June 6, 1945—America had embraced
Charlie Chaplin, a onetime London street urchin with a Dickensian childhood, when his “Little Tramp” became perhaps the most easily recognizable and loved silent-film character. But the movie star felt an increasing alienation from the U.S. when a Los Angeles judge refused to hear an appeal ordering him to pay child-maintenance fees —even though three different paternity tests determined that he had not fathered the little girl.
Chaplin found himself in this predicament because of a liaison with
Joan Barry, a 22-year-old aspiring actress that he considered casting in his adaptation of a Paul Vincent Carroll play,
Shadow and Substance (a project never completed). The resulting sex scandal and legal morass bore some resemblance to one 50 years later involving another beloved big-screen funnyman, Woody Allen.
Both Chaplin and Allen achieved fame by virtue of screen personae—nebbishes with idealistic attitudes but little prowess toward the opposite sex—with no relation whatsoever to their real selves. Both saw their careers damaged, at least initially, in their fifties because of affairs with females three decades their juniors. And both cases were sparked by nasty splits from romantic companions who had appeared (or were slated to do so) in their films.
Chaplin’s case lacked the sense of transgression of Allen’s (the latter’s young lover, Soon-Yi Previn, was the adopted daughter of paramour and muse Mia Farrow, so the affair gave off the whiff of quasi-incest), or some of the piquant details that made the latter a daily tabloid bonanza (e.g., Farrow discovered the affair when she found nude photos of Soon-Yi in the Woodman’s apartment).
But, though almost certainly innocent of the charges brought against him, Chaplin had followed a years-long pattern of (mis)behavior that made him vulnerable to scandal.
Over the prior three decades, Chaplin had cheerfully entered into one sexual relationship after another, with his more famous amours rumored to include Paulette Goddard, Louise Brooks, Hedy Lamarr and Marian Davies. Nothing remarkable about that in the skirt-chasing male warrens of Hollywood..
What was remarkable, however, was that a high percentage of these involved women who were very young—sometimes only in their mid-teens. In fact, while Charlie grew older, his type of woman barely budged at all in age. Here’s a fast rundown:
* Hetty Kelly, his first true love (she was 15, he 19);
* Mildred Harris (she was 16, he 29);
* Lita Grey (she 16, he 35);
* Georgia Hale (she 19, he 35);
* Joan Barry (she 22, he 51—we’ll get to this in a second); and
* Oona O’Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill (she 18, he 54)
Some of these women ended up going to the altar with Chaplin. It’s a safe bet, however, that the one he regretted was Barry. A fast review of her pre-Charlie history will show why he came to feel this way:
* She came to Los Angeles at age 18 and soon had been arrested for shoplifting from a department store;
* Short of funds, she became the kept woman of a shoe salesman, and even after the relationship sometimes registered herself in hotels as “Mrs. Mark Warner”;
* Before long, she had set her sights considerably higher—on oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who kept her, for awhile, in high style;
* Still with her sights on Hollywood, she came to a party on board the yacht of Spencer Tracy. No liaison resulted from that, but the same night she met Chaplin, to whom she began to pour out her frustrations about getting a job in the film industry.
Chaplin—now a major success in his own right—was very sympathetic, and before long he’d signed her to a contract. What did he see in her—another Katharine Hepburn? At least another Edna Purviance, a prior co-star (and lover) of his?
Well, he explained, in slightly elevated language, considering the subject matter, a couple of decades later in his autobiography: “Miss Barry was a big handsome woman of twenty-two, well built, with upper regional domes immensely expansive which…evoked my libidinous curiosity.”
Two years later—after Barry had shown up, unannounced at points, on his doorstep; after she had engaged in one inexplicable outburst after another, including getting drunk and breaking the windows of his home; after he’d been induced to pay for two of her abortions; after she took him to court, claiming that a baby she carried to term was his; after she’d reneged on a deal between his lawyers and hers that, if two paternity tests established he couldn’t be the father, she wouldn’t pursuit the case further—well, after all that, this Renaissance man of film, who even composed a well-known theme for his movie Limelight, was not singing “Thanks for the Mammaries.”
Barry’s charges dovetailed with efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—which had him on its radar screen since the early 1920s—to bring Chaplin to ground.
The Roosevelt administration, which wanted the public to see the Soviets as a firm partner in the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers, took little if any notice of Chaplin’s woolly-minded statement that that Stalin’s purges had been “a wonderful thing” (“In those purges the Communists did away with their Quislings and Lavals, and if other nations had done the same there would not be the original Quislings and Lavals today.”)
But J. Edgar Hoover did, and his agents began to compile evidence that Chaplin had violated the Mann Act, a piece of legislation from the Progressive Era with an excellent intention—stopping young women from being forced into prostitution—but which had, over the years, been used to selectively punish people (such as boxer Jack Johnson) who had somehow violated social mores with a consenting adult.
Chaplin ended up acquitted of violating the Mann Act, but the judge in the Barry case refused to dismiss her charges, because the paternity tests that had exonerated Chaplin were not generally used in California courts. Until the state legislature passed such legislation, the case had to proceed, he ruled.
The first paternity trial was a mistrial; Chaplin lost the second, and was forced to pay $75 a week to Barry’s daughter Carol Ann, with an increase to $100 as her needs grew until she reached the age of 21.
In 1953, Joan Barry was committed to a mental institution by her mother after having been found walking on the street barefoot muttering, “This is magic.” In that same year, California adopted a law to accept blood tests to determine paternity, and the ruling against Chaplin in the paternity suit was overturned.
But it was too late for the star. His 1948 film Monsieur Verdoux (in the image accompanying this post), about a bluebeard who is compared favorably to thieving capitalists, further soured a public that had loved the Little Tramp. Four years later, while attending the London premiere of Limelight, Chaplin's re-entry visa was revoked because he was deemed a “security risk.”
In 1972, enough time had passed so that the perfect storm that had nearly engulfed Chaplin decades earlier—his unwary private behavior and the McCarthyism that wildly exaggerated his political naivete—could abate. Returning to Hollywood to accept an honorary Oscar, he was greeted, at last, rapturously, as this pioneer of film comedy deserved to be.
