A King in New York

Chaplin's 1957 satire on McCarthyism and the political situation in America, in which he stars as a penniless European king at odds with the American way of life

Director
Charles Chaplin

Cast
King Shahdov: Charles Chaplin
Queen Irene: Maxine Audley
Prime Minister Voudel: Jerry Desmonde
Ambassador Jaume: Oliver Johnston
Ann Kay (TV specialist): Dawn Addams
Johnson (TV advertiser): Sid James
Mona Cromwell (Hostess): Joan Ingram
Rupert Macabee: Michael Chaplin
Macabee Senior: John McLaren
Headmaster: Phil Brown
Lawyer: Harry Green
Lift boy: Robert Arden
School superintendent: Alan Gifford
U.S. Marshal: Robert Cawdron
Member of Atomic Commission: George Woodbridge

Following a revolution in his country in which he is overthrown, King Shahdov travels penniless to New York, where he finds that to make ends meet, he must make TV commercials. He is suspected of being a communist however, and is forced to face one of McCarthy's hearings.

This was Chaplin's last starring film, a satire on America and the communist witchhunts of the 50s and 60s. The film received only a limited release in Britain and wasn't seen at all in America until 1973. Essentially autobiographical (Chaplin was himself accused of 'un-American activities' and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive files on him, tried to end his United States residency), the image of the dethroned king was seized upon as a particularly apt theme by critics, many of whom saw the film as embodying all the reasons Chaplin should never have entered into talkies; the slapstick humour takes a back seat and the film is instead led by Chaplin's earnest but often long-winded dialogue.

Yet in spite of it all, it has funny, well-observed flashes of genius, as the exiled European king, completely out of touch with the modern world, collides head-on with New York in the midst of the rock 'n' roll era, and is an interesting and entertaining film, if for biographical purposes alone.