Charlie Chaplin visits London in 1930. The following decade, he was among those blacklisted in the US for alleged communist leanings
BBC/TOPFOTO/ VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM
In later life, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) – at his peak, the world’s biggest movie star – found himself exiled from Hollywood. How did this extraordinary reversal of fortunes occur? The story of the actor who was among the highest-profile victims of the blacklist era opens a new 10-part series narrated by his granddaughter, Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones).
The series goes on to explore how the FBI targeted Tinseltown in a prelude to the post-Second World War US witch-hunts against alleged communists. It also charts the experiences of figures such as writer Dalton Trumbo (1905–76), who couldn’t collect his Academy Awards for Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956) while he was blacklisted.