Chaplin kept making films after his exile. A King in New York came out in 1957, shot in England, a comedy that contained pointed satire about the McCarthyism that had driven him out. A Countess from Hong Kong followed in 1967, with Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. Critical reception was mixed. Neither film approached the commercial and artistic stature of his great silent work.
His autobiography was published in 1964. It covered his entire life and career with the authority of a man who had lived through one of the most improbable rises in entertainment history and had survived being driven out of the country where he had become famous. The book was widely reviewed.
He also returned to his silent films, composing new orchestral scores for re-releases of The Kid, The Gold Rush, City Lights, and Modern Times. These were not mere revivals; Chaplin wrote full scores and oversaw the presentations. They gave several generations of audiences who had only known him by reputation or from clips a chance to see his major work in something approaching its intended form.
In 1972, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary Oscar for “the incalculable effect he had on making motion pictures the art form of this century.” The ceremony required Chaplin to return to the United States for the first time in twenty years; he was seventy-two. The State Department issued him a temporary visa. When he walked onto the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the audience gave him a twelve-minute standing ovation. By multiple accounts it was among the longest sustained ovations in the ceremony’s history.