FDR versus CC

Well, we know the 'received wisdom' about how J. Edgar Hoover was able to manipulate powerful Democratic Presidents to push his own private agenda against Chaplin....

But Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most powerful, if not *the* most powerful, Chief Executives of the 20th century, and he routinely used government agencies to persecute political opponents.

A case in point was Moses Annenberg, father of media billionaire Walter Annenberg.

Annenberg was an ardent opponent of the New Deal and Roosevelt said to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau:

'I want Moe Annenberg for dinner.'

A new book on the life and career of the Annenberg's has been published and the author (according to a NY Times Book Review) 'leaves little doubt that Annenberg's 1940 conviction for income tax evasion....was the result of a White House-directed vendetta.'

Since Roosevelt's Attorney General Tom Clark approved and supported the prosecution of Chaplin in the Barry case, why have some assumed that the whole matter was a Hoover-inspired plot rather than coming from higher up in the chain of command?

(George Shelps transparently and lamely attempts to revive the newsgroup with political brouhaha.)

<< (George Shelps transparently and lamely attempts to revive the newsgroup with political brouhaha.) >>

George Shelps is attempting to open a discussion in an area of interest to him which concerns Chaplin. (It doesn't much interest me but others might care a lot).

You, who neither sign your flame nor offer an AOL profile as clue to your identity, are attempting to smother one of the few sparks this newsgroup has seen in many weeks.

If I were choosing players for my team based upon this evidence, it would be George any day.

David Shepard

I disagree. FDR and Charlie were always great freinds all the way back to world war I. Charlies problems did not begin until FDR died.

Truman maybe another story!

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

There's a small problem with this premise.

Roosevelt's Attorneys General were Homer S. Cummings, Frank Murphy, Robert H. Jackson, and Francis Biddle, in that order. Tom Clark was merely an Assistant AG under Biddle.

When Truman told Biddle that he was appointing the dubiously competent Tom Clark as his successor, Biddle's only comment was, 'I would strongly urge you to reconsider.'

The first post in this thread, which is mainly about FDR and Annenberg, and all posts that follow it are essentially off-topic.

It is precisely this kind of tangential politocentric blather, and the hostility it generates, that killed this newsgroup.

Connie K.

I have no objections to either the political or the tangential nature of the posts. What I *DO* object to is the clear attempt to 'prove' a point through misrepresentation of fact. That this may have been done out of ignorance rather than maliciousness doesn't remove the need for correction. And while not wishing to disturb the dead (NG), I offer the following:

In addition to the 'small problem with [George's] premise' had he done a bit of homework and provided us with some other easily obtained background information, like 1) the fact that Biddle had attempted to fire Clark only a short few months prior to being replaced by him *after* FDR's death, or like 2) according to a transcript of _Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman_, that when the interviewer, Merle Miller, asked then ex-president Truman 'What do you consider the biggest mistake you made as President?' the response was 'Tom Clark was my biggest mistake, no doubt about it. It isn't so much that he's a *bad* man. It's just that he's such a dumb son of a bitch', or 3) as is recounted by Chuck Maland in _Chaplin and American Culture_ (p203,259 and more), that a direct pipeline between Hoover and Clark existed in reference to Barry case 'information', George could have saved us all from the seemingly intended but erroneous conclusions which his presentation would have us draw AND save himself from the oh so transparent egg(white) on his face.

Sometimes 'received wisdom' gains its status not simply from having been created to support a point of view, but from the elementary quality of being based on reality.

There is more than sufficient evidence that Clark, with his (as Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter put it) 'somewhat rancid morality', was not only corrupt, but also very much the unwitting tool of J. Edgar Hoover, playing an apparently significant, if unknowing, part in getting the expansion of the FBI's wiretapping authority through the Truman White House. Clark is also known to have indulged in other questionable associations and relations which might generously be described as conflicts of interest. If George wishes to have his apparently limited knowledge of Clark expanded, I'll be happy to oblige, but I'll warn him in advance that the more he learns, the more he will see Hoover's fingerprints all over Clark's actions, Chaplin-related and otherwise.

I leave it for others to determine whether the original error or its subsequent correction should be viewed as the more hostile, or homicidal, act.

RIP

Probably because there is no evidence whatsoever that the matter came from higher up in the chain of command. The notion of FDR putting World War II on hold long enough to launch a 'Get Chaplin' conspiracy doesn't seem very likely to me.

Hardly any of us like these political topics, but they're the most reliable way to get the old regulars to post! This was the best day or two that the NG has seen in a long while.

My, my, my...look at all the names that were once so familiar to the newsgroup that have come back from the dead. There's the venerable Connie. And then there's my ol' Sweetie. And even my ol' friend David Totheroh. (Welcome back, Dave.) But I think it's kinda funny that most of you have come back just to gloat over the scarsity of posts here. (As if the ONELIST wasn't suffering as well! Thought I didn't know about it, huh?!) But I suppose that it'd be far better off for all of us if those who are harping on the newsgroup's demise would instead post on topic. It'd be good to see where it gets us.

~ Crooner

But as Buster Keaton said: 'If anybody says it's like old times, I'll jump right out the window.'

Thank you, David. I realize that you do not see things my way in some of these matters, but you have spotlighted precisely the type of attitude that has poisoned this newsgroup, and led to its current moribund condition: intolerance.

Thank you.

I misrepresented nothing by saying that Tom Clark, a Roosevelt appointee, prosecuted Chaplin and that Roosevelt was known to use the Justice Department to pursue political vendettas. I don't absolve Hoover. I simply extend the moral responsibility to his superiors.

Those the only two possibilities, eh?

Irrelevant. So why didn't *Biddle* over-rule the Barry prosecution? It happened on his watch.

2)

These reminiscences of a semi-senile Truman have never been taken seriously by historians. Besides, Clark's pursuit of Chaplin didn't occur when Truman was President.

Again, so what? Hoover headed the investigative arm of the Justice Department and it was a federal prosecution.

What erroneous 'conclusions?' I drew none. I simply stated that Clark pursued the case in an Administration known for abusing its power to pursue political vendettas. I theorized that there was possibly more than a Hoover-inspired agenda at work here.

I never have stated that Hoover was not involved. It is *you* who have created a point-of-view that absolves some liberal heroes from moral responsibility for what happened to Chaplin.

So Clark favored wire-tapping but was 'apparently' and 'unwittingly' and 'unknowingly' the tool of Hoover, as were Truman, Roosevelt, and all the attorney generals listed by Kuriyama. Huh?

More likely, they all approved it because they all favored it, as did Hoover, whose job it was to carry out the mandates of his superiors.

Any conflicts of interest having to do with *Chaplin?* That's the topic here.

You'll be off-topic if you do that. If you prove that Clark was corrupt, you simply bolster my case of a more general corruption which can't be laid at the feet of one man.

Please supply any Chaplin-related information you have. That's the purpose of this newsgroup.

I think others

Maybe when the newly restoryed Essanays are seen by more of the newsgroup participants, Chaplin's movies will be the topic.