New Book: Dawn Addams - My Life As Chaplin's Leading Lady
“What he is satirizing in the film is not so much America as our whole modern civilization — the world of television and fan hysteria, of exiled monarchs and corrupt republics, the values or lack of values in our age. It just so happens that Chaplin has lived so many years in the States that he knows how far that country is the synthesis of all our ills. Whereas Mod- ern Times was a satire on the machine age, so A King in New York may proba- bly come to be considered as a satire on the atomic age.”
In 1957, Dawn Addams cast a lucid gaze upon the film she had just starred in as lead actress: A King in New York.
Charles Chaplin was forced into exile from America in 1952 during the time of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. In the 1950s, Chaplin wrote and directed in England the film comedy, A King In New York, that satirized America in the atomic age and blacklisting. He cast English actress Dawn Addams as his co-star.
Just before the film’s release in 1957, film writer John Francis Lane sat down with Addams and conducted an illuminating interview on what it was like to work with Chaplin.
Dawn Addams - My Life As Chaplin’s Leading Lady is a cleverly compiled book by journalist and author James Pepper which includes John Francis Lane’s interview with Addams while A King is New York was still in post-production and original writing by Charles Chaplin from the same period, giving his thoughts and definitions of comedy and tragedy. The chosen extracts are from a rare draft typescript preserved in the Chaplin Archives.
Printed in a limited edition, this little gem of a book is illustrated with black and white photographs from the Chaplin Archives and can be ordered at www.jamespepperbooks.com
CHAPLIN, CHARLES, DAWN ADDAMS, JOHN FRANCIS LANE. Dawn Addams - My Life As Chaplin’s Leading Lady - Filming Charles Chaplin’s A King In New York - By John Francis Lane. Introduction and Afterword by James Pepper. Santa Barbara: Santa Teresa Press, 2024. First Edition. Limited to 500 copies.
