When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law
Diane Kiesel
University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472133581
Good ol’ Charlie Chaplin! How we loved him. He dominated the silent screen with his wonderful comedies as the Little Tramp. Then, when talkies arrived, he mesmerized us as the Great Dictator and others. His innocent, playful onscreen persona charmed audiences and made him wealthy and famous.
Then he disappeared. Chaplin vanished in the 1940s, and we heard nothing of him through the 50s and 60s. Then, out of the blue, he re-emerged in the 1970s as a celebrated legend of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
What happened? Where had he gone for 30 years?
In her nicely crafted new book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law, Diane Kiesel, a retired New York Supreme Court judge, fills in this blank with a remarkable story about how we Americans cannibalize our celebrities. In a nutshell, Chaplin was the victim of a massive legal smear that destroyed his career and banished him from America’s shores. And we all managed to just forget the whole thing.
The story is tawdry. Back in the early 1940s, as our boys were off fighting World War II, Chaplin had a fling with a wannabe actress, a 21-year-old ingenue calling herself Joan Barry. At the time, Chaplin was in his prime: a Hollywood magnate, co-owner of United Artists and running his own studio, wealthy, with mansions and lawyers aplenty. At 52, he was promiscuous and flirty, especially with much younger women. He and Barry fell in lust. Chaplin signed her to a film contract and promised to make her a star. She was thrilled.
But then it all went bust. Barry was emotionally unstable and quickly descended into drinking, break-ins, suicide attempts, missed appointments, finger-pointing, and drama galore. (Yes, the author spells out all the documented ugly episodes.) She also had multiple lovers besides Chaplin and lived a troubled life. In the end, he rejected her. She then had a baby — an adorable redheaded daughter — squeezed Chaplin for money, and finally sued him for paternity, which he denied.
Hollywood’s vicious gossip press got on board with the scandal, and soon J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, already stalking Chaplin as a possible Red, joined the pack.
It all exploded in lawsuits and headlines, irresistibly salacious. Joan Barry and Charlie Chaplin become the names on everyone’s lips, protagonists in a front-page spectacle. There was just one problem: The legal claims against Chaplin obviously weren’t true. Still, the litigation grew epic, and Kiesel’s deep legal expertise is invaluable in untangling the knots for readers.
First, Barry sued Chaplin for paternity. But blood tests quickly proved he couldn’t be the father: His blood type was O, hers was A, and the baby’s was B. Both parties’ lawyers had stipulated that the test would settle the matter, and the judge agreed.
Sorry! Despite established science, pre-1953 California law specified such tests were not dispositive in paternity cases and gave the child rights beyond those of the parents — so long as said child could find a lawyer slimy enough to pursue a case. Welcome to La La Land.
Enter Hoover and his Feds. Learning the tawdry details, they decided to prosecute Chaplin under the anti-“white slavery” Mann Act, accusing him of bringing Barry to New York City (crossing state lines) for an “immoral purpose” — alleged sex in a hotel room. Chaplin denied it, and after a lengthy, high-profile trial, the jury found him innocent.
Done yet? Don’t be silly. At this point, a new judge in California decided to take the old paternity case and give the baby another bite at the apple (again, despite medical proof that Chaplin couldn’t possibly be her father). After another headline-grabbing trial, the jury voted 7-5 for Chaplin — a mistrial, since Golden State law required nine votes to confirm paternity.
Hey, how about a retrial? Why not? said the judge. But this time, the jury decided Chaplin’s courtroom demeanor toward the poor infant wasn’t sufficiently sympathetic. Ignoring the scientific evidence, they voted 11-1 against Chaplin, finding that he actually (or at least legally) was the girl’s father. As a result, he would spend years dutifully paying child support for a daughter who clearly wasn’t his.
Meanwhile, the FBI continued its endless probes into Chaplin’s alleged ties to Communists. But they never found enough evidence either to bring a case or to deport him. (Despite emigrating from England in 1914, he never bothered to become an American citizen.) Instead, the Feds decided on a back-door trick. In 1952, days after Chaplin left the U.S. for a film premiere in Europe, they abruptly revoked the reentry permit they’d approved weeks earlier. Effectively exiled, Chaplin would spend the rest of his life abroad.
Confused? That’s the point! Let’s recap: Chaplin was not the father of Barry’s baby. He had not violated the Mann Act. And he was not disloyal to the country. Those were the settled facts. Alas, this story was never really about facts; it was about our collective appetite for rumors and slander. By the early 1950s, the press had convinced Americans that their once-beloved movie star was somehow tainted, immoral, and “pink,” in Cold War parlance.
It would take until 1972, three decades and a generation later, for Hollywood to reverse course and invite Chaplin home to receive an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in film. After that, it was okay for us once again to adore him and forget all about that nasty business with the paternity suit, the 30-year smear, and the rest.
This is the story Kiesel skillfully brings to life, and it’s worth a read. It has its moments of tedium — trial after trial, corrupt judge after egotistical lawyer after crooked hanger-on — but the bigger drama carries the day. The details here are important, and Judge Kiesel is happy to supply us with 75 pages of footnotes to underscore that point.
Did Chaplin live a profligate life? Take advantage of naïve actresses? Hide behind lawyers and gofers? Sure. This was 1930s Tinseltown. He had plenty of company. But multiple wrongs don’t make a right, and today’s #MeToo movement would find much to sympathize with in Barry’s situation, as the author points out. Did any of it justify Chaplin being dragged repeatedly into court, smeared, and eventually deported? No. But it more than justifies When Charlie Met Joan, a terrific tale of Old Hollywood and a legal system gone awry.
Ken Ackerman is a lawyer and writer in Washington, DC. His books include The Gold Ring: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and Black Friday 1869 and Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York.
