My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

woman nor the headlines of the Press. As Oona and I had already talked of getting married, we decided to do so then and there. My friend Harry Crocker made all the preliminary arrangements. Now he was working for Hearst and promised to take only a few pictures of the wedding, explaining that it would be better to let Hearst have the exclusive story and Louella Parsons, a friend, write it up than subject ourselves to the belligerence of other newspapers.

We were married at Carpinteria, a quiet little village fifteen miles outside Santa Barbara. But before we could obtain the licence, we had to register at the Santa Barbara town hall. It was eight o’clock in the morning and little life was stirring in the town at that hour. The register clerk, if one of the couples happens to be celebrated, usually notifies the newspapers by pressing a secret button under the desk. So in order to avoid a photo festival Harry arranged that I should wait outside the office until Oona had registered. After taking down the usual details, her name and age, the clerk said: ‘Now where’s the young man?’

When I appeared he took it big. ‘Well, this is a surprise!’ And Harry saw his hand disappear under the counter. But we hurried him up, and after stalling as long as he could he reluctantly gave us the licence. Just as we left the building and were entering our car the Press drove into the courtyard. From then on it was a race for life, driving in the early morning through the deserted streets of Santa Barbara, skidding and screeching then turning suddenly into one by-street and up another. In this way we evaded them and arrived in Carpinteria, where Oona and I were quietly married.

We leased a house for two months in Santa Barbara. And in spite of the paroxysms of the Press, we spent a peaceful existence there, for they did not know where we were – although every time the door-bell rang we would jump.

In the evening we would go for quiet walks in the country, careful not to be seen or recognized. Occasionally I would sink into a deep depression, feeling that I had the acrimony and the hate of a whole nation upon me and that my film career was lost. At such times Oona would lift me out of this mood by reading Trilby to me, which is very Victorian and laughable, especially when the author goes on for pages of explanations and excuses for Trilby’s continual generosity in giving away her virtue. This Oona would read curled up in an armchair before a log fire. In spite of an occasional depression those two months in Santa Barbara were poignantly romantic, motivated by bliss, anxiety and despair.

*

When we returned to Los Angeles, disturbing news came from my friend Justice Murphy of the United State Supreme Court, who informed me that at a dinner of influential politicians one of them had remarked that they were out ‘to get Chaplin’. ‘If you get into trouble,’ wrote Justice Murphy, ‘you will do better to get a small, unimportant lawyer and not an expensive one.’

It was some time, however, before the Federal Government got into action. They were supported by a unanimous Press, in whose eyes I was the blackest of villains.

In the meantime we were preparing for the paternity suit, which was a civil case and had nothing to do with the Federal Government. For the paternity suit Lloyd Wright suggested a blood-test which, if in my favour, would be absolute proof of my not being the father of the Barry child. Later he came with the news that he had reached an agreement with her lawyer. The terms were that if we gave Joan Barry $25,000 she and her child would submit to a blood-test, and if the test proved that I could not be the father, she would drop the paternity suit. I leaped at the offer. But it was a fourteen-to-one chance against me because so many people have the same blood type. He explained that if in the blood type of the child there was a type that was neither the mother’s nor the accused father’s, then that blood type must come from the blood of a third person.

After the Barry child was born, the Federal Government started a grand jury investigation, questioning Barry with the intention of indicting me – on what grounds I could not possibly imagine. Friends advised me to call up Giesler, the well-known criminal lawyer, and against Justice Murphy’s advice I did so. This was a mistake, for it looked as though I were in serious trouble. Lloyd Wright had arranged a meeting with Giesler to discuss on what grounds the grand jury could bring an indictment. Both lawyers had heard that the Government wanted to prove the violation of the Mann Act.

Every once in a while the Federal Government used this bit of legal blackmail to discredit a political opponent. The original intention of the Mann Act was to prohibit the transporting of women from one state to another for prostitution. After the abolition of the red-light district there was little legitimate use for it, but it is still used to victimize citizens. Should a man accompany his divorced wife over the border to another state, and should he have intercourse with her, he has committed an offence against the Mann Act and is liable to five years in prison. It was this bogus piece of legal opportunism upon which the United States Government brought an indictment against me.

Besides this incredible charge, the Government was concocting another, which was based on an obsolete legal technicality so fantastic that eventually they dropped it. Wright and Giesler agreed that both charges were absurd and saw no difficulty in winning the case if I were indicted.

And now the grand jury investigation was on. I felt confident that the whole thing would collapse: after all, the Barry woman had,