Charlie Chaplin - Silent Genius

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the women of charlie chaplin's life




chaplin's first wife, mildred harris

young silent film star mildred harris was only 16 when she met charlie chaplin at a hollywood party. according to chaplin's autobiography, she was there with someone else, but when they had a spat about something, she asked chaplin to give her a ride home. chaplin said he had little interest in her at first - he thought she was pretty but vacant and thought no more about it when he dropped her off at her home.



but she was the one (according to chaplin) who initiated their relationship. she called him that night and it didn't take long for chaplin to become interested. maybe nothing would have happened if chaplin hadn't overheard a comment made about mildred by a driver who said he saw chaplin with the most beautiful girl in the world. before long they were involved, and before much longer, chaplin said, "mildred began to worry."

they say she tricked chaplin into believing she was pregnant, so he married her when she was 17 and he was 29. it was a bit of scandal, nothing nearly like what he would face in coming years. but it turned out to be a false pregnancy, which i'm sure was a BIG wtf moment for chaplin.



marriage to mildred had a very negative effect on chaplin's work. making sunnyside was "like pulling teeth" he said. and mildred did give birth eventually, to a boy that only lived three days. this was right around the time chaplin began work on the kid. those scenes with the tramp and the baby at the beginning always makes me think of that time in chaplin's life.

they began living separate lives until chaplin finally suggested they divorce. mildred accepted it and it seemed it might go smoothly at first - or that might have been chaplin's wishful thinking. it turned into a circus and chaplin had to fork over quite a bit of his hard earned money to rid himself of mildred. chaplin always said mildred wasn't that smart, but she almost stole the kid right out from under him. in order to keep it from being attached to the settlement, chaplin had to sneak it to another location to finish it and get it to first national.



after the divorce, mildred married a couple of more times - after having an affair with the prince of wales - but from what i found on her, she developed a drinking problem and died of pneumonia in 1944.

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the women of charlie chaplin's life


mary pickford

mary pickford got her start in show business much like chaplin. her father was an alcoholic that abandoned his family. her mother was a seamstress to support mary and her younger brother and sister. mary, along with her siblings and mother, began traveling on the road to perform in plays and vaudeville. she eventually became america's sweetheart and was the actress on top of the food chain in hollywood. especially when she married hollywood's first action hero, douglas fairbanks. they were the brangelina of their day.



man, i love fairbanks. he seemed to be such a great, fun guy. chaplin described him that way in his autobiography. he had extraordinary magnetism and charm and a genuine boyish enthusiasm which he conveyed to the public. he was the first star to live in beverly hills. he'd do things like drag chaplin out of bed at three in the morning with a few others to ride horses out somewhere to watch the sunrise and eat breakfast over a campfire, or hire a hawaiian orchestra to serenede mary at her window in the middle of the night.



however, chaplin and mary didn't always get along. i don't know, i always got a sense from his tone in his autobiography that chaplin was a little standoffish with mary. i've said before that perhaps he felt she came between he and fairbanks. maybe she just didn't like chaplin and he resented her. maybe they were great friends, i have no idea. just a feeling i have about them. but they definitely didn't get along all the time in business. after they became partners in united artists, mary and chaplin often butted heads.



chaplin had little interest in the inner workings of the business meetings - they bored him. i've described before (on page 3) about how chaplin laughed at mary when she began to say, "it behooves, us, gentlemen," and disrupted the meeting. i'm sure mary didn't appreciate that. as much as i love the guy, i don't think chaplin had a very high opinion of women that often. i could blame it on his youth, when he saw plainly how women were treated, thinking it was the norm. but he did love and respect women like his mother, edna (for the most part) and of course, oona.

chaplin and mary remained friendly through the years - she attended the premiere of monsieur verdoux with he and oona. but they still couldn't agree on business, especially when it came to them selling their shares of united artists. they bickered back and forth about it until a circuit of theaters made them a generous offer. chaplin told mary he'd take five million cash at signing and she could have seven million, which she agreed to. but chaplin heard that just as she was about to sign the documents, she said, "no! why should he get the five million dollars now and i have to wait two years for mine?" chaplin said because of that, they were forced later to sell for considerably less than before.

mary and fairbanks split in 1936. fairbanks had had an affair that went public so mary kicked him to the curb. she and fairbanks had both been married before, so her third marriage was to actor and band leader, charles 'buddy' rogers.



but mary, like many other silent actors, could not move forward successfully with the talkies. like her father and pretty much everyone else in her family, she became an alcoholic and a recluse. she once said, i left the screen because I didn’t want what happened to chaplin to happen to me …i know I’m an artist, and that’s not being arrogant, because talent comes from god … my career was planned, there was never anything accidental about it. it was planned, it was painful, it was purposeful. i'm not exactly satisfied, but i’m grateful.

she died at age 87 in 1979 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

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the women of charlie chaplin's life

these next ones are for fun.



may reeves

reeves was hired to help with chaplin's mail when he was making a world tour in the early '30's. on her first day, chaplin happened to walk in and see her and fell in love. falling in love was very easy for chaplin in those days. the trouble was, he might be in love with you for a few weeks, days or only a few hours. he and reeves began having an affair, but chaplin said they both knew what it was going into it. in other words, just a fling. they did the rounds of parties, dinners and dances and spent a lot of time together.

in his autobiography, chaplin described some of it, but didn't give may's name. he said at a party they ran into a former lover of may's and on their way back to the hotel, she gave a flimsy excuse to go back to the party alone. she didn't return that night and later confessed to reuniting with her old flame, which pissed chaplin off. he did his usual thing of breaking it off and then hastily getting back together with her before he left. according to him, they parted friends and the last he saw of her was when she was imitating the tramp's walk on a pier as his ship was pulling away.



may wrote a book about their time together and elaborated a bit. i don't know how much of it is true, if any of it is. it was rumored that she also had an affair with sydney, chaplin's brother, at this time. she evidently became pregnant and she said chaplin made her go skiiing with him, hoping the exertion and possible falls would trigger a miscarriage. she didn't have the baby - if she was pregnant at all. sydney had to leave on business and begged chaplin's entourage to keep him from marrying may on impulse. may described the mornings they would "play dolphins" together in the bathtub, but like georgia hale, said chaplin could be either loving and sensitive, or cold and distant. he told her he wanted to star her in his next film. he was leaving to sail to hong kong and promised her he would send for her when he returned to the states, but he never did.



louise brooks

i love louise brooks. at one time everyone did. maybe she wasn't the first one to do it, but she was credited for popularizing the bobbed haircut and was kind of known as the first flapper. she starred in 16 or 17 silent movies and made a few talkies, and was known for her vamp characters.

she and chaplin used to hang out at w.r. hearst's mansion, where chaplin was a frequent guest. it was said they had an affair around the time he made the gold rush.



i read once where brooks compared chaplin as a lover to buster keaton and said keaton was better. she said chaplin wasn't much interested in pleasing women, sadly. she also described a party where chaplin took off his clothes and began chasing a young woman around. he had heard that coating his...uh...little tramp... with iodine would protect him from std's. so she said there he was, running around the room, naked, with this bright red...uh...flag before him. quite an image. your welcome.


^i have that in a frame in my house

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the women of charlie chaplin's life



clare sheridan, with a bust of chaplin

chaplin was invited to sam goldwyn's dinner party for sheridan, the talented sculptress and author of the controversial book, from mayfair to moscow.  she told chaplin that it was difficult to earn money sculpting in america.  "american men don't mind their wives sitting for busts, but are reluctant to pose themselves, they are so modest." 

"i'm not modest," chaplin said. 

so she came to his house to begin working on his sculpture.  it was said they had an affair, but chaplin didn't own up to it in his book, though he did devote more than a few sentences about her.  


chaplin with sheridan and her son, dicky

he said when sheridan's son, dicky, died at age 19, clare became a catholic and lived for a time at a convent. she died in 1970 at age 84. 



marion davies

while reading chaplin's autobiography for the first time, i found myself disliking marion davies.  he met her around the time he was making the gold rush.  to me, she sounded self-absorbed and thoughtless.  she became the mistress of millionaire w.r. hearst, who plastered her picture in every one of his newspapers and magazines.  though again, chaplin doesn't own up to it in his book, it's pretty well known they were lovers.  



hearst's mansion, san simeon, was a gathering place for all the A listers back then, and chaplin managed to get an invited most times.  he was married to his second wife, lita, by then, and she said in her book that chaplin enjoyed the over excessive wealth and luxury there, knowing he didn't have to pay for it.  

as most people know that citizen kane was based loosely around hearst's life, marion included.  in CK, kane attempts to force his mistress to become a great opera singer, though everyone knows she's not suited for it.  in real life, hearst seemed determined to make davies a name as a dramatic actress, when she was better suited for comedy.  



but hearst didn't approve.  still, marion got a few good comedies in under her belt, including my favorite, the patsy, which i wrote about in my blog thingy.  i also liked show people from 1928, in which chaplin has a cameo - 











chaplin was a brave man to risk hearst's wrath upon discovering their affair.  if you believe hollywood legend, rent the cat's meow sometime.  it's about the thomas ince scandal.  in 1924 several guests were invited to hearst's yacht for a weekend, and among them were marion, of course, chaplin and director/producer, thomas ince.  it was said ince took ill while on the boat and was taken off to see a doctor for a heart ailment, but died shortly afterwards.  then, suddenly, a headline appeared on the los angelos times paper that he had been shot while on hearst's yacht.  but the story disappeared, so said, under hearst's influence.   he was promptly cremated and that was the end of ince. 



BUT, it was pretty well documented that chaplin WAS a guest on hearst's yacht that weekend.  the other story is that hearst, who was getting suspicious of davies and chaplin, caught them in a clinch one night on the yacht and tried to shoot chaplin.  but ince just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time and took a bullet to the head. it was possible that hearst mistook ince for chaplin, and seeing him close to marion, took a shot at him.  kono, chaplin's faithful driver and servant, further implicated everyone by stating publicly that he saw ince removed from the boat with a bloody bandage wrapped around  his head.  he later denied it.  


kirsten dunst as marion davies with eddie izzard as chaplin in "the cat's meow" 2001

chaplin barely mentions the incident, other than to say he was not on board and he, hearst and marion had visited ince shortly before he died.  hmmm...watch the cat's meow if you ever get a chance.  even if it isn't true it was a good story.  dunst did a great marion davies.  i didn't like izzard as chaplin much.normally i looove izzard.  although he did capture chaplin's personality quite well, he looked nothing like him. i read an interview with izzard, who said the thought of trying to take on the role of charlie chaplin was pretty overwhelming, so he broke it down to just how he thought where chaplin would be for that one weekend - just a guy hoping to have a good time, relax and possibly get laid. and that was probably the best way to tackle that role.  

it was also said that chaplin paid a servant five bucks to vamoose so he and marion could knock boots there while his wife, lita, was giving birth upstairs in their own house.  

the more i got to know marion, the more i liked her, i admit.  now i love her. and i always thought she would have been a better match for chaplin.  but she was totally devoted to hearst, as he was to her (marion once wrote a check for hearst for one million dollars when he started having money problems). and charlie chaplin jr. summed it up pretty well in his book - he said marion didn't need chaplin.  he was drawn to women that he could rescue and ravish.






hearst died in 1951 and marion, understandably devastated, stayed in bed for a couple of days.  when she woke up in her apartment, everything of hearst's had been removed by his family - there wasn't a trace of him in her home anywhere.  she wasn't allowed to go to the funeral, either.  she began drinking more and eventually married a man named horace brown, but they were not very happy together.  marion devoted a lot of her time and money to charities, particularly children's charities.  she died of stomach cancer in 1961. [/span][/font]

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the women of charlie chaplin's life



pola negri

pola negri, born apolonia chałupiec, was a polish stage and film star that had a streak of popularity in the states back in the '20's. chaplin first met her in germany and then again when she came to california. this was a funny romance for charlie - it was really all a publicity stunt to benefit pola's career.


chaplin with pola in 1922

by this time, chaplin didn't have to work for female company, and pola was no slouch in reeling him in. when he first ran into her in hollywood, he said she said to him, "you are very cruel, chaarlee, not to have telephoned. i have been waiting so long to hear from you. where is it you work? give me your number and i will call you."



it's one of my favorite parts of chaplin's autobiography, his romance with pola. she was definitely a drama queen. once it was public, headlines began popping up declaring they were engaged, though they were not. chaplin described when he received a message that miss negri could not see him, giving no explanation as to why. but later that night pola's maid phoned chaplin to say her mistress was "very ill" and chaplin needed to come at once. once there, the frantic maid took chaplin into a drawing room, where pola was draped across a couch. when she saw chaplin she moaned, "you are cruel!"

chaplin's driver and trusted servant, kono, couldn't stand pola. chaplin used to wear a scent called mitsouko, a sort of unisex scent that is still made today. i bought a tiny bottle once, just to see what chaplin smelled like, and it's heavenly. pola used to pour mitsouko around chaplin's house, on the carpets and furniture so the rooms would smell more like him, much to kono's distress.



finally, the manager of paramount studios, charlie hyton, paid chaplin a vist. he hemmed and hawed at first, but eventually suggested to chaplin that he marry pola - since it was already in the papers that they were engaged. chaplin told him since he owned no stock in paramount, he didn't see why he should marry her. their relationship ended quite soon afterwards. i'm really kind of surprised chaplin didn't marry her - he could be talked into almost anything when a woman was involved, but maybe pola was too practiced, too savvy for his tastes. still, it was a fun ride. pola negri lived a very full and dramatic life and died at age 90 in 1987.





chaplin's second wife, lita grey

during the filming of the gold rush i married for the second time. because we have two grown sons of whom i am very fond, i will not go into any details. for two years we were married and tried to make a go of it, but it was hopeless and ended in a great deal of bitterness.

there. that's it. that is all chaplin says of lita in his autobiography. but believe me, there was plenty to write about. lillita louise macmurray was just 16 years old when she married chaplin, who was 35 in 1924. this is where his bad reputation really began and never really left him. he had to have learned a very valuable lesson from lita.



lita was cast as the flirtatious angel in the heaven scene in the kid. amazingly, she was only 12 then, cast to seduce the tramp, which i know is a little freaky to think about. for such a small part lita did do a good job - and nothing sums up chaplin's take on romance like their scene in the kid. it's beyond symbolic.



maybe the whole disaster of their relationship could have been avoided if lita hadn't just decided to stop by chaplin's studio one day with her friend, merna (more about her later)when she was 15. cracks me up to think there was a time you could just stop by the movie studio of the most famous man in movies like that. anyway, chaplin had begun work on the gold rush at that time, and was casting for the female lead. when he saw lita he had some pictures taken of her in different outfits with her hair in different styles. rollie, his cameraman, would later comment on how fixated chaplin seemed to be of lita.



i can't get over how chaplin is looking at her in that picture. anyway, lita got the part of the dance hall girl in the gold rush. in her first book, lita described the trip with chaplin and the cast & crew to truckee, california, to begin filming. she had said chaplin paid little attention to her up until then, but one day on the train during lunch, she remembered him staring at her the whole time in a way that made her uncomfortable. she then said that while on location, chaplin came down with a bad cold and stayed in bed for days, but encouraged visitors, including lita. she said she had a crush on him, but flipped out when he attacked her. they wrestled about for a few minutes, according to lita, and even though she described him as brutish, she still began meeting him in secret once they were back in hollywood. she went into great detail of her deflowering by chaplin in his home sauna.


lita, in later years, checking out an absolutely horrid wax model of the tramp

lita's first book is full of sex scenes between her and chaplin, and she later admitted that the person who really wrote the book wasn't very interested in what actually happened, but ramped up the sex scenes to sell more books. she also admitted her mother's real role in the "romance." evidently, lita's mother saw her meal ticket in chaplin and pushed her own teenaged daughter at a man in his 30's relentlessly. she was even the one who pushed lita into visiting chaplin without supervision in his room in truckee.


chaplin with lita and her mother

when lita found out she was pregnant, all hell predictably broke loose. chaplin stupidly had an aversion to birth control and unfortunately had a very casual attitude concerning abortion. but not this time. not only did lita have a leech for a mother, her uncle was a lawyer. chaplin found himself in a shotgun marriage to lita - they "eloped" to mexico to have it done so he could avoid jail time.

lita said in her first book that while she and chaplin were on their way to mexico that he coldly suggested she throw herself from the train to solve all their problems. she said she was still in love with him and he had been in love with her as well until he found out about the baby. after that he ignored her or was extremely cold. there was also the gold rush to worry about. he had to re-cast lita's role and gave it to georgia hale.


chaplin with lita and charlie chaplin jr.

lita and her mother moved into chaplin's mansion, where she was mostly ignored. she got into big trouble one time when she invited a crowd of her old school friends to come visit - they were having quite a party until chaplin came home and threw everyone out, more like an irate father than husband. but she said they also went through a period after charlie chaplin junior was born where they connected again - physically, since they had little in common otherwise. chaplin seemed to take on a - well, i paid for the car, may as well drive it - attitude and renewed his interest in lita until she gave birth to sydney junior.



and lita should have known better than to suggest her best friend, merna, for the lead female role in the circus, chaplin's next movie. really - what was she thinking? but he did, and when he wasn't having an affair with georgia hale, he was with merna, another young, pretty girl with hero worship. lita realized what was going on when she was having lunch with merna one day, and merna showed off a diamond bracelet. she casually said "charlie" had bought it for her. and knowing how tight her husband could be, lita finally got a clue.



the divorce was a bloodbath. lita, backed by her own anger at discovering her husband's affair with her best friend, along with her money-grubbing mother and cutthroat lawyer uncle, planned on ruining chaplin. lita's divorce complaint was reported to be 42 pages long, full of juicy, behind-the-scene stories of chaplin's sexual behavior and a list of names of women he'd allegedly slept with. georgia was in there. so was marion davies. and a number of others. it took time, but i finally tracked it down years ago. basically, the biggest complaint was that chaplin had demanded oral sex from lita, which was pretty shocking for that time. it was so scandalous that copies of the divorce complaint were made and sold on the streets.



it was the biggest divorce settlement anyone had had at the time, $600,000 and $100,000 in trust for each child. it seemed lita enjoyed the attention she got from the trial, cashing in on her lost time in front of the movie camera, and made the most of it. they said in the schickel doc that most of the mud she threw at chaplin, ended up on her. it did nearly do chaplin in - he reportedly had a nervous breakdown - his hair turned completely white and he would be stuck with a lecherous rep for the rest of his life. but there is a great deal of the tramp in chaplin, and he moved on with his life and used his pain for his art. so - thanks, lita - i guess.



i can't hate lita for what she did to chaplin, though. honestly, he brought it on himself for hooking up with a girl so young, anyway. and she was pushed around by her mother, too. lita was just a starstruck kid who worshiped a movie star. though i don't think she had much to do with the writing of her first book, you can get a sense she could be funny; at least she had a good sense of humor. i still haven't read her second book, wife of the life of the party, which is supposed to be more truthful of her time with chaplin. she did interviews for unknown chaplin that wasn't disrespectful to chaplin in the least - she was a very good sport about it. she also supported chaplin when he was going through his problems as an alleged communist. she married two more times after chaplin and died at age 87 of cancer in 1995.

and - chaplin and lita's relationship was the inspiration for vladimir nabokov's famous book, lolita. BAM.

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I'm lovin' these! Keep it up!

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gawrsh, thanks. i'm so glad i'm finally doing this. chaplin went through enough women to keep this thread up indefinitely.

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the women of charlie chaplin's life



georgia hale

georgia hale was born in missouri in 1905. she won a beauty contest in 1922 that got her a trip to hollywood. georgia wanted to be a movie star. she harbored a huge crush on her favorite movie star, charlie chaplin.



georgia starred in a short called his marriage wow, as an uncredited bridesmaid, but it was her appearance in the salvation hunters in 1925 that impressed chaplin.


georgia with george k. arthur and bruce guerin in the salvation hunters

i can't imagine what it must have felt like for georgia to get such an opportunity - to have loved chaplin all her life on the silver screen - to becoming his leading lady for his biggest picture to date. for the gold rush was an enormous deal at the time - much more ambitious than the kid or anything else chaplin had attempted at the time. she must have been over the moon.

georgia did an impressive job as georgia, the dance hall girl in the gold rush. i read the book she wrote about her time with chaplin, and she described him as tireless on the set. chaplin was famous for taking take after take of the same scene, no matter how big or small the scene might be, and georgia said as impatient as he could be, he had nothing but patience when it came to directing. he knew he had to, to get just what he wanted out of his actors. even so, he could lose all sense of time while working, and georgia recalled a time when the extras were growing exceptionally weary after a very long day of shooting, and she had to remind chaplin to let them go.



one of my favorite parts of unknown chaplin is where georgia is interviewed as an older woman. wearing a shiny blonde wig and a few sets of thick false eyelashes, georgia spoke about her time working on the gold rush as if it were yesterday to her. she claims that chaplin did not make his move on her until the scene at the end of the movie, when the tramp kisses the girl. she said he did take after take like he usually did, but she finally realized he was doing it because he wanted to kiss her.



georgia was the one who classified chaplin as two different people to me - charlie, the sweet, sensitive artist - or the personality of his famous tramp - and mr. chaplin, who could be very cold and ruthless. i have a feeling chaplin was never serious about georgia - i believe he felt strongly about her as an actress, but their relationship was very on again, off again. true, he was going through hell at the time post-gold rush and pre-city lights, due to his divorce. but another problem between georgia and chaplin was georgia's religious side of her personality. i think chaplin, who wasn't a believer (he claimed to be agnostic), clashed when georgia's spiritual side inhibited their relationship.



reading georgia's book was interesting. i think it must have hurt her terribly when chaplin claimed he would scrap all of city lights and start over, using her as a replacement for virginia cherrill, whom he fired. georgia claimed chaplin called her, very excited over the idea of re-shooting the whole movie, which was already near completion with cherrill's part. he brought georgia in and ran screen tests of the amazing final scene of city lights with her, which fortunately are still with us.



georgia wasn't a bad actress - she just didn't have the same quality that cherrill did, and chaplin must have realized it. also, he concluded how expensive it would be to start over from scratch, so he eventually hired cherrill back. it must have been devastating to georgia. things fizzled between them shortly after that.

one really weird part of her book comes at the end, when georgia writes about the night chaplin visited her, out of the blue, years later. he told her he had agreed to marry the girl he had been involved with, oona o'neill, but was having second thoughts. she said chaplin, pacing the floor, suddenly came up with the idea that he and georgia should run off and get married! she said he was sure of it and talked her into waiting for him - he would go home and pack a suitcase and return for her. but he didn't come back and the day after that, she read of his marriage to oona. diehard chaplin fans have discussed this at length and some believe it happened, due to chaplin's known impulsiveness. others deny it, saying his love for oona was complete and unshakable from the beginning. i fall somewhere in between. i could see chaplin getting a wild hair and talking about doing something like that. but i also know how much he adored oona, right from the start. so, who knows.



georgia's book ends with the most bizarre rambling account of an imagined marriage and honeymoon with chaplin. it was so out there that i couldn't even finish it. i don't think georgia ever married. she was in several more movies, but like so many other silent actors, she was unable to make a success with talkies. she taught dance for a number of years and also made a name for herself in real estate. part of me thinks she never fell out of love with chaplin. she died in 1985.

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the women of charlie chaplin's life



chaplin's third wife, paulette goddard

i don't care who you are, if you don't think paulette is hot, you're crazy. born marion goddard levy in 1910, she was 21 years younger than chaplin, but in the time that they were together you wouldn't have been able to guess much of an age difference. they always seemed so happy together, and i've always thought if paulette wasn't set on being an actress, they might have gone the distance.

after chaplin finished city lights, he traveled around the world a bit, at a loss at how he could make the tramp evolve into the world of sound. you can sympathize with him, for who could imagine the tramp speaking? i liked that chaplin assumed silent films would survive the talkies, believing there was room for all forms of art in film. when he returned to the states he bummed around a bit, unable to think of how he could move forward with the talkies. he contemplated selling everything, retiring and moving to china, where he had spent a lot of time on his world tour. he was invited to spend a weekend on a yacht with friends and as he said in his autobiography, "and being desperately lonely, i hoped i might find a pretty little ray of sunlight," meaning the usual bevy of beautiful girls that were always a part of these get togethers.



and that is exactly what happened. as chaplin got to know her that evening, paulette told him she was going to invest $50,000 of her alimony money from an ex-husband in a film. she had all the documents with her and chaplin sniffed it out as a hollywood gyp and "almost took her by the throat" to prevent her from signing. they became friends.



paulette was a blonde when she and chaplin first met. he convinced her to change it to her natural color, which she did and i have to agree - she looked much better as a brunette. chaplin said the bond between he and paulette was loneliness. she was new from new york and knew no one. on sundays they would take long drives together, and that is how they found a 55 foot yacht for sale that they would go look at every week until chaplin said their presence became embarrassing. he bought it as a surprise to paulette. he arranged to have an ex-keystone cop be the captain and cook, and paulette, who thought chaplin was only going to look at it again, refused to join him. when she learned he had bought it, chaplin said she said, "wait a minute," got up and left the boat and ran about 50 yards along the harbor, covering her face with her hands. she said she had to do it to get over the shock.



chaplin, still wondering what his next project would be, was with paulette at a horse race when she was asked to present the cup to the winner. though she was from brooklyn, chaplin said she did a very good imitation of a southern belle during the presentation. that put the wheels in motion for chaplin, who was now convinced paulette could act. she had starred as a ziegfeld girl and was in several movies (mostly uncredited), but chaplin said she struck him somewhat as being a gamine, and he began to imagine the tramp and this gamine meeting and getting into all kind of scrapes together. couple that with chaplin's growing political concern and views of industrialization and before long modern times was born.



i wouldn't say paulette stole the scenes she was in from the tramp, but she could definitely match his presence. she was his equal, in that she had known her share of trouble and only wanted to make it in the world - and she was scrappy. that's what i love most about her character in modern times. she would be the first female lead that didn't faint and simper and wait to be rescued - she could take care of herself. she wasn't thrilled that her big chance to star in a charlie chaplin film she would be required to be dirty through most of it, but chaplin assured her the dirt on her face were "beauty marks."


i love how involved chaplin was with every last detail of his films - not even trusting a makeup technician to get paulette's look just right

aside from being in two very important chaplin films, paulette's most lasting contribution to chaplin was her involvement with his two sons, charlie jr. and sydney jr. chaplin had them part time, but he had let their relationship lapse, as he was either too busy with work, traveling or whatever else to really get to know them. paulette was good with them and made them feel more like a family when she was around. and with her around, chaplin felt comfortable enough to get to know his sons all over again.


paulette with chaplin's sons, charlie jr. and sydney jr. - not sure who the little chick is

charlie jr. remembered paulette in his book as a caring, intelligent woman. he said she was very dedicated to chaplin, as well as modern times. she was determined to do her best and spent hours rehearsing and learning her part under chaplin's patient direction. it paid off - she was a hit and modern times was a huge success. and chaplin let her dress up and be pretty in the last half of it.



after modern times, paulette and chaplin traveled to the east, where it was rumored they were married while in china. they didn't deny it, but neither wore wedding rings and no proof of their marriage was ever produced. many know the story of how close paulette came to snatching the holy grail of leading female roles as scarlett o'hara in gone with the wind. they were pretty set on her, but since she couldn't prove she and chaplin were married, they decided to pass, thinking it would be a bit too scandalous. oh, how far we have come.


chaplin and paulette with a goofy looking jackie coooper

paulette would star as hannah in chaplin's next film, the great dictator, but by then she and chaplin were becoming a bit estranged. her career with paramount was getting busier all the time, and she really pissed him off one day when she brought her agent to talk terms about the great dictator. chaplin threw both of them out.



i liked paulette a lot in TGD, but her voice was a bit too shrill for me at times. she definitely had a strong brooklyn twang at times. but she proved herself again, especially in that final scene, imo.

chaplin and paulette began drifting further apart, and i believe (i could be wrong) they were not living together by the end of TGD. but even when they definitely broke up for good, they always remained friends. there was no horrible divorce to go through this time (if they had gotten married in the first place) and paulette made no monstrous demands on chaplin's fortune when they parted.



chaplin and paulette would meet again - i believe the following picture is from the 1972 academy awards, where chaplin was given his honorary oscar.



but i could be wrong. it looks like him from that night, though. after chaplin, paulette married burgess meredith and later married enrich maria remarque (author of all quiet on the western front), and by then, mostly retired from acting. like chaplin, she and remarque moved to switzerland. i thought it was kind of sad that when they were putting chaplin's last book together, my life in pictures, by then chaplin was very old and losing touch. oona did much of the work. and when they showed him pictures of paulette, chaplin had no idea who she was, but he sure thought she was pretty.



paulette survived a bout with breast cancer, but died of heart failure at age 79 in 1990. she had quite a career, though i feel she was more known for her beauty than anything else. there was a rumor that she once had a necklace made out of all the engagement rings she'd received in her life.



but the most impressive thing she ever did in my opinion is getting to be the pretty girl who walked into the horizon with the tramp for the last time in film history.

[nondescript spice]

the women of charlie chaplin's life



joan barry

chaplin's life was getting more tumultuous all the time post-paulette and pre-oona. he spoke freely of his political views, which were a little too radical for the time when the mccarthyism storm was beginning to brew. go back to page 8 if you want further details, because it was a meaty, unpleasant time in his life that eventually led to his exile from the u.s..

if only he had met oona first. but before she would enter his life, he met joan barry through a friend. he found her pleasant, but he wrote in his autobiography that she was the one who began calling him first. chaplin was a weakling when it came to women, so he took her to lunch one day and things progressed from there.

i love how he described her in his autobiography: miss barry was a big handsome woman of twenty-two, well built, with upper regional domes immensely expansive and made alluring by an extremely low decollete summer dres, which, on the drive home, evoked my libidinous curiosity.[/font]



which, as i said before, only meant chaplin wanted to tap that. but he should have paid closer attention - barry gave warning signs early into their relationship. she told him on their first date that she was supposed to return to new york the next day, but if he wanted her to stay she would and "give up everything." he told her not to stay on his account, but she did and they continued seeing each other. he should have nipped that in the bud right then and there, but he didn't, unfortunately.

he thought he had possibly discovered another actress, for when she read some lines for him from a play called shadow and substance, he was surprised at how well she did. he put her on salary for $250 a week and planned to use her in the eventual movie, after he bought the rights.

but this was not 1920 anymore. chaplin's days of "discovering" pretty young actresses were over because the rules had changed. though he did seriously believe he could mold barry into an actress, they were sleeping together. and her behavior became more and more volatile. she began showing up to his mansion in the middle of the night, drunk. one night she broke into his house and threatened him with a gun. barry told chaplin she no longer wanted to be an actress and wanted to go to new york, if he would pay her fare. he did, and after tearing up her contract, thought he was rid of joan barry.



but that was not the end. chaplin was quick to put her out of his mind when he met oona o'neill. they married and when they returned from their honeymoon, chaplin learned not only was the u.s. government was about to come down on him, but joan barry hit him with a paternity suit.



remember that sonofabitch? j. edgar hoover hated chaplin and had kept a file on him since the '20's. when he learned of the barry paternity suit, he found out about chaplin paying barry's way to new york and used it to slap a mann act violation on him, which was ridiculous - but chaplin was not the only man to have that thrown at him unjustly.

it didn't matter that joan barry was clearly stalking chaplin - that she most definitely had a screw loose - OR that she had slept with several other men the same time she had been with chaplin. once the press got a hold of the story - especially hedda hopper, who also had an intense hatred for chaplin, all hell broke loose.



joan barry's lawyer was josepsh scott, a ruthless attorney that went for blood in the courtroom. it was a terrible strain for chaplin - yeah, he had let his libido get in the way of instinct one more time, but he honestly had good intentions for joan and tried to end it amicably. plus, it additionally a strain on his new marriage. you might think oona came into his life at the wrong time, when all this was happening, but it was really the perfect time. she kept him from falling apart.



blood tests proved chaplin was not the father of carol ann, but joseph scott convinced the court the test results were inadmissible, so though chaplin was not the father, he was required to pay child support until the child was 21.


chaplin shakes hands with the jury after the trial

joan barry had a sad end - though i read that she did marry and have two sons, i had never come across that before and have no idea how true it is. but she was institutionalized in 1953 after she was found wandering the streets barefoot, carrying a pair of baby shoes and a baby ring, muttering to herself, "this is magic." after she was committed, carol ann was put into foster care and changed her name. to my knowledge, nothing else was ever heard from her or joan barry again.

[nondescript spice]

the conclusion of the women of charlie chaplin's life



chaplin's fourth and last wife, oona o'neill chaplin

i'm sure there are more women who left their mark - be it good or bad - on chaplin's life that we will never know about. but the last and most important influence on chaplin was oona o'neill, whom he met in the early 40's when she was 17 years old.



oona was born in bermuda in 1925, around the time her future husband was making the gold rush and preparing to go through his disastrous divorce with lita. her parents - writer, agnes bolton and the famous playwright, eugene o'neill, split shortly after oona's birth.

oona received sporadic attention from her father through her childhood - he would write her affectionate letters, promising they would soon get together, but it would be years before she would actually see him. she did spend a long vacation with eugene and his third and last wife, carlotta monteray, and it seemed she and her father enjoyed each other's company. she got along well with her stepmother until oona became a teenager and controlling carlotta couldn't find a common ground with her.



oona was named debutante of the year in 1942 and her picture was in the new york city society papers for a time, which absolutely infuriated her father. most people assume he wrote oona off when she married chaplin - he did, but he already had before that. he found it cheap and embarrassing that she would allow herself to be exploited in such a way, when the truth was, oona was just a very pretty girl who was receiving a lot of attention for her beauty and her ties to her famous father. but eugene was pissed enough to write her a scathing letter after she declared she wanted to become an actress. eugene told her she was lazy, only expecting to get jobs because of his name and told her he pretty much wanted nothing to do with her until she came to her senses.



oona dated not only orson welles but author j.d. salinger before she met chaplin. salinger was desperately in love with her, but did mention to a friend after a date with oona that "pretty little oona loves pretty little oona."

she met chaplin at the house of an associate of chaplin, who was looking for a lead in the story shadow and substance he was working on. oona's agent suggested oona and set up a dinner for the three of them, along with a few others. oona had moved to california with dreams of making it as an actress, but also with hopes of reuniting with her father, who lived there with carlotta. but eugene refused to answer her letters, and whenever oona tried to phone him, carlotta always told her he was out.

chaplin was smitten immediately by oona's beauty and charm, just as oona was in awe of chaplin. what blue eyes he has! she wrote to a friend after meeting him. within a month they were living together. oona came down with a bad case of bronchitis and chaplin moved her into his house to see she was well taken care of, and i think she just never left. after being burned so many times by this scenario, chaplin had little reluctance to take yet another chance. but as he said in his autobiography, oona believed in them - "oona was resolute as though she had come upon a truth - " and they were married shortly after oona turned 18. chaplin was 53.





charlie and oona on their wedding day


shortly after they were married, oona confessed she no longer wanted to be an actress. it was a great relief to chaplin. oona's career became chaplin himself - she devoted 100% of herself to him. people who saw them together said - even after they'd been married for 20 years - they were like teenagers together. it was obvious they were totally gone on each other. oona was chaplin's greatest audience. everything he did entertained her and friends said it was no act - even if it was a story chaplin had told a hundred times before, oona would laugh like it was the first time she'd ever heard it.



she was a godsend to chaplin, who, right after they got together, began his trials with the u.s. government and the joan barry paternity case. oona, pregnant with their first child, fainted when she heard the news on the radio that her husband was found not guilty of the charges against him. oona began taking charge of the house and managed to stay by her husband's side at all times - all while she kept having babies. while chaplin was making the last film he would make in america - limelight - oona befriended the leading lady and it's said she was the body double used in the scene where calvero first discovers terry. you never see her face, but it could be oona - she and claire bloom did resemble each other.



oona had given birth to four children by the time chaplin was kicked out of the u.s. - geraldine, michael, josephine and victoria and was pregnant with their fourth child as they settled in vervey, switzerland, that would be named eugene, after his grandfather. throughout all of this, oona did make attempts to reconcile with her father, but it never happened. he died just three months after the grandson named for him was born, never giving in on his grudge against his daughter.


chaplin and oona with geraldine and michael

oona would give birth to jane, annette and christopher in switzerland. christopher was born in 1962, when chaplin was 73 years old. oona could be a devoted mother, but chaplin always came first. in the foreward in chaplin's last book, my life in pictures, it was said that chaplin and oona were so impossibly close that even their kids felt left out of their love, like outsiders. it was understood the kids had to vamoose at a certain time so they could have their alone time together. chaplin was very stingy about his time with oona - he wanted nothing to interfere with it; nor did she.



but something did get in the way of their love. unfortunately, oona did not escape the curse of alcoholism that ran rampant in her family. i recently finished the biography on oona called living in the shadows, and i read that about every day oona had to have a little alone time to herself, so she would go into her room (as close as she and chaplin were, they still had separate bedrooms) to read, write letters - and as time went by, more and more she would escape there to drink. there were times chaplin would beat upon her locked door to get her to come out, but oona's drinking was of course never mentioned in chaplin's biography. but among the family, it was well known.



but it was tolerated. oona continued to put chaplin's needs first. he made two more films after his exile - a king in new york and a countess from hong kong. oona was there each day somewhere on the set, knitting or reading, but just there. after each take, chaplin would turn to her anxiously, wanting her opinion. as the years went by, he became increasingly dependent on her. shortly after they moved to switzerland, oona returned to the states to close everything up, take what they had out of the banks and put the studio and house up for sale. she also gave up her u.s. citizenship. it was an enormous task for her to handle at such a young age, but she handled it with aplomb - she went through the flight home with thousands of dollars sewn into the lining of her coat. and during the weeks she was gone, chaplin was said to have been an absolute wreck without her. and when he was nearing the end of his life, if oona left the room only for a few moments, chaplin would become highly agitated.


oona sitting quietly in the background as chaplin works on the production of a countess from hong kong

EDIT: as chaplin began to show signs of aging, oona remained steadfast in her devotion. she had commented that he had been there for her; now she must be there for him. chaplin remained mostly active until he fell and sprained an ankle one day - and that seemed to be the harbinger that would bring on his declining years. despite his limitations, chaplin still thought he could work on another film. he began work on a screenplay for a film called the freak, about a girl born with wings. he planned on starring his daughter, victoria in the part. there's footage somewhere i've seen of her - a pretty young girl flouncing around the estate at vervey with the wings chaplin had made for her. but victoria got married unexpectedly, which broke her father's heart, i read. he seemed to favor victoria a little more than the others, because he believed she inherited his creativity and acting ability. oona was profoundly relieved the film never went into actual production, as it was 1969 and chaplin's age was beginning to slow him down.


victoria chaplin



when he became very old and unable to get around on his own, oona became his full time nurse. she began sleeping with him and if he had to get up in the night for the bathroom, it was oona who helped him up and get him back to bed, which would eventually cause her great wear and tear, both physically and emotionally. and she was by his side when he died on christmas morning in 1977 at age 88 while their children opened their presents. oona was then 52, around the same age chaplin was when they met.




chaplin and oona after he was knighted in 1975 by queen elizabeth - someone asked him what he would do after the ceremony and chaplin said, "...get drunk."


geraldine, holding an umbrella over oona at chaplin's funeral

oona's devotion to her husband continued after his death when his casket was actually stolen by two small time crooks. it's gruesome, yet at the same time it is kind of funny and just the kind of story chaplin would have found hilarious. he had a love of the macabre and it almost sounds like something that might have happened in an old short from the silent days.

oona received the call from the guys, demanding $600,000. but here's the kicker - something i loved about oona - she refused to pay it! chaplin had a great fear of kidnappers. because of it, oona wasn't the only family member required to be close to him while he was working. especially when the children were young, chaplin liked to have them near by as well. but he told oona once that if he were to ever be kidnapped - never pay the ransom. and she told the grave robbers she would not pay it, her husband was "in heaven and in my heart." the guys lowered it - this just cracks me up - they were bargaining, here - to $250,000, but to no avail. the police were able to trace the guys and they got something like 7 years in prison. but first, they had to find chaplin's casket. they moved it to a cornfield, but forgot where they buried him, so a mine detector was used to locate the casket. chaplin was put back in his original grave with a layer of concrete over the top to discourage any more criminals. i thought it was nice that the farmer who owned the cornfield placed a cross with chaplin's name on the spot where he temporarily rested. oona was to visit that desolate spot many times over her remaining 14 years.



oona's life was definitely different after chaplin's death. her kids, family and friends tried to rouse her, to keep her active, but her heart wasn't in it. it was with chaplin. she was out of a job and didn't know what to do with herself. she gave it a shot - she moved to new york for a time and even had affairs with not only ryan o'neil but david bowie! she attended a few dinners and parties, but her drinking was beginning to become too difficult to hide. a friend once was going to meet oona for lunch in the city and was surprised when a limo pulled up with a drunken oona in the back, still wearing her pajamas. according to oona: living in the shadows, there was a scene when oona suddenly screamed "what the f*ck did i DO with my life!?"



oona did begin a relationship with a man, sorry, i didn't write down his name, that lasted a few years, but it was understood she would never marry again.



she met michael jackson, who had always been a charlie chaplin fan. but i understand the meeting didn't go all that well, because michael allegedly insinuated that he was a bigger star than chaplin was. i hope that didn't happen - it would be pretty gauche to say something like that to the widow of one of the most famous men in cinema.

she never got help for her drinking. and she eventually moved back to the home she shared with chaplin and their children in vervey and it was there she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. oona died at age 66 on september 27, 1991, a year before the movie chaplin was released.

some think oona only married chaplin because he became a substitute father for her, after her own had cruelly cut off all contact. oona understood why people would think that, but she never wavered in her belief in the love she and charlie shared. she once said that he helped her grow up and she helped keep him young. she called him "pops" and he referred to her as his old lady, but they shared one of those loves that people would envy, even as they criticized and judged.

[afriendlychicken]

I find it sad that every time someone is 20+ years older than the person they're dating people frown upon it. I think they believe it's always all about sex. Sex, sex, sex. I don't find that to be true of the relationships like this I know about in my life. In fact all the younger/older relationships I've seen work, and I think it's because these relationships are based on much more than physical attraction. There's some kind of deep caring and understanding that bridges the age difference.

And I love the last picture you used. Charles and Oona, side-by-side.

[nondescript spice]

i know what you mean. you can't judge a relationship if you are not in it. but we still do, unfortunately. when i was 27 i dated a guy that was 18. i took a LOT of crap for it, but it was one of the best relationships of my life. he was much more mature than other guys i'd dated and we had a lovely time together.

yes, i love that picture of oona and chaplin, too. just two years before he died, which meant he was still able to get around on his own almost to the end. there is a clip of him in the schickel doc i talk about that was taken from that picture, i'm sure. oona isn't in it, but the setting looks exactly the same. it was when his son michael was talking about chaplin's death as a "slow, drifting away." chaplin was smiling at the camera and very slowly tipped his hat. it makes me cry EVERY single time.

but i realized i overlooked something in that last behemoth post above - sydney.



charlie and syd remained close all their lives. it couldn't have been an easy job, being chaplin's busines manager, and though chaplin had the genius and talent to back it up, sydney was the one negotiating the sweet deals that made his brother a cinema icon.

there's home movies in that schickel doc of sydney with his second wife, gypsy visiting charlie, oona and the kids in switzerland, and it looks just like any other home movies from the late 50's - early 60's - silent, goofy and sweet. you could see the closeness and ease of their relationship easily. geraldine called him their funny uncle, and she meant that in a good way.

it was tragic that sydney passed away on chaplin's 76th birthday - april 16th, 1965. it was a terrible blow to charlie.

[nondescript spice]

i found the quote from the forward in chaplin's book my life in pictures - it's by writer, francis wyndham.

"at the height of the joan barry scandal, and while he was working on the early stages of monsieur verdoux, he met oona o'neill. she was very pretty and very young and he married her. history, instead of repeating itself in a boringly predictable way, now went into a spectacular reverse. it turned out that oona's inner nature was of a piece with her outward beauty. she is clever, witty , calm, loyal and totally lacking in self-regard or self-interest. she has made her love for him the centre of her own life, with the result that he soon came to depend on her entirely. their marriage is perfectly happy. when she comes, rather shyly, into the room, he reaches out a hand to hold hers; he will interrupt any conversation to blurt out, unembarrassingly, how much he adores her. he has numerous nicknames for her: "the old woman," "the missus," "the old girl." if she leaves his side for a moment, he looks distressed until her return. himself a sensitive, proud, egotistic, touchy man, the essential artist, he marvels at those qualities which make her the ideal artist's wife: tolerance, intuition, selflessness, tact. the only flaw in their domestic harmony - occasional misunderstandings with their children as each in turn ceases to be a child - springs from the very intensity and completeness of their mutual happiness. the delight which charlie and oona take in each other's company tends to isolate them in a self-sufficient world of love."



just happened to come across this, so i'm throwing it in - my absolute favorite picture of chaplin sans tramp costume. it's in a frame in my house. ha-cha-cha!

[nondescript spice]

a friend of mine that i met years ago on a charlie chaplin forum (no longer around, unfortunately), was lucky enough to see the chaplin musical in new york last fall.



she somehow obtained a copy of it that she is letting me borrow. i watched it over the weekend. normally, i'm not much into musicals. it's a real hit or miss kind of thing with me. i didn't think i'd like les mis, but i love it. and i assumed i'd love the chaplin musical...and i did like it, but i didn't love it, i guess. i think if i had been there, it would have been much different.



my friend sure loved it - she went back to see it a second time before the show closed. i was sad to hear it closed, but i suppose that would have demanded a very particular audience - not everyone would be interested in chaplin's life - as they should be. but i had a hard time getting into it.



that guy in the middle^? he played syd. i really liked him, but as in the movie, chaplin, they used him as a bit of an antagonist in places. there was a scene where rob mcclure, who played chaplin, fired syd, which never happened. accused him of being jealous of his talent. of course i don't know if that happened or not, but the historical errors in this made me quite pissy. they made it seem that chaplin's first marriage was very different - that chaplin was head over heels in love with mildred and devastated when they parted, which, if you've been paying attention here, you know is not true. they made chaplin seem like a total ogre while making the kid - how he was cruel in making jackie coogan cry in the scene where the kid is taken away from the tramp. which he was not.



i had to laugh at the scene where sydney first comes to america when chaplin is at the beginning of his fame, and he is showing syd a short - it's payday, a short that starred sydney. i guess i could let that go, but there were many little things that just bugged me. they brought oona into the story all wrong and they made hedda hopper the main bad guy instead of j. edgar hoover.



but i have to give it up for rob mcclure as chaplin. he was fantastic. he had the same build as chaplin, and i could even see it in his smile and nose - very similar. and he learned the moves flawlessly. from rolling the derby hat down his arm, the walk and all the nuances and expressions, this guy really did his homework. he had a hell of a voice, too. he should have won a tony for his performance - i don't normally care about that kind of thing, but he really deserved it. it made the closing of the show even sadder, imo.



i had wondered if any of chaplin's family went to the show, and my friend told me that his granddaughter, kiera chaplin, went and wanted to know what short they used in a scene that played on a background screen. they told her it was actually rob mcclure - they had re-shot a few seconds of what looked like was taken from a dog's life, and she couldn't tell the difference. they said mcclure cried when he was told. but you know what? i knew it wasn't chaplin. immediately. i thought it was a great imitation, but i knew it wasn't the tramp. in yer face, kiera!

the ending was very moving - and cool, how they did it. it's the scene from the 1972 academy awards, when chaplin is an old man, there to accept his long overdue oscar (although i must complain that they really did not do much of anything to show chaplin's age in this scene - other than mcclure walking slowly with a cane - they didn't even really whiten his hair). he's on the red carpet and after having sung his final song, a large screen comes down that shows that empty road from the last scene of modern times. mcclure turns and does his tramp walk towards it and slips through a slit in the screen and then you see him - mcclure, fully dressed as the tramp, on screen, walking down the road. very cool, very well done. hmmm. maybe i liked it more than i realized.

as everyone took their bows, the last one, mcclure, came down walking on a lowering tight rope! i think he was rigged - it was hard to tell. but it was a very cool way to take his bow. my friend told me that the cast all got little tramp tattoos after it was over.



i've been planning on getting a similar one to that at some future date - i was thinking hat, mustache and a little cane next to it. just as soon as broadway calls.