAC attacks Chaplin. 265 their ramifications became a key part of his star image. This cartoon’s portrayal of Chaplin as a lonely fighter foreshadowed the more concentrated campaign that was to follow. Accentuating Chaplin’s isolation in the face of HUAC aggression highlighted one of the main thematic tropes that will be outlined in the next section. Swimming in the capitalist sea: Chaplin as outcast and progressive artist Czechoslovak communists engaged with Chaplin’s films, his private life and his multifaceted public image to reconstruct his star persona for propagandistic purposes. Charlie Chaplin was presented to the Czechoslovak public as an outcast and a progressive artist. Both of these concepts (which often overlapped) provided a platform upon which general tensions between capitalism and socialism could be articulated, and various anti-American narratives could be constructed. The concept of the outcast enabled Czechoslovak propaganda to portray persecutions against Chaplin as a clash between the peace-mongers, to use Chaplin’s own term, and American fascist warmongers.35 The centre of this bellicosity was the financial heart of America—Wall Street. Hollywood was portrayed as one of Wall Street’s propagandist tentacles and HUAC, which, like the Nazis, discriminated against certain groups was portrayed as implementing fascist practices. As will be discussed in the following sections, both Wall Street bankers and Hollywood helped to form, maintain and cultivate the American system that was, in the eyes of Czechoslovak communists, fascistic. The bankers ruled the society maintaining class inequality by oppressing and exploiting workers and plotting against the world peace in order to generate profit (Figure 2). The clash between peace-mongers and warmongers, which was in principle a clash between socialism and capitalism, served as a foundation for the articulation of another, more abstract, conflict between the mode of film production 270 275 280 285 XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 278 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION FIGURE 2 The menace from Wall Street. ‘They don’t have jobs? Really? I am quite busy’ (Tvorba, 30 September 1948). XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 279 290 295 300 305 310 315 320 325 and individualism. This leads to the category of the progressive artist. This category offered a space in which to present the conflict between, on the one hand, the dehumanized mass production of the Hollywood studio business model that could produce only culturally and ideologically inferior product and, on the other, Chaplin’s individualism that generated progressive art. This conflict, that ascribed certain values to each regime, allowed for a direct connection to be made between the practices of a prominent culture industry and military aggression. It is important to highlight here that the Czechoslovak Communists employed Chaplin’s star persona in ways that inverted the established binary oppositions that are seen in the West as distinguishing capitalism from socialism. Thus it was not socialism that was presented as a dehumanizing system of alienated labour. And it was not capitalism that championed individualistic achievements. Instead, socialism was presented as offering the possibilities that are more typically associated with capitalism and vice versa. It was under socialism, where individual the artist could flourish and it was under capitalism, where individuality was subjugated to the dehumanizing effects of Fordian mass production. HUAC’s interest in Chaplin triggered the Czechoslovak media’s widespread depiction of Chaplin as an outcast and a victim. When commemorating Chaplin’s 60th birthday in April 1949, Kino claimed that Chaplin is ‘in today’s America of war-mongers and fascists actually an outcast and an outlaw. He does not even know when he will be hit by the hand of the Committee on Un-American activities’.36 Another newspaper, Svet prace, put it more bluntly when it proclaimed that, ‘[t]here ˇ ´ is simply no place for Chaplin in contemporary Hollywood’.37 Unsurprisingly, this portrayal became more prevalent after 1952 when Chaplin was barred from re-entry into the United States. In December of 1952, Kino spotlighted Chaplin’s ostracization from the film community. ‘Although he has made all his films in Hollywood’, commented the magazine, ‘he remained a stranger, even a legal alien, in this environment of film dealmakers and speculators. For forty years of his stay in America, he had not deemed it necessary to apply for American citizenship’.38 A stranger in America, Chaplin effectively belonged to the socialist camp. ‘Chaplin is alone in the capitalist world and he feels abandoned. He strives for socialism but ´ swims in the capitalist sea’, mused the chief trade unions newspaper, Prace in its June 1948 review of Monsieur Verdoux.39 Chaplin was not only a stranger in America but, according to Czechoslovak propaganda, he stood, by extension, at odds to capitalism. And he had been for some time. When Chaplin met a delegation of Soviet artists who were visiting California in the early 1930s, he supposedly criticized Hollywood’s production system. ‘No films are being made in Hollywood. What is being made here is money via films. If you want to see how films are made, go elsewhere, for instance to Moscow’, Chaplin is alleged to have declared.40 The most recent proof of Chaplin’s alienation from capitalism was Monsieur Verdoux. Feeling the socialist way: Monsieur Verdoux and his moral struggles 330 The Czechoslovakian press largely praised Chaplin for his audacity in taking a ‘progressive’ political stance in Monsieur Verdoux. ‘Nobody uncovered the monstrosity XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 280 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 335 340 345 350 355 360 365 370 375 ´ ´ of the capitalist society more fully and boldly’, lauded Rude pravo, the media flagship of the Communist party in its review of the 1947 film.41 ‘Chaplin had shown courage in revealing the cynical face of the capitalist society, its immense brutality and moral ´ decay’, added Filmove noviny, the official magazine of the Czechoslovak film industry.42 The film was not, however, embraced without some reservations. There were no ´ doubts about Monsieur Verdoux’s artistic qualities. For instance, Filmove noviny praised the film as ‘the climax of Chaplin’s art’43 and ‘the biggest social satire that has ever ´ ´ been made’.44 Rude pravo was equally enthusiastic calling the film ‘perfect in every sense’.45 Chaplin’s real contribution to the socialist cause was, however, questioned. It is a great and brave criticism of capitalism, agreed reviewers but is it progressive enough, asked some? Many concluded that, despite his good intentions, Chaplin had failed to think in fully socialist terms. ‘Although Chaplin discusses and illuminates the decadent and unacceptable system, he does not suggest any solutions’, pointed out ´ Filmove noviny, in what it saw as the key flaw of the film.46 The paper continued: ‘There is not even a hint at possible ways out of the system he criticizes; of a possible better and new world. Only shots of strikes and demonstrations imply that there is a ´ ´ fight and resistance’.47 Similarly, the reviewer in Rude pravo highlighted the ideological limits of Monsieur Verdoux. ‘A film as a piece of art that simply documents an actual situation is not enough for us. We demand art that is a co-creator of the new emerging reality . . . that encourages the acceleration of progress’, it declared.48 The real socialist would address the problem by a positive revolutionary action, suggested the magazine. In short, Verdoux, like Chaplin, was not yet a full-fledged socialist. ‘In his ambiguity as an advocate of humanism, Chaplin is tragically an example of an intellectual who has not yet discovered the right way to the progress of humankind’, sighed Kino.49 Verdoux’s response to his personal hardship—marrying and killing women for their money—was immoral and unacceptable in socialist society. ‘We cannot sympathize with a murderer. Murderer is a murderer and his deeds cannot be justified. His murders are . . . alien and repulsive in the world of socialism,’ condemned Verdoux ‘s actions magazine for ‘politics, science and culture’ Tvorba, that was published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.50 Verdoux, however, could not act differently since his response to his problems was determined by the morally corrupt capitalist system in which the character was living. Chaplin himself was not, nevertheless, a lost case. He was on the right track to socialism in Monsieur Verdoux. While condemning the fact that Chaplin had chosen to criticize capitalist society through a morally dubious pathological character, media nevertheless saw him to share many similarities with the members of the socialist society.51 Although Monsieur Verdoux ‘does not solve problems in the socialist way, ´ he feels like a socialist,’ explained Prace.52 So did, as far as Czechoslovak propaganda was concerned, Chaplin. After all, during the meeting with Linhart in September 1946, he had supposedly lauded Czechoslovak ‘realistic policy’53, appreciated the nationalization of the country’s film industry and, by extension, the socialist model upon which it was based.54 Thus, even though Monsieur Verdoux may have been flawed in terms of its morals, Chaplin’s bravery openly to criticize America and its system was ‘to be understood and appreciated’.55 And for this bravery, if nothing else, ‘we must stand shoulder to shoulder with Chaplin against those who strive to ´ ´ silence him,’ remarked Rude pravo.56 Should Chaplin find his way to socialism, Czechoslovakia was even ready to offer him exile.57 XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 281 The disgusting role of Hollywood and the Korean War 380 385 390 395 400 405 Importantly, Chaplin as the outcast was marked as being different from the rest of Hollywood. The marginalization of Chaplin in Hollywood and in America more generally was pivotal to the construction of the negative image of Hollywood, and by extension the negative image of the United States. Hollywood was depicted as a place of alienation, depersonalized Fordian production, oppression and exploitation in the name of profit. This put the film industry’s leaders in bed with Wall Street bankers and the warmongers that had ruthlessly financed global conflicts in order to generate vast sums of blood money. These accusations escalated after the Korean War had begun in June 1950. At the time the conflict started, the Czechoslovak government had launched an extensive anti-American campaign.58 Western journalists were expelled, the United States Information Service (USIS) library was closed and staff at the US embassy in Prague cut. In 1951, an Associated Press journalist called William Oatis was sentenced to prison for espionage.59 In June of the same year, the MPEA representative to Prague was expelled.60 The same month, the United States advised its citizens against travelling to Czechoslovakia, warning that it was extremely dangerous.61 Hollywood and its films did not escape this vilification of America. Following the official Communist party line, the Czechoslovak press severely lambasted the American film industry by accusing it of warmongering over Korea. Hollywood, it was suggested, was involved in an orchestrated campaign that had been conducted by the US government to destroy world peace. ‘In the current climate’, mused Kino, ‘the role of Hollywood is nothing less than disgusting’.62 While Monsieur Verdoux criticizes weapons of mass destruction and the culture of violence in America, ‘[a]ll Hollywood production serves the imperialistic and militaristic goals of Wall Street’,63 proclaimed Kino (Figure 3).64 In the eyes of the Czechoslovak communists, one victim of the militaristic aggression was Chaplin himself. They felt that he had been ruthlessly silenced by a hate-campaign that was launched by the very same people who had sent troops to Korea. FIGURE 3 Hollywood attacks world peace. A Kino cartoon illustrates the connection between the American film industry, banking and military aggression. XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 282 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 410 415 420 425 430 435 440 445 450 Kino made this point clear in April 1951. The magazine published an article about Chaplin’s old slapstick comedies being barred from distribution.65 The text was accompanied by the familiar little tramp character looking especially sad. Directly above the article, a section of the promotional poster for the US film A Yank in Korea (1951) was reprinted. The text adjacent to this was located under the headline ‘The Atlantic education’, it denounced Hollywood for brainwashing American citizens and turning them into ‘ruthless destroyers of cultural values [. . .] and murderers of defenseless civilians’.66 The way that the layout was composed created an arresting juxtaposition and opened a ‘dialogue’ between the humble tramp Charlie and the maniacal US soldier. This juxtaposition implies that Chaplin is being persecuted and punished because he had stood up and dared to criticize to Hollywood’s warmongering (Figure 4).67 As has already been indicated, Chaplin’s distance from Hollywood enabled Czechoslovak communists to vilify the American film industry—its production mechanisms, its ethics and its product. Hollywood was depicted as artistically, ideologically and systemically degenerate. This portrayal of Hollywood sharply contrasted with the supposed virtues of the socialist society and its cinema. The artistic superiority, progressivity, humanity and sense of social equality of cinema in the socialist countries showcased the decay of capitalism. If the Hollywood system was degenerate, then, by extension, the product that it churned out was also degenerate. In a public opinion poll that was conducted in 1952 by the Czechoslovak Public Broadcasting Corporation, 90% of respondents claimed not to have missed Hollywood films. One of these respondents deplored Hollywood. The mother of two asked: ‘Do you think that in the current climate, when Korea is fighting the American invaders and the workers of the world are attempting to maintain peace for their children that it is acceptable for young people to be educated by the so-called culture of Hollywood?’68 The employment of this quotation illustrated the short distance that existed, in the minds, at least, of Czechoslovak ideologues, between the nature of film production and American militaristic aggression. The capitalist system, Czechoslovak propagandists claimed, is predetermined to produce kitsch and low culture. This kitsch is subsequently mobilized to serve the militaristic goals of the United States. Condemning the excessive violence in American ´ ´ films, Rude pravo ascertained that ‘[i]t is no wonder, that American capitalism produces such culture. Those, who try to generate profit on the murders of millions, naturally ensure a cult of crime, a cult of killing’.69 In short, the film industry served ‘the imperialistic and militaristic aims of Wall Street bankers’ by exporting ‘poison’ to movie theatres both in America and across the world. Hollywood’s ‘utopian, phantasmagoric stories about supermen fighting atom-men that were full of violence and mentally deranged characters’, narcotized the audience, alienated it from reality and prevented any revolutionary action (Figure 5).70 Such ‘culture’ failed to fulfil the progressive and educational role that was assigned to films by socialist states. In the socialist society, or so it was claimed, films’ chief role was not to generate profit but to contribute to the formation of the new system by educating the audience politically. Films were ‘weapons of truth’.71 For cinema to be called progressive, it had to contribute to ‘the revolutionary class struggle’.72 From Modern Times, to The Great Dictator and to Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin had tried to achieve this goal. Unlike standard Hollywood fare, his films were not XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 283 FIGURE 4 Casualties on US soil; Chaplin as a domestic victim of militaristic aggression. XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 284 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION FIGURE 5 Hollywood exporting ‘poison’ to the movie theatres. 455 460 465 470 ‘distracting the audience from burning social problems’.73 Distinguishing of standard Hollywood output from Chaplin’s films that was part of Czechoslovak propaganda leads us to the concept of Chaplin as the progressive artist. In direct contrast to Hollywood production, Chaplin’s films were celebrated in Czechoslovak propaganda as progressive. Chaplin himself was lauded as a progressive artist who was concerned with the life of the little man and ‘who fearlessly serves progress, democracy and freedom’.74 Chaplin ‘[d]id not stray from his path, he is, and remains, a friend of socialism that loves humankind’, claimed the daily newspaper ´ Prace.75 Proof of the progressivity of Chaplin’s art was, of course, his persecution in America. For socialist regimes, progressive art, such as Chaplin’s films, could only ever be framed as subversive by capitalist states like the United States and thus erased from the cultural landscape.76 This was encapsulated in a cartoon that was printed in Kino in December 1952, which showed Charlie Chaplin being sent packing by a pin-up girl and comic strips’ and animated films’ character Popeye. The original caption under the cartoon read: ‘Go Charlie! There is no place for peace-mongers— only for the representatives of American culture!!!’ (Figure 6). The notion of progressivity that was associated with Chaplin enabled the producers of Czechoslovak propaganda to portray not only Hollywood but the entire XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 285 FIGURE 6 The little tramp, yet again, does not belong. 475 American society as backward. Of course, they depicted the socialist society as being the exact opposite. In 1953, an article published in Kino likened Chaplin’s work to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. That article, entitled ‘After Darwin also Chaplin on the Index in Tennessee’ proposed that, [l]ocal youth is not taught that a human—either white or black—comes from an ape. Similarly, they are not allowed to take pleasure from watching the great work of Chaplin . . . Chaplin is considered by the venerable politicians of Tennessee to be too dangerous. Just like Darwin. Chaplin loves all people and does not make a difference between them. And he is loved by all people with the exemption of a pack of reactionary hypocrites.77 Placing Chaplin alongside Darwin is a fascinating example of rhetorical spin. It made it possible to spotlight racism in American society and thus proliferate the image of America as a fascist state. Here, Czechoslovak Communist propaganda mobilizes two inter-twined points. On one hand, American society is portrayed as retrograde, religious, rejecting science and thus rejecting modernity. On the other hand, the specific Southern setting of the debate (Tennessee) is important here since it brings in racism and lynching. For communist propagandists generally, charges of racism were a powerful and often used weapon; not only in the 1940s but during the entire Cold War.78 Accusations of racial discrimination functioned as evidence that the 480 485 490 XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 286 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 495 500 505 510 515 520 525 530 535 American system was not only fascist but also a rung or two behind the socialist society on the evolutionary ladder. ‘Crime and adultery are important parts of the American way of life’, commented Kino, ‘the fundamental aspects of US democracy are lynching and racism. The extermination of Indians and the persecution of black Americans serve as models of humanism’.79 It was racism that was perceived by American policymakers and propagandists as the Achilles’ heel of the United States in the ideological battle with the USSR.80 Identifying racism as one of the distinctive features of American society allowed Czechoslovak communist propaganda to add relevancy to their consistent depiction of the United States as a fascist state.81 They promulgated this image by drawing parallels between American capitalism and the imperialism of the Third Reich.82 American ´ ´ imperialists are ‘Hitler’s heirs’ declared Rude pravo on the first page of its first issue of 1951. ‘German imperialism was crushed. But it was replaced by American ´ imperialism’, explained the daily.83 Linking imperialistic aggression and capital, Rude ´ pravo continued by asserting that, ‘[w]hile Hitler wanted to Germanize the whole world, American billionaires want to Americanize it. They strive to establish the rule of dollar imperialism . . . American imperialism encompasses everything that is monstrous and hideous about capitalism . . .’84 Inevitably, the de-nazification of and the economic aid provided to Germany after the Second World War under the Marshall Plan, was perceived by Czechoslovak communists as a masquerade. Under the cover of international aid, Americans aimed to build nothing less than a new powerful Nazi army on the doorstep of the Eastern Bloc. This army ‘would become America’s striking fist against the USSR, against people’s democracies, against us’.85 To communicate this threat, the cartoonist of the magazine Tvorba, inspired by the famous fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, portrayed Czechoslovakia as a little girl who is about to become a prey of the United States that was metaphorically depicted as a blood-thirsty, whiskey-drinking wolf (Figure 7). Unsurprisingly, Hollywood, as one of those powerful agents that helped to maintain the American system, was accused of playing a key role in this agenda.86 The US film industry was framed as a despicable mercenary that was no better than the Nazis.87 The Soviet magazine Sovietskoje isskustvo even likened Eric Johnston, the president of the MPAA, to the mastermind of Nazi propaganda Joseph Goebbels. He was also ‘charged with purging Charles Chaplin from Hollywood’s ranks.’88 According to Czechoslovak Communist propaganda, Chaplin was indeed a victim of American capitalism and imperialism. He was persecuted in America and ostracized by Hollywood for his progressive personal politics and humanistic messages of his films. As this study has revealed, he was also a victim of Czechoslovak propagandists who ‘hijacked’ his star persona and his films and re-interpreted them for propaganda purposes. This study has demonstrated that in the Cold War ideological battles between socialism and capitalism in the late 1940s and 1950s Chaplin was reduced by Czechoslovak Communist propaganda to an outcast and a progressive artist. Both concepts enabled Czechoslovak propaganda to construct a negative image of America and its capitalist system. The concept of the outcast enabled Czechoslovak propaganda to portray attacks against Chaplin that had been conducted by HUAC and by the US immigration office as a clash between the peace-mongers and American fascist warmongers. Chaplin was expelled from Hollywood and from the United States because in his comedy-drama Monsieur Verdoux he had dared to depict American society XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 287 FIGURE 7 American imperialism in disguise. America as a blood-thirsty wolf threatening the small nation (Tvorba, 30 September 1948). 540 545 550 555 560 as fascist. America was portrayed as an imperialistic aggressor who was not different from the Nazis. American military aggression was financed by Wall Street and supported by Hollywood propaganda. At the time of the Korean War, Chaplin was thus the home-front casualty. I also showed that the lambasting of Hollywood as a hotbed of warmongering was pivotal to these anti-American narratives. Hollywood was depicted as a place of alienation, depersonalized Fordian production, oppression and exploitation in the name of profit. Chaplin, on the other hand, was portrayed as an individual progressive artist who was irreconcilably at odds with such a system. Chaplin represented humanism in a deeply inhuman culture, individualism in an oppressive system, progressivity in a degenerate society. He was, in principle, a representative of socialism in capitalist system and thus had to be punished. The concept of the outcast in conjunction with the concept of the progressive artist enabled the producers of Czechoslovak propaganda to portray not only Hollywood but the entire American society as backward and inferior to the socialist society. In the first half of the 1950s, Czechoslovakia and other Soviet satellites attempted to secure several of Chaplin’s films. They particularly wanted his latest feature, Limelight (1952). The film’s distributor United Artists asked for $1.5m for the film at a time that Czechoslovakia paid an average of just $3000 per American feature.89 After discussing the offer with the Soviets and other Soviet satellites, Czechoslovakia offered $200,000 for the entire Eastern Bloc, which was swiftly rejected. Since Chaplin was notorious for his strict control over his feature films, it stands to reason that it was Chaplin who made the decision not to sell his films behind the Iron Curtain. This adds a bittersweet taste to the propagandist efforts of XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 288 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION Czechoslovak Communists. Chaplin—the outcast, the progressive artist, the great humanist, the victim of anti-Communist hunts and the stranger to capitalism—was first and foremost a capitalist and a cautious businessman. Acknowledgements 565 This article was written with the kind support of the Grant Agency of Charles University in Prague (grant no. 258126). I would like to thank my colleague Dr Richard Nowell for insightful and invaluable comments on the draft of this article. Notes 570 1 2 3 575 580 4 585 590 5 6 595 600 ˇ ´ bz, Hollywood mezi dvema valkami, Kino, 20 July 1950, p. 349. ˇ ´ ˇ ´ ´ Rudolf Myzet, Vypravenı o Chaplinovi II, Filmove noviny, 20 September 1947, p. 10. The Czechoslovak film monopoly also mediated contact between Moscow and Sherover and helped to organize a screening of Monsieur Verdoux for Soviet artists in ˇ ˚ ´ ´ ˚ˇ the USSR at the end of 1947. Distribuce v roce 1948. Reditel Statnı pujcovny filmu ˇ ´ ´ ˇ ´ ´ ˇ ´ Josef Hlinomaz generalnımu rediteli Ceskoslovenske filmove spolecnosti Lubomıru Linhartovi, Praha, 25. 1. 1948. National Archives of the Czech Republic, Prague ˇ (hereafter NACR), Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party ˇ ´ Archive (hereafter A UV KSC), 19/7, Archival Unit (hereafter AU) 660, l. 43–46. ˚ Dovoz americkych filmu do SSSR, Praha, 25. 11. 1947. NA, Ministry of ´ Information Files (hereafter MI) 861, board 231, inventory number (hereafter IN) 506-Rusko. ´ ˇ ´ ´ bz, Stary Chaplin stale zivy, Filmove noviny, 31 May 1947, p. 7. Charlie Chaplin Festival ˇ ´ included the short comedies The Vagabond, The Count (both 1916), The Cure, The Adventurer, Easy Street and The Immigrant (all 1917). The films were sold to the Czechoslovak film company by the Prague-based firm PDC. The films were screened again in early 1954 as a part of the Exhibition of Satire and Humour. ˇ ´ Pametnı protokol, Praha, 20. 11. 1946. NA, MI, 861, board 234, IN 559, sign. ˚ ´ USA filmy-ruzne 1945–48. Exhibition of Certain Charlie Chaplin Pictures, Prague, 25. 2. 1955. Department of State Files, Record Group 59, National Archives, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA, RG 59), Decimal File (hereafter DF), 1955–59. 811.452/2-2555. On analysis of Chaplin’s socio-political world view see Philip G. Rosen, Chaplin’s world view, Cinema Journal 9(Autumn, 1969), 2–12. This study makes use of the following Czechoslovak newspapers and magazines: ´ ´ ´ Filmove noviny, Filmova prace, Kino (all three were official papers of the Czechoslovak ´ ´ ´ film monopoly), Rude pravo (Communist Party paper), Svet prace, Prace (trade unions ˇ ´ newspapers) and Tvorba (a weekly for ‘politics, science and culture’ published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party). Articles that were published in these periodicals in the period under examination can in principle be seen as echoing the official cultural policy of the Communist party. After the Communist coup in February 1948, all press was controlled by the Czechoslovak Communist Party through the Ministry of Information. Censorship was introduced and practiced. XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 289 605 610 615 7 8 620 9 10 625 11 12 630 13 635 14 15 640 645 16 17 650 All press was censored by the so-called press division of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The editors-in-chief of individual newspapers were selected by the Communist party and were held personally responsible for any ‘ideological’ lapses. In 1950, the position of ‘supervising editor’ was established. Those ‘editors’, who were reliable politically, controlled all articles. Without their approval no article was published. In 1953, censorship fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. All the newspapers and magazines that are referred to in this study were thus directly or indirectly under the control of the Communist party during the period under examination. Although official censorship did not exist before the 1948 coup, the Communist party exercised significant power over the press in this period. It did, however, employ different strategies. One way that it controlled the media was though the allocation of paper. Newspapers or magazines were simply put out of business by means of cutting their supply of paper. Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock and Rebels (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000). Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: the cultural mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War, trans. Diana M. Wolf (Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1994). ˚ ˇ ´ ´ Petr Mares, Politika a ‘pohyblive obrazky’. Spor o dovoz americkych filmu do ´ ˇ ´ ˇ ´ ´ Ceskoslovenska po druhe svetove valce. Iluminace, 1 (1994), 77–95. ˇˇ ´ ´ ´ ´ Jindriska Blahova, Hollywood za zeleznou oponou. Jednanı o dovozu novych ˇ ´ ˇ ˚ hollywoodskych filmu mezi MPEA a CSR; 1946–1951. Iluminace, 4 (2008), 19–62. ´ ˇ ´ ´ Pavel Skopal, Filmy pana velvyslance. Ceskoslovenske filmove publikum a americky ´ ´ ´ Statnı department (1945–1960). Iluminace, 3 (2008), 175–188. On Chaplin and FBI, see: John Sbardellati and Tony Shaw, Booting a tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the construction of the subversive image in Red Scare America, Pacific Historical Review, 72(4), 495–530. Historians have traditionally portrayed Chaplin as an innocent victim of the Red Scare in America. D. William Davis somewhat complicates this straightforward story by showing that Chaplin and United Artists mobilized the political antagonism that surrounded Chaplin and his films for marketing and economic purposes. D. William Davis, A tale of two movies: Charlie Chaplin, United Artists and the Red Scare, Cinema Journal 1 (Autumn 1987), 47–62. ˇ ´ ´ Petr Mares, Politika a ‘pohyblive obrazky’, 82. In 1939, Germany exported 92 films, while the US exported 89. American films accumulated 60% of all the revenues that were paid for foreign films that were distributed in Czechoslovakia. In the period 1925–1930, the share of the market ˇ ˇı ´ for the US films fluctuated between 40% and 50%. Jir´ Havelka, Cs. filmove ´r ´ ´ ´ ´ hospodaˇstvı 1939 (Nakladatelstvı Knihovny Filmoveho kuryru, Praha, 1940). Zprava ´ ˚ ˇ ´ ˇ o porade o americke smlouve a o dovozu americkych filmu, Praha, 15 March 1946, ´ NA, MI, 861, board 233, IN 559. ˚ ´ ˇ ´ ˇ Zprava o porade o americke smlouve a o dovozu americkych filmu, Praha, ´ 15 March 1946, NA, MI, 861, board 233, IN 559. ˇ ˇ ˇı ´ Jir´ Havelka, 50 let Ceskoslovenskeho filmu (Ceskoslovensky statnı film, Praha, 1953), ´ ´ ´ p. 178. In 1947, there were 65 Hollywood, 24 Czechoslovak, 33 Soviet, 31 British ˇ and 26 French films screened in Czechoslovak cinemas. Rozbor nekterych ´ ˚ ˇ ˇ ´ predpokladu distribucnı politiky. Praha, 17 March 1950. National Film Archive, XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 290 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 18 655 19 660 20 21 665 670 22 675 23 680 24 685 25 26 27 690 28 695 29 ˇ ˇ Czechoslovak State Film Files (hereafter NFA, CSF) (unprocessed), CSF— ˇ s. filmove hospodaˇstvı 1945–1950 ˇ ´ ˇı ´ ´r ´ distribucnı politika 1950; Jir´ Havelka, C ˇ (Ceskoslovensky statnı film, Praha, 1953). ´ ´ ´ Alfred Harding, Prague Likes American Films But There’s Class Problem, Motion Picture Herald, 20 March 1937, p. 57. For instance, one of the most popular stars was Rita Hayworth. The front pages of March (14 March 1947) and December (5 December 1947) issues of the magazine Kino featured the diva whereas the December one reprinted a picture that was signed by Hayworth and dedicated to the magazine’s readership. ˇ ´ ´ ˇı Justine Faure, Americky pr´tel. Ceskoslovensko ve hre americke diplomacie 1943–1968 ˇ ´ (Nakladatelstvı Lidovych novin, Praha, 2005), p. 98. ´ Hollywood films gradually disappeared from Czechoslovak cinemas as a result of a distribution policy that had been designed in response to both the economic needs of the film industry and to shifts in Czechoslovak foreign policy during the escalation of the Cold War. In 1948, twenty American films were distributed in Czechoslovakia (MPEA films and films imported by independent distributors). This number dropped to 12 in 1949 and then to only three in 1950. Rozbor ˇ ˚ ˇ ˇ ˇ ´ nekterych predpokladu distribucnı politiky. Praha, 17 March 1950. NFA, CSF ´ ˇ SF—distribucnı politika 1950. Zprava o prubehu a vysledcıch ˚ ˇ ˇ ´ ´ ´ (unprocessed), C ´ ˇ ´ distribuce za rok 1949, Praha, 28. 4. 1950. NA, A UV KSC, 19/7, AU 666. ´ ˇ ´ ´ ´ G. Kozincev, Lidove umenı Charlie Chaplina, Filmova prace, 15 June 1946, p. 6; ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Bohumil Brejcha, Svetoobcan Charlie Chaplin, Filmova prace, 23 November 1946, ´ ˇ ´ ´ p. 4; Rudolf Myzet, Vypravenı o Chaplinovi, Filmove noviny, 13 September 1947, ´ ˇ ´ ´ p. 10; Rudolf Myzet, Vypravenı o Chaplinovi II, Filmove noviny, 20 September ˇ´ ´ ´ 1947, p. 10; Jaroslav Broz, O Chaplinovych zacatcıch historicky, Filmove noviny, ˇ ´ ´ ´ 31 May 1947, p. 3; ro, Charlie Chaplin: Ztratil jsem vıru v Hollywood, Filmove ´ ˇ ´ noviny, 10 January 1948, p. 3 or Jak zijı . . . Zabery ze zivota, prace i oddechu, Kino, ˇ ´ ˇ 23 May 1947, p. 418. Czech Tycoon of Films Here to Reap Ideas, Los Angeles Times, 30 September 1946, p. A8. This invitation followed the final round of negotiations that had been conducted in New York between the Motion Picture Export Association (MPEA) and Czechoslovakia concerning the importation of Hollywood films to the Eastern Bloc country. John Edgar Hoover to the Office of European Affairs State Department, Washington, 3.10.1946. NARA, RG59, DF 1940–44, 860f.4061 MP/10-346; ´ ˇ ´ ´ Rudolf Myzet, Vypravenı o Chaplinovi’, Filmove noviny, 13 September 1947, p. 10. ˇ ´ Zpet z Ameriky, Kulturnı politika, 25 October 1946, p. 4. ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Bohumil Brejcha, Svetoobcan Charlie Chaplin, Filmova prace, 23 November 1946, pp. 3–4. Throughout the 1930s, Chaplin was part of the anti-fascist and pro-leftist community in Hollywood. This group was composed of mostly German emigrants like Hanns Eisler, Lion Feuchtwanger or Salka Viertel. Chaplin’s close friends included many Hollywood radicals such as the screenwriters Dalton Trumbo or Paul Jarrico. Charles J. Maland, Chaplin and American Culture (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 221–223. ´ ˇs ´ ´ ´ bz. Charlie Chaplin—trn v oku americkeho meˇt’aka, Filmova prace, 21 July ˇ 1945, p. 5. XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] CHAPLIN AND CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA 291 30 700 705 710 715 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 720 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 725 730 735 740 745 See Charles J. Maland, Chaplin and American Culture; David Robinson, Chaplin: his life and art (New York, McGraw Hill, 1989); Charles Spencer Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1964); or Colin Chambers, Here We Stand: Politics, performers and performance: Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Charlie Chaplin (London, Nick Hern, 2006). Maland, Chaplin and American Culture, 190. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 193. Kino, 26 December 1947, p. 1036. Maland, Chaplin and American Culture, 261 ´ ´ ´ Co nas zajıma, Kino, 14 April 1949, p. 98. ´ ˇ Jaroslav Broz, Chaplin a americka verejnost, Svet prace, 22 June 1948. ˇ ˇ ´ ˚ ´ri reflektoru, Kino, 4 December 1952, p. 475. ˇ bz, V za ˇ ˇ ´ ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ ´ Emil Radok, Umenı, v nemz se slucuje ohen a voda, Prace, 11 June 1948, p. 2. ´ film ve sluzbach reakce, Kino, 16 February 1950, p. 80. ´ G. V. Alexandrov, Burzoasnı ˇ ˇ ˚ ˇ ´ ´ K. Vanek, Chaplinuv ‘Monsieur Verdoux’, Rude pravo, 11 June 1948. ˇ´ ˇ ´ ´ Jaroslav Dvoracek-Josef Schneider, Nove filmy—Monsieur Verdoux—tradicka ´ noviny, 18 June 1948, p. 4. komedie, Filmove ˇ´ ˇ ´ ´ Jaroslav Dvoracek-Josef Schneider, Nove filmy—Monsieur Verdoux—tradicka ´ komedie, Filmove noviny, 18 June 1948, p. 4. ˚ ´ Chaplinuv Monsieur Verdoux, Filmove noviny, 3 May 1947, p. 4. ˚ ˇ ´ ´ K. Vanek, Chaplinuv ‘Monsieur Verdoux’, Rude pravo, 11 June 1948. ˇacek-Josef Schneider, Nove filmy—Monsieur Verdoux—tradicka ´ˇ ´ ´ Jaroslav Dvor ´ komedie, Filmove noviny 18 June 1948, p. 4. Ibid. ˚ ˇ ´ ´ K. Vanek, Chaplinuv ‘Monsieur Verdoux’, Rude pravo, 11 June 1948. ´s zajıma. Kino, 14 April 1949, p. 98. ´ ´ Co na Miroslav Kroh, Monsieur Verdoux, Tvorba 18 June 1948, p. 479. ˇ ˇˇ Karel Vanek, A jeste Monsieur Verdoux, Tvorba, 30 July 1948, p. 600. ˇ kolik slov k podivuhodnemu filmu ‘Monsieur Verdoux’, Prace, ´ ´ rdk, Znovu ne 19 June 1948. ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Bohumil Brejcha, Svetoobcan Charlie Chaplin, Filmova prace 23 November 1946, p. 4. ´ ˇ Jaroslav Broz, Chaplin a americka verejnost, Svet prace, 2 June 1948. ˇ ˇ ´ ˚ ˇ ´ ´ K. Vanek, Chaplinuv ‘Monsieur Verdoux’, Rude pravo, 11 June 1948. Ibid. ˚ ´ Chaplinuv Monsieur Verdoux, Filmove noviny, 3 May 1947, p. 4. ´ ˇı Faure, Americky pr´tel, 95–100. Ibid., 99. Irving A. Maas to the US Ambassador to Prague Ellis O. Briggs, Washington, 10 August 1951. NARA, RG59, DF1950–1955, 849.452. U.S. Bans Travel to Czechoslovakia, Calls Conditions There Hazardous, New York Times, 2 June 1951, pp. 1–2. ´ Hnusna role Hollywoodu, Kino, 29 March 1951, p. 146. ˇ Oleg Masinskij, Vyvozci jedu, Kino, 7 June 1951, pp. 274–275. ´ ´ ˇı ´ Hollywood utoc´ na mır, Kino, 9 June 1949, p. 173. I Chaplinovy grotesky na indexu, Kino, 26 April 1951, p. 195. ´ ´ Atlanticka vychova, Kino, 26 April 1951, p. 195. XML Template (2009) {TANDF_FPP}CHJF/CHJF_A_414727.3d [7.8.2009–3:51pm] (CHJF) [271–292] [First Proof] 292 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 67 68 750 69 70 755 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 760 765 79 80 770 775 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 780 89 I Chaplinovy grotesky na indexu, Kino, 26 April 1951, p. 195. ˇ ´ ´ Stanislav Steindler, Styska se nam po hollywoodskem filmu?, Kino, 4 December ´ ´ 1952, p. 476. ´ ´ ´ ´ Ivana Lazanska, Americka kultura, Rude pravo, 22 November 1950, p. 5. ˇ ˇ Oleg Masinskij, Vyvozci jedu, Kino, 7 June 1951, pp. 274–275; Grigorij ´ ´ ˇ ´ s ´ˇ ˚ ´ ´ Alexandrov, Hollywood ve sluzbach valecnych ˇtvacu, Rude pravo, 4 February 1951, ˇ ´ ˇnı umenı ve sluzbach americkeho imperialismu, Kino, ´ ˇ ´ ´ ´ p. 5; A. Andrejev, Reakc ˇ 15 March 1951, p. 130. ˇ ˇ ´ Jindrich Pus, Film zbranı pravdy, Kino, 22 December 1949, p. 396. ´ ´ Vaclav Kopecky, O socialistickem realismu, Kino, 9 June 1949, p. 1163. ´ ˇ trych, Dopis prvnı, Kino, 23 June 1949, p. 189. ´ Josef S ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Bohumil Brejcha, Svetoobcan Charlie Chaplin, Filmova prace, 23 November 1946, p. 4. ˇ ´ ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ ´ Emil Radok, Umenı, v nemz se slucuje ohen a voda, Prace, 11 June 1948, p. 2. ´ Chaplin o Ridgwayovi a ostatnıch, Kino, 18 December 1952, p. 483. Po Darwinovi i Chaplin na indexu v Tennessee, Kino, 11 August 1953, p. 3. See for example Paul Swann, ‘The Little State Department: Washington and Hollywood’s rhetoric of the postwar audience’. In: David W. Elwood and Rob Kroes (eds) Hollywood in Europe, Experience of Cultural Hegemony (Amsterdam, VU University Press, 1994), pp. 193–194. G. Avarin, ‘Filosofie’ Hollywoodu, Kino, 12 October 1950, p. 480. Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American propaganda and public diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 71. ˇ ˇı ˇ ˇ ˇ ´ ´ CTK, Dals´ tri cernosi v USA zavrazdeni, Rude pravo, 7 February 1951, p. 3. ˇ ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Americky imperialismus—dedic Hitlera, Rude pravo, 1 February 1951, p. 1. ´ Ibid. Ibid. ˇı ˇ ´ ´ ´ ´ ˇ ˇı ´ ´ Jir´ Zak, Americke rejdy v zapadnım Nemecku skonc´ krachem, Rude pravo, 9 February 1951, p. 2. ˇ ´ Americky imperialismus—dedic Hitlera, Rud? pravo, 1 February 1951, p. 1. ´ ´ Hnusna role Hollywoodu, Kino, 29 March 1951, p. 146. ˇ ˇ Mich. Makljarskij, Celovek s licom modeli, Sovetskoje Iskusstvo, 8 January 1949, p. 4; Yank Win, Lose In ‘Curtain’ Areas, Variety, 12 January 1949, pp. 3 and 9. Iron Curtain Lands after Chaplin Films, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 October 1954, p. 1. 785 ˇ ˇ ´ ´ Jindriska Blahova is completing her Ph.D. in the School of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia and in the Department of Film Studies, Charles University in Prague, on ‘Hollywood behind the Iron Curtain: relations between Czechoslovakia and the US film industry (1945–1959)’.