The Truth about Charlie Chaplin

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Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me,

Kate Lister. Welcome back to Betwix the Sheets.

I think you know the drill by now,

but I'm going to give it to you again anyway.

We call it the Fair Doos awarding because if you keep listed

and you get offended, tough tips,

that almost on you, Fair Doos.

Right, here it is.

This is an adult podcast book of my adults,

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but adulty things, just adulty wake every Wednesday,

not something's new, spin adult too.

Right, let's crack on.

Join me for a stroll through Victorian London

with a fog sits low when you can taste the sutt in the air.

Honestly, where's a cold can of Coke

to clear throat when you need one?

In a workhouse down the road,

lives a child called Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr.

Amongst his life of poverty,

he's studying everything,

the stagger of a local drunk,

the sway of a labourer,

and the dignity people have in the hardest of environments.

He doesn't know it yet,

but he's collecting for a character

that will one day make his fortune.

His life takes some extraordinary,

and pretty dark twists and turns,

and we're going to find out all about him today.

Hello, and welcome back to Patrixa Sheet for History of Sex,

Scanlon Society with me, Kate Lister.

Charlie Chaplin is an icon,

maybe the icon of Hollywood Golden Age,

and his life is fascinating,

from the filthy cobbled streets of Victorian London

to the glitzing glamour of Hollywood's film sets.

It was a life filled with drama and controversy,

almost as much off the screens as there was art.

To unpack some of the major moments of his story,

and to find out if his mustache really did influence Hitler,

is Dr. Lisa Steinhaven,

professor of English at Ohio University Zanesville,

and an expert on all things Charlie Chaplin.

And whilst I'm here, I wanted to let you know,

once again about the two,

but Twixa Sheet's live shows that are happening in May,

one in Edinburgh and another in London.

Tickets are available at fain.co.uk,

just search for Betwixt,

and I'd love to see you there.

But a word to the wise,

there's only about 20 tickets left for Edinburgh,

and London is getting towards 80% sold out.

So move quickly,

get on with it,

don't be waiting right on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to Betwixa Sheet's,

it's only Dr. Lisa Steinhaven.

How are you doing?

I'm doing excellent. How are you?

Well, I'm beyond happy to be talking to you,

because you, I mean, we've got to say,

you're a Charlie Chaplin expert, right?

You've written, how many books have you written on him?

Um, about four.

That's a lot of books, Lisa.

I know, there's a lot.

Do you remember when you first encountered him?

I mean, he must be such a huge present in your life,

but do you remember when you first

saw a film, heard his name?

Right, um, in middle school here,

when I was going up in the 70s,

we had an hour for lunch,

half an hour was eating,

half an hour was watching old silent films.

So that's where I came across him.

He's, he's iconic in a way that,

well, very few Hollywood stars

become absolutely iconic, isn't it?

He is old school Hollywood, right?

Right. Well, he was one of the first,

as the reason I mean, you know,

with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and William Hart,

I mean, they all became like these huge stars

that everybody should remember,

but I'm not so sure that most of them are remembered today.

Charlie is, Charlie still is.

Yeah.

I love that you're on first name terms with him.

Of course.

But I don't know how much people actually know about his,

his background.

I mean, obviously, his character of the Trump is hugely famous.

And he went on to dominate Hollywood,

but his origins are decidedly less humble than that.

Right. Right.

So he grew up on the south side of London.

London boy.

Yes.

Kennington area, if you know that.

And his mother and father were both in the music called business.

His father was actually quite famous as a singer.

The marriage only lasted like a year, I think.

And Charlie had an older half-brother,

Sydney, who became very instrumental in his later life in Hollywood and such,

also in his musical life, to be honest.

But they were destitute.

His mother was put into an insane asylum when he was seven years old.

And I think Sydney was able to get training on a ship.

But when he came back, he found Charlie roaming the streets.

You know, it's just a really, really sad, sad thing.

Can you tell me about his mother, Hannah?

Because I've been long fascinated with her.

I read so much.

I don't know if this was just a myth that people make up,

but that she was a sex worker.

Is that untrue?

Is that...

That's up for debate.

She was a single mother who was trying to put money together,

as best she could.

I mean, the traditional story is that she did piecework in the apartment,

you know, and also she was a singer in the music halls for as long as she could do that.

But she did have health problems,

so whether those came from doing other things is not clear.

When she wasn't a very well-lady, how much do we even know about,

it's must have been so traumatic for those children,

but they spend time in the workhouse,

and then she gets institutionalized at that order of things.

So she checks them into the workhouse.

I think around 1897, something like that.

When they leave, then she's not well enough to do anything,

so she's put into the asylum at that point.

Yeah, so they spent many years in different workhouses,

the one in Kennington, for sure, which is now the cinema museum,

and Hanwell, which is out in the country, some place,

they were there for a while.

So, yeah.

Do we know much about Hannah's illness?

Like, I know it's such a silly question, maybe,

but why was she institutionalized?

Well, that's part of the thing that we're unclear about,

because her records do say syphilis.

Oh, I see, right, the dots have been dropped right.

Yeah, right.

That is written on her records, so it could be that.

Okay, it could be that.

This must have had a profound effect on young Charlie Chaplin.

Oh, yeah, it's being poor like that.

He got a lot of flak in his later life

for being such a cheap skate in many regards,

but it's because when you're poor,

you want to make sure that you have enough.

This isn't just poor, is it?

This is homeless in one house.

This is homeless.

The destitute.

Yeah.

Really destitute, right?

I'm trying to think like, how do you go from that then

to you said that his parents?

Or was his father, by the way?

Yes, I was going to mention that.

His father was successful,

and it was actually brought up on charges

for not supporting his sons.

He was also responsible for Sydney.

And brought the boys into his household for a little bit.

That didn't work out with a new girlfriend or whatever.

And he died in 1901 anyway from alcoholism,

so he wasn't around for very long to help out.

This is bleakly.

So this is not a good start.

No, it's not.

But it's the entertainment business.

I just want to point that out.

So what happens and how do you go

from this level of destitution?

How does he get his break?

How does he start on the stage?

What's his career trajectory?

Well, actually, I want to blame Sydney for that

because Sydney was a bugler on ships for a while.

This is, I don't know,

where the entertainment aspect came in again.

And when he got done with that,

then they went into music hall.

And they started very, very small,

but ended up with the Carnot London comedians.

Sydney was hired first.

Charlie was very, very young at that point.

But at the time, Sydney started in 1908.

Oh, no, I'm sorry.

1906, he was born in 1884.

So Charlie wasn't then hired on until 1908

or a little bit later than that.

And it was Sydney who got him the job

because he was a skinny kid.

You know, he was obviously malnourished

and all this sort of thing.

And didn't really have much to offer Carnot,

but it was Sydney's expertise and reputation at that point

that got his younger brother on.

And that was, is where it steamrolled

because he became a huge headliner for Carnot.

He came over here in 1910.

And by 1913, he had the keystone contract

because Maxson and it saw him in one of his, you know,

musical shows, night and all.

That's wild club or what it was called.

To go from nothing at all in a few years,

to suddenly, did he just land in America

in Hollywood at the right time as things were?

So yeah, it was, I'm not saying that he's not very talented.

He clearly isn't. We'll talk about that.

But like he just, like, you know,

the talk about America is the land of opportunities.

Sounds like he just got off the boat

and they were like, here, have a Hollywood contract.

That's right. No, no, it doesn't happen that way.

He was touring around.

I mean, I think it was his second or third American tour.

Okay. Before he was discovered by Maxson,

and it wasn't until he went to the West Coast

to perform, actually.

And what kind of acts is he doing?

Do we even get noticed?

It was called Mumbing Birds in England.

You may have heard of it.

And I'm not sure.

But it's what the show consists of

is a stage within a stage.

So you have acts on the stage,

and then you have the second stage

where it's the unruly audience member

who's really the focus.

And that's that was Charlie's part,

the inebriate he was called.

So all of the little shenanigans

that he gets up to in watching the pseudo entertainment

on the stage is where his brilliance came in.

So I wonder how the rest of that troop

fell about him getting the big break

and then not.

No, there were others.

I mean, this was a long, long-going show.

So others were in that spot,

but he had worked up to it kind of.

But I think there's always going to be jealousies too.

Yep, of course.

So what did they love about him?

I mean, now, you know, the character of the tramp is iconic.

But what do you think it was about Charlie Chaplin

that just made Hollywood and the early film producers go,

yes, him, we want him?

I think there's several things.

First of all, the character itself,

the little tramp character is quite charismatic.

I mean, he appeals to everybody.

He can appeal to you if you're a mother

because you want to mother him.

You know, he's got so many problems.

He appeals to the working class

because he kicks the policeman or the boss in the pants.

You know, he doesn't take that kind of stuff.

He's very anarchic kind of.

And he's got incredible body control.

I mean, you know, what he can do with his body is funny.

It's belletic, artistic, all kinds of things, you know.

So that little tramp character was really golden

in terms of being able to attract popularity.

If anyone hasn't watched his film's resident familiar with it,

can you just describe who the tramp is and where he came from?

Okay. So the little tramp was developed

during his Keystone contract where he was told to go

into the dressing room and come up with something, right?

So he just like that.

Yeah, he chose a mismatched costume.

Now he had he modeled the walk and certain parts of the behavior

on people he'd seen in England when he was there.

But the costume itself was just a matter of a too small waistcoat,

too big shoes, too small hat, too big jacket, things like that.

So a very mismatched kind of an outfit,

but also a jacket that would have belonged to a more wealthy person

that is, you know, a little freight at the elbows

and that sort of thing.

The mustache was to make him look older

because, you know, he was in his 20s

and he looked very, very young with that pretty face of his.

So he had to ugly up a little bit.

He was in his 20s.

So I just, I watched the kid last night.

You can watch it all retouched up online.

So I knew I was going to come and talk to you.

And I was looking him thinking, what would I think that he is there?

Okay. So the kid he would have been,

I was, it's always the year 21 plus 11.

So he would have been 32.

30.

It's such a lovely picture that one.

Yes.

It is wonderful.

It's just, it's,

and do you know what I was, because we were talking to

another film historian, William J. Man,

about the Hollywood Hayes Code

and about how pre-code films were markedly different.

And as I was watching it, I was noticing.

I was like, he's absolutely right.

There's themes of adultery in it.

There's themes of sex before marriage.

In it, there's lots of like broad, yes.

And I was like, that's, and this was like 1920s.

I mean, it's not explicit, but I was noticing.

That is quite wrong.

Maybe not what it's suggestive.

Yeah, um, body is what they called it.

But there was, there was a lot of press against it,

you know, this body humor is what they referred to it as.

Until a woman named Mini-Madern Fist came out

in the Atlantic or something with this article

about the fact that Chaplin's, you know,

screen persona was art and not body humor.

So that kind of changed things for him.

When you know about his past and how he grew up

in extreme poverty, you can't help but wonder how that shaped

this character of the Trump.

Yeah, well, he, as I said, he kind of modeled his gate

on one of the street peddlers that he was familiar with in London.

I'm sure he saw plenty of inebriates there

and here that he could model himself after.

I mean, that was a really popular comedy back then

was being inebriated.

We don't care for that so much anymore.

But back then, it was the thing, you know,

and there's something that's often said about the Trump is

that there's a lot of, there's the dignified,

the dignity of that character in poverty

and people have been tempted to draw that parallel as well

that he's bringing dignity back to poverty.

What do you think about that?

Well, in that the little Trump character is so self-assured.

He has a lot of confidence.

He's not like a victim at all.

No, no, no.

And the beauty of the films is that he comes in

without any backstory and he goes out

without leaving any relationships or anything.

You know, he's almost like a metaphorical character in a way.

He's not real, he doesn't belong anywhere

and he belongs everywhere kind of a thing.

And how did audiences react to these early films?

I think I know what you're going to say, but tell me anyway.

They love them.

They were very violent.

I don't know if you've watched the keystones.

They're a whole different animal than the kid, for instance.

There's a lot of...

I tell us how.

Beating up people, spitting, pulling clothes off, you name it.

And if there had been words, there would have been body language too.

I'm sure.

But people shocked by those ones.

Initially, until it became a thing,

I mean, there's so many keystone comedians that became famous.

After that, you know, still a thing, isn't it violent?

Yes, it is.

So he's...

Oh, I've got to ask you, because I was thinking this last night,

where did that moustache come from?

He just cut down a moustache in the keystone dressing room and stuck it on.

It came from anywhere, except he just wanted a little something up there

to suggest that he was older than he was.

Is it true, but Hitler modeled his moustache on Charlie Chaplin?

Well, that's a question.

That's what they say.

They say, because Charlie was popular, he wanted the same popularity in a sense.

I mean, I can see that.

So weird.

You realize they were born four days apart in the same year?

No.

Yes.

Charlie's born on the 16th of April and Hitler on the 20th of 1889.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's, that just, that's blown my mind.

But just the idea that Hitler modeled himself on a comedian.

That's so bizarre.

It's not, we don't know for sure, but it's a possibility.

No, we don't.

Okay, right.

It's a movie past that one then.

So we've got a young Charlie Chaplin who, and when you look at photos of him as a young man,

he's good looking.

Yes, he's very good looking.

Looking.

Chaplin, he is.

And he's got this newfound fame and the world is at his feet.

How does he react to this?

He lives very simply initially.

Oh.

He lives in the various hotels and finally the,

I'm not going to be able to think of it, but the one downtown that everybody lived in,

the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

He had a suite in there for many, many years, including on up until he got married for the first

time in 1918.

He was living in the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

So he was, you know, not someone to go out and buy a Cadillac or something.

You know, in fact, he didn't drive for a long time.

So where was his mother during all of this?

They put her in increasingly better homes, but she was still in a home at this point.

They did try to start bringing her over, but it was during the war.

First world war, and that wasn't going to happen.

So I don't think she was over here until the early 1920s, but she did come over.

I'll be back with Lisa and Charlie after the short break.

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So, we've sort of spoken about the good stuff.

The comedic genius, the early film star, and the icon.

Cultural icon change the layout of cinema forever.

Let's talk about some of the not-so-great stuff.

You mentioned their first marriage.

Let's talk about the buskers, the women, but maybe girls is a better word in his life.

Well, yes, but the first one was, I checked on this.

She was actually 17, so they got married in November of 1918.

She claimed she was pregnant.

She was not.

Shot good marriage.

Oh, yes.

She wasn't.

No, he met her at Sam Goldwyn's house at a party or something like that,

and so they were hideously ill-matched for many, many reasons.

She did end up becoming pregnant later, and this is another sad story,

is that the child only lived three days.

His name was Norman, but that was Charlie's first child,

and he is buried in Hollywood.

And that kind of was the last straw in terms of that marriage,

and so they ended up getting divorced in 1920.

How long would they, only for like a year, that they were together?

About two years.

Two years.

Yeah.

And he said that they were very ill-matched.

What was it about them that was ill-matched?

Well, Charlie was trying to pretend that he was an intellectual

on two years of public school education.

But he was hanging out with intellectuals.

They loved him, you know.

Oh, that's interesting.

That's interesting, okay.

He would invite them to the house.

Of course, Young Mildred is not going to be able to

participate in those conversations, and Charlie couldn't either,

but he was listening, you know, he was in, he was learning.

Why'd you think he was doing that?

Why'd you think that came from?

This was something that was a goal for him to become,

to raise himself up in terms of his abilities,

reading and writing and thinking, you know.

Of course, he wouldn't have had access to reading and writing

when he was growing up, would he?

As I said, I only went to a couple of days of school

in second grade or something.

Yeah.

Very spotty.

In fact, I think Sydney had to teach him how to read.

His brother, Sydney, was well read.

Why was Sydney, by the way, at this point?

Sydney, when Charlie came over here in 1914,

Sydney was continuing with the music hall because he was a headliner for Carnot,

but he's doing good.

Yeah, but then he comes over here himself in 15 and he stays over here.

So he also gets a contract with Geestone.

He's like the consolation prize for Senate because Charlie left after a year,

and I said, here's my brother.

Would they own good terms, the brother?

Yes, very close.

Oh, okay.

That's good.

So we have this first marriage.

It sounds like it ends badly for everybody involved.

Was there any sources or any records for you to get a feeling of how

how Charlie felt about that marriage?

And because this is still 1920s, 30s,

divorce is still a big deal by this point.

Yes, it is.

I think he once you found out,

Mildred was not pregnant to begin with.

He was angry.

And he did she did she tell that lie on purpose to get married?

Yeah, I'm assuming.

Oh, yes.

Oh, I see.

Okay, okay.

Since that point, I mean, it was there was no hope, really.

And I truly believe that Charlie wasn't ready for marriage until he married Una

in 1943.

So is she she's the fourth?

Okay, let's talk about wife number two.

Wife number two is the biggest scandal.

Wife number two is the need of gray.

She was 16 and they met at 14 or 13.

She was in the kid.

She played one of the angels in the kid.

So you saw her last night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's when he met her and her mother pushed and pushed for that marriage.

And Charlie was an idiot basically.

He was, let's see, they got married in 24.

He would have been 35 and she was 16.

Isn't that illegal?

No, it's still not illegal.

It's still not illegal here.

I suppose that you were saying that her parents, her mother was pushing for this.

Yeah.

Is that right?

Why?

Because he's famous, I guess?

Because he's famous and he has a lot of money.

She wanted a good life for her child.

And she ended up giving her the worst life.

Tell me why.

Tell me what happened.

So so 24 they married in Mexico.

He almost tried to push her off the boat on the way back.

That's, that's a myth, that's a myth.

What?

Oh, okay.

That was in the papers, though.

But that wasn't, that was in the papers, but that did not actually happen.

Was this a violent relationship, though?

Not violent.

Just, just two people who didn't like each other at all.

But they had two children.

They had Charlie Jr. and Sydney.

And I think she might have been pregnant with Charlie Jr.

when they got married.

Not sure about that.

But he wanted to put her in the gold rush.

And that didn't work out.

He ends up putting in Georgia Hale as the main character.

But they lived in, you know, not Beverly Hills,

but close by the Hollywood Hills someplace.

It was a rented house.

He had not built his house yet.

And he basically left her alone all the time.

So he would go out and socialize with whomever.

For Elvis and Priscilla.

And in fact, he was having an affair with,

you know, Marion Davies.

He was having an affair with her during this marriage.

Oh, this isn't good.

And you said that it was, it was scandalous.

So I guess that means that this attracted negative press at the time.

Yes.

Yes, this is the first negative press that he gets.

He doesn't really get any for the first marriage.

But, um, and mainly,

kind of headlines.

Mainly it was because when she filed for divorce in 27,

I'm talking Lida.

She, uh, her lawyer published a pamphlet.

And I used to own a copy.

I don't think I own any, any more of the proceedings

that was passed out on street corners and stuff, you know what I mean?

So it's like a 18 to 20 page paper pamphlet,

amplet with all of the, the testimony and everything.

So it's like today we go to YouTube,

you know, and back then they published it.

So it had everything like his, you know,

supposed weird sexual predictions and things like that.

Can you tell us what those were?

I, I think it was just oral sex to be honest.

That's all I remember.

I was, I was expecting, I was expecting much more than that.

But it was the 1930s, I suppose.

That's right.

That's, that, so that was printed and handed around.

That's kind of why.

Yeah.

Yes.

And we're saying that.

I say that.

And then you think about the Johnny Depp amber herd trial,

which was publicized like around the world.

And everybody couldn't get enough of it.

Like, I guess we haven't changed all that much.

No.

So what happens to Lita then they finally have the divorce.

She's a child really.

And then she's kind of thrown into this marriage by her mother.

She has children.

A husband who is absent and having affairs as well.

What happens to her?

She attempts to stay in entertainment or to go into entertainment.

She does sing fairly well.

I just saw a short with her.

And at the other day that featured Sammy Davis,

junior when he was a child.

And she was the main lead.

And she did.

She did a great job.

She sounded really good, but she didn't take off.

You know, she kept the name Chaplin.

She did get married later on again.

Was he blocking her at all?

Picasso used to do that with the women that he kind of discarded

if they tried to get into the outworld.

He'd.

Oh, no, no, I don't think so.

I'm sure he wondered her to make money.

So he didn't have to think about giving her more.

Because he didn't give her that much.

I forget how much like

250,000 or something.

I can't remember.

But it didn't seem like a whole lot.

I'll be back with Lisa.

I'm Charlie after the short break.

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So, we're two marriages in. We've got our first raft of scandals.

It's strange when you look back at these things in the past,

the things that they were actually angry about,

and then you think about today,

what's the thing that we would be angry about?

We would rightly be angry about the age,

but at the time they were angry about blow jobs.

It's strange to know that there was no physical abuse that I know of.

There was never reported any physical abuse,

so I'm sure a lot of mental, though.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

So, he's having sex with other people as well.

Do we know who he was having affairs with,

who's having flings with?

Mary and Davies, as I said, and also things here and there.

Louise Brooks, once.

Louise Brooks.

A couple of other people, not very notable.

I've got a strange memory forming in my head.

Tell me if I'm hallucinating,

but didn't Louise Brooks say something about having a big penis?

Is that, if I just hallucinated that?

Possibly, I don't remember.

Don't confirm this nonsense,

so things are going through my head.

People go and Google that, don't listen to me.

I've just misremembered that one.

Right.

Tell me about wife number three.

Wife number three was pretty amiable compared to the other two.

Wife number three was Paulette Goddard,

who was born.

Her last name is Levy, actually.

And she was actually 20 or 21 when they got married.

She is the female lead in modern times.

Okay.

And so they didn't marry until after the shooting was over,

and they married someplace in the in Southeast Asia.

So there's really no records.

But the fact that they had an actual legal divorce

suggests to me that they were actually married.

Good point.

Yes, yes, that makes sense.

So we don't have an overbearing mother flinging this one towards Charlie Chaplin.

She's not lying and saying that she's pregnant.

Could we maybe say that there was a genuine affection this time?

Yes, I think so.

A happy marriage.

As long as it could be,

she actually strayed possibly more than he did.

He was working on the great dictator.

By the time they got to the great dictator,

which is only four years later, three years,

if you consider production starting,

they were estranged by that point.

He did hire her as the female lead,

but there was a lot of legal stuff going on

about when she had to be on set and all this kind of thing.

Did they have children?

They did not.

And she never did.

She's been noted to have been with the George Gershwin,

Diego Rivera.

Lots of really big guys.

And she ends up with Eric Maria or Mark.

That's who she ends up as her last husband.

And they live in Switzerland actually,

just a few miles from her Charlie's houses in Switzerland.

So they were living there at the same time.

This is like they just grow apart.

Plus, kind of having sex with other people, it would seem.

I think Paul, that's argument is that he didn't spend enough time with her.

He was too busy working.

That seems to be a pattern of a few of them have said that, right?

Right.

Workaholic.

Workaholic, definitely.

In fact, they say that he didn't bother with women at all while he was working.

Really?

That's interesting.

Okay.

But you wouldn't have said that he was cruel to Paul.

I was just interested because you said to like his first wife that

there's my man.

I haven't seen anything about him being cruel to her except for, you know,

not being around is kind of cruel.

That's true.

That's true.

Not spending time with her.

Wife number four.

Should we talk about Joan Berry between wife number three and wife number four?

Yes.

Okay.

So Joan Berry comes in actually during the marriage to Paul at, but at the very end.

So he's working on this project about a young Irish girl and he chooses Joan Berry because

she has red hair and she really fits the part of a young Irish girl.

But the problem is that she has really huge issues with mental illness and he doesn't know it.

You know, so she clumps onto him and won't let go kind of a thing.

Not the same time.

She's also seducing

J. Paul Getty.

And in fact, the child that Charlie is legally responsible for due to a paternity test that

he actually showed that he was not the father, but they didn't include it.

What?

I got, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Becca, okay.

He, what?

He wasn't the father, but they said that he had to pay paternity?

Yes.

They said that that test could not be entered into the proceedings.

This is back in the 30s.

Well, he ended up paying for this child until she was 18, I believe.

Yeah, I'm quite a bit of money per year.

He did do.

He did do that.

He did do that.

But that sounds crazy to me.

Yeah, it is crazy.

Okay, okay, all right, okay.

Let's backtrack a little bit because first he is arrested on the Man Act.

Jay, Jay Edgar Hoover has Charlie in his sights by this point.

He really wants to railroad him and get him out of the country.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

So Jay Edgar Hoover is going to try to find something on Charlie,

even if there's nothing there.

And the first thing he finds is it's a kind of a trumped up charge that

Charlie has transported Joan from California to New York for sexual purposes.

How old is Joan?

She's in her 20s.

She's in her 20s.

Yeah, okay.

That's called the Man Act.

You are not allowed to do that.

That's the Man Act.

It's a very, very old piece of legislation.

It was old then.

So that's what he initially gets charged with.

He is acquitted of that.

And then Joan takes him to court for paternity of the child.

After that, the child that's not even his.

His lawyer is a busy, right?

Yeah, Geesler was the lawyer's name.

So why do you think that

Jay Edgar Hoover had his sights on Charlie Chaplin?

Could that mean to a modern,

yeah, that sounds very strange.

But obviously this is,

is it the start of McCarthyism and the panic around communism?

It is the middle of McCarthyism.

It's the middle of it.

And Charlie is called on the phone.

He doesn't go to court.

I think they're afraid of him actually,

but he gets out of that.

But it's not lasting because when he leaves America,

for the line light premiere,

he's not, he's banned at that point.

But anyway, that's getting ahead of myself.

So where's wife number four at amongst all of this?

Okay, she's at the end of the Joan Barry thing.

But just let me say this about Jay Edgar Hoover.

The reason is that Charlie is mouthing off

about stuff that he shouldn't be mouthing off about,

including that we should be supporting the Soviets

during World War II because they are our allies.

So it's called the second front initiative.

I see.

And he also has a lot of communist friends

and all this kind of stuff, you know.

I truly believe that Charlie doesn't understand

the ramifications of some of what he's doing.

But it's like giving the final great dictator speech at certain events,

which is, I don't know if you know that speech or not,

but it's a very, it's a very political speech, you know.

So I think that's why he gets comes into, you know,

Jay Edgar Hoover's purview kind of.

Anyway, so at the end of the Barry trials,

he's defeated on the paternity.

He has to pay the paternity fees.

And then during and someone round about this area,

he meets Una Chaplin.

She is trying to get a part.

She is Eugene O'Neil's daughter.

She's Una O'Neil at this point.

I'm sorry.

So one of our greatest playwrights, she's his daughter.

And O'Neil, the father and Charlie are about the same age.

However, O'Neil has married a woman called Carlotta Monterey

who wants him to kind of disown his children.

So Una and her brother Shane are kind of at loose ends.

They're having to figure out a way on their own.

Una decides to go into modeling first and then to try to get some parts in Hollywood.

And ran in about there, Charlie meets her.

And actually their marriage occurs quickly.

June 1943 amidst all this hubbub.

Is public opinion starting to turn against?

Oh yes, Sally Chapo.

Oh, it is, right.

It's not just the FBI and those people come in to get him.

Like he's getting bad headlines.

And is it the communist thing?

It's the communist thing.

It's also his film called Miss Year Verdue,

which came out in 1947,

which in which he plays serial killer.

Ah, right.

I would say no one.

So that's his first big role after the tramp, you know?

Yeah.

So he leaves a tramp behind in the great dictator.

So imagine going to the cinema and thinking that you're going to go and see

Charlie Chapo in this latest movie and you've just seen the tramp.

And then suddenly he's a serial killer.

That's right.

Right.

Of his wives.

He's a blue beard.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Of his wife.

All right.

So public opinion is starting to turn against him.

Yes.

And you mentioned earlier about how he he wasn't allowed back into the United States.

Right.

So his next film, Lime Light,

which is very endearing and sweet and all that sort of thing,

he plays an aging musical star in that one,

who meets a young ballerina,

you know, which is a kind of a, you know,

play on his own situation with Una.

When he goes to London for the premiere,

he's blocked from ever returning to the US at that point.

Unless he submits to a huge interrogation,

which he's not going to do.

So he just, you know, gave him the five finger salute

and found a new home.

How did he feel about that?

About not being allowed back into marriage?

Oh, he was devastated.

I mean, he was very angry to the press about it,

but he was devastated.

He loved America.

So, and that, that was because of the communist.

I mean, that can't have been because they didn't like his film, can it?

No, it's that he was considered to be a communist.

Yes, even though he wasn't.

So he's kind of, he's like, I was going to say he's out in the wilderness,

but he's actually out in Switzerland,

but he's kind of isolated from Hollywood at this point.

Does he continue making films?

He does try to make, he makes two films over there,

one in England.

Actually, they're both in England, I think, both bombed.

So the last one was with Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando,

but it's, it's the worst of the worst.

Oh, I have to say that it's the favorite of some people that I know.

So I shouldn't say that.

Did he get any kind of like rehabilitation into America during his lifetime?

Yes, the Oscars, which I've just passed here.

So in 1972, he's invited to come back to America

to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.

So he makes that, he actually doesn't want to do it.

I think Unic talked him into it.

I'm not sure.

But they go to New York still with Una.

She's with him to the death.

Yes, she's the final.

She's the one he's he's finally ready for marriage.

By the time he marries her.

So they started New York.

There's several events in New York.

And then they go to Los Angeles for the Oscars.

And he does, it goes to a lot of parties there.

And he's really kind of very feeble at this point.

Because he's in his 80s, you know.

So he goes to the Oscars for the one and only time.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the last award of the night.

And he receives a 12 minute ovation, which has not been surpassed to this day.

Oh, wow.

So that sounds like they were ready to welcome him back in.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Wow.

Okay.

And then, and then he dies in 1977.

There's this really weird story about how his coffin was stolen.

Is that true?

Yes, it is true.

That is true.

Yes.

What happened?

These two, I believe they were from Eastern Europe.

I can't remember what country dug him up and held the body for ransom.

They reburied him in a corn field in Switzerland,

which is now marked and people go to visit it.

That's the reign.

I know.

And held him for ransom.

And they found out who these guys were and were able to

put them into custody before any money changed hands or anything.

And he was re-instated in this little tiny cemetery in Vive, Switzerland.

And now he's in lead.

So that's insane.

That's like something out of a Hollywood movie.

That's just the modest thing to kidnap.

And he'd been dead for a year, right?

When they did that.

Oh, Charlie.

Yeah, I don't think you would have found that funny somehow.

I just thought that so.

No, I don't think so.

No.

Lisa, you have been fantastic to talk to.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

Well, just look up Lisa Steinaven.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

You've been a treat.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you for listening.

And thank you so much to Lisa for joining me.

And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like,

review, and follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

Coming up, we've got episodes on Victorian sex trafficking

and another taking you inside the brothels of Storyville, New Orleans.

If you want us to explore a subject, if you'd like to say hello,

you can email us at betwixtathistoryhit.com.

This podcast was edited by Hannah Fiedorov,

and produced by Stuart Beckwith.

The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

Join me again, betwixta Sheets,

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a podcast by history hit.

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