Kidnapping Charlie Chaplin

Do you know anything of the kidnap of Charlie Chaplin?

Charlie Chaplin was one of “The Greats” from the silent era.  Compared to the careers of other film directors and comics the career of Charlie Chaplin reached the stratosphere. 

Like many film makers he settled in America.  However, in 1952, he left America for one last time.  He had fallen foul of the authorities who believed he had communist sympathies.  Chaplin certainly had left wing sympathies.  In 1940 he produced a satirical film called The Great Dictator.  It ended with a speech that criticised blind obedience to patriotic nationalism.  In 1942, he spoke out in favour of opening a second front in Europe and, according to a quote in the Daily Worker, he suggested not just that Communism would sweep the world but that it would be a good thing for human progress.  During the 1950s in the  fiercely anti-communist McCarthy era he was under investigation as a suspected communist.  When he travelled to London to attend the premier of Limelight in 1952 the US authorities closed the door and refused to let him back into the country.

Chaplin settled near Vevey, a picturesque town on the north shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.  Here, he spent the rest of his life.

Charlie Chaplin died in his sleep following a stroke at the age of 88 on Christmas Day 1977.  Two days later following a quiet family service his body was laid to rest in the little cemetery of Corsier-sur-Vevey.

Three months later, on 2 March 1978, press headlines loudly reported that the grave of Sir Charles Chaplin had been violated.  The body was missing.  The Swiss police began an investigation.  Interpol was alerted.  There was one small clue.  A man said that shortly before midnight he had heard the sound of a pick axe coming from the cemetery.

In public, the police searched for motives.  The author Frederick Sands mentioned in a book that the comedian had once expressed a wish to be buried in his homeland, England.  Was the kidnap the work of a group of devoted followers who wanted to bring the body to England? Was there any significance in the fact that Chaplin who was Jewish was buried in a Gentile cemetery?  In public, the investigators were stumped.  There seemed no motive.