031004
"if you want to take my picture, it'll cost you a fiver. if you don't, i'll smash your bloody camera in." |
| - sid vicious |







...the chaplin i remember most vividly is one who stood alone and frail on the stage of the dorothy chandler pavilion of the l.a. music center in 1972. he was just a week away from his 83rd birthday and back in hollywood for the first time since he'd been ruled persona non grata 20 years earlier in the era of mccarthyism when he was refused an entry visa to the u.s. following a trip he'd made to his native england. he was, at that time, accused of having communist sympathies, although he had adamantly declared he never did. ("i am not a communist and never have been," he insisted. "what i am is a peace monger.") after that, he swore never to set foot on american soil again and didn't for two decades, during which time not only did the world change drastically but so, eventually, did the public's distrust of him. eventually, he became a beloved icon again and hollywood's academy asked him to accept a special oscar in 1972 for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art fom of the century." |