In his sixties, Maugham lived for most of the Second World War in the United States, first in Los Angeles, where he worked on many screenplays, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations. He later lived in the South. While in the US before that country's entry into the war, he was asked by the British government to make patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. After his companion Gerald Haxton died in 1944, Maugham returned to England. In private, Maugham espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish refugees, noting that "the Gestapo is known to have had spies among refugees, and these have not seldom been Jews". After the war, in 1946 Maugham returned to his villa in France. He lived there until his death, with time away for frequent and long travels.