Quote:
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The previously secret file, released Friday by Britain's National Archives, shows that MI5 investigated the silent film star in the 1950s at the request of U.S. authorities, who had long suspected him of communist sympathies. MI5 historian Christopher Andrew said the FBI's red-hating chief, J. Edgar Hoover, privately denounced Chaplin as "one of Hollywood's parlor Bolsheviks."
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Chaplin was friends with at least director Grigori Aleksandrov, who applied Chaplin's example in some of his films, and even made a very direct reference to Chaplin and his problems with the studios in his film
Tsirk. I wouldn't be surprised if such connections would have been more than a reason for some people to start suspecting his sympathies.