Lucy and Chaplin

[That Other Fan]

did they ever meet publically (as in some media event) or privately???

I remember some sporadic comments from Lucy about how much she admired Chaplin and his work, but did Chaplin ever comment on Lucy (he had to know who she was...I guess).

Could you imagine them working together (either in the 50's or the 60's)

[JaneTVFan]

Originally posted by That Other Fan
did they ever meet publically (as in some media event) or privately???

I remember some sporadic comments from Lucy about how much she admired Chaplin and his work, but did Chaplin ever comment on Lucy (he had to know who she was...I guess).

Could you imagine them working together (either in the 50's or the 60's)

Chaplin was banned from the United States in the '40s for hooking up with young girls. So by the time of the Lucy phenomenon in the '50s, he was unable to come into this country. I'm not sure if he ever made it back to the United States again, though I think maybe he did once late in his life in the 1970's to accept some award. Bottom line: I don't think he and Lucille Ball ever met. Maybe they did, but considering his circumstances, it's unlikely.

[JaneTVFan]

Hey, I came across this article about Charlie Chaplin written by Glenn Ford's son, Peter. In it, he mentions Lucille Ball among others as guests at parties in his neighborhood in Beverly Hills in the 1940's. So maybe it is possible Lucy and Chaplin met. But this was still well before I Love Lucy. Incidentally, it was in 1972 that Chaplin returned to the United States after being in exile for about a quarter century. He came here to accept a special Oscar award.

A Boy, His Dog, and Charlie Chaplin
by Peter Ford

It was early in 1952, I was seven years old, and silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin lived around the corner from my family in a big house on Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, California. Mr. Chaplin had recently been under investigation by the FBI for suspected communist activities. He had also suffered under three trials for violations of the Mann Act for immoral conduct with teen-age girls, and had felt the pressure of other charges of moral turpitude when he left the U.S. for England to attend the premier of his latest film, Limelight. My first — and only close — encounter with the actor the world knew as the "little tramp" occurred one rainy winter night shortly before his departure for England, a departure that was to mark the beginning of his life-long exile from the United States. The encounter is etched keenly in my memory, partly because my parents convinced me that the tragedy that happened that night was directly connected to Chaplin’s exile from America. But I am getting ahead of my story.

A New Adventure

When the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) first convened in February 1947, the career of my father, actor Glenn Ford, was in its ascendancy. The previous year he had starred in the film Gilda with a frequent visitor to our home in those days, Rita Hayworth. My mother, Eleanor Powell, had recently retired from a stellar career at MGM Studios when my parents decided to combine their resources to purchase what was to become our family’s first home — a 22-room "nest" on Cove Way in the heart of Beverly Hills.

My father had gotten his first big "break" when Bette Davis asked him to co-star with her in A Stolen Life at Warner Brothers, and it was there that dad met one of the preeminent Hollywood composers at the time, Max Steiner. He mentioned to dad that he wanted to sell his home. On the heels of scoring such classics as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca, Mr. Steiner was moving on to bigger "digs," so dad and mom took the opportunity to buy his home and move the four of us onto the three acres of this incredible estate. We weren’t exactly the Beverly Hillbillies, but for a child moving to a house bigger than some hotels — with grounds to match — it was the beginning of quite an adventure. I mention the "four of us" because, in addition to my parents and me, there was another member of the family who shared our home: Bill, my beloved German Shepherd. Sadly, Bill was to play a principal role in the drama that was to unfold between me and Charlie Chaplin.

The David O. Selznicks lived across the street from us in an even bigger house. Mary Pickford lived up the road in a still larger home on Summit Drive called "Pickfair." And at the bottom of our hill on Benedect Canyon was Harold Lloyd’s huge 22-acre estate aptly named "Greenacres." Our little "spread" was modest by comparison, but this was the Hollywood I knew as a child.

When the Selznicks stopped by to welcome us to the neighborhood, they offered to introduce my dad to another famous neighbor who lived in the big yellow house a few doors up — Charlie Chaplin. My father told Mr. Selznick that he had already had the pleasure.

My father had first met Charlie Chaplin in 1943 when the first of Mr. Chaplin’s legal problems surfaced. I was told Mr. Chaplin had fled his forested palace in Beverly Hills and was in hiding to avoid being subpoenaed regarding his dalliance with a starlet by the name of Joan Barry. He took shelter in the West Los Angeles home of his friend, film producer Eugene Frenke. Mr. Frenke’s wife was actress Anna Stern, who starred with my father in the 1941 film So Ends Our Night. In this film my father portrayed a refugee from Nazi oppression, fleeing through Europe to avoid persecution.

So Ends Our Night was the first major film that my father made in his long career, and its subject matter kindled within him a patriotic fervor which continues to this day. Never in his life has he wavered in expressing this point of view in his films or in his devotion to his country.

One day in 1943, dad was invited to stop by the Frenkes’ home for a drink after work, where he found Charlie Chaplin sequestered in the house along with his 17-year-old girlfriend, Oona O’Neill. Theirs was a relationship of which Oona’s father, playwrite Eugene O’Neill, disapproved.

By the end of the visit, Mr. Chaplin had discussed with my father his plight in avoiding prosecution under the Mann Act for transporting a minor (Miss Barry) across state lines, his views on the ongoing war, Russia, and the "Second Front" speech he had given in New York in 1942, among other subjects. It was an unusual encounter between my 27-year-old father and the older comic actor who was later to become our neighbor, and my father found that he held few views in common with Chaplin.

The House on the Hill

Four years later, when we moved into the house on Cove Way, Oona O’Neill and Chaplin were married. Our neighborhood was a bustle of parties and excitement. Ronald Coleman, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Lucille Ball, John Garfield, Bill Holden, and a host of others were regular guests at events up and down the hill during those halcyon days. Much later I was to learn that things were not quite as innocent in Hollywood as they seemed.

Mr. Chaplin’s big yellow house on the hill looming above us certainly commanded our attention, but there was also gossip at the dinner table in our home about some unusual goings-on there. Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a hotbed of politics, and it was almost unfashionable to be apolitical in those days. Our house was always full of activity, and all present were free to express their opinions. Even when I was young my parents treated me as an adult, and talked freely in my presence. I learned that our English neighbor, Charlie Chaplin, was a bit of an eccentric. This, of course, was not unusual in a town made famous by the eccentricities of its inhabitants, but there was more that caught the interest of this seven-year-old’s inquisitive mind.

My mother had renewed her friendship with the lady across the street, David Selznick’s wife Irene (the daughter of my mother’s mentor at MGM, Louis B. Mayer), who was no stranger to conservatism. Adolphe Menjou, Robert Taylor, and columnist Hedda Hopper were frequent visitors in our home. Through associations at his work in films at the time, my father often had visitors stop by the house who were of a different political persuasion, such as Edward G. Robinson, David Niven, and directors Fritz Lange and Orson Welles. For a child in his formative years, it was an opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of ideologies.

But there was more that piqued my young mind, apart from the snippets I had gleaned from adult conversation. At night I heard haunting music coming from the yellow house up the road, and my neighborhood playmates said that Mr. Chaplin didn’t like children. They said he spied on his neighbors from a hidden telescope in the house, and the rumor among us impressionable youths was that Mr. Chaplin was a "secret agent from a foreign land."

Television was a new medium, and our family was one of the first in the neighborhood to get a television set. I soon discovered "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" — the rage among my friends at the time. I was a devotee of the program, and I took very seriously the program’s mandate that the safety of the Universe was dependent on the vigilance of the Video Rangers. I, of course, became a Video Ranger when I strapped on my decoder ring, one of the many products young fans of the program could acquire through the mail. I was prepared to conquer evil wherever I found it, and I believed Charlie Chaplin was the perfect place to start.

In my mind Charlie Chaplin was the personification of the show’s villainous genius, "Dr. Pauli," head of the "Astroidal Society." After all, hadn’t Mr. Chaplin portrayed Adolph Hitler in the film The Great Dictator?

All of this fueled my active imagination, and I convinced myself that I must investigate. However, if I were caught on the grounds of his home, there was the distinct possibility of my being kidnaped, never to be seen again. Even if I were to take my homemade version of the "Captain’s Atomic Rifle" with me on my clandestine sorties, I could not be sure of success. Our neighbor was also well equipped to do battle, but I was determined to venture where I was warned not to go — risking it all on scouting parties into the woods around Charlie Chaplin’s estate.

Hollywood Reds

Those readers unfamiliar with the days of the "Hollywood Ten" and the HCUA’s investigation of the film industry in the 1940s and ’50s may have been convinced by the major media’s revisionist myths that there was a no-holds-barred Red witch-hunt going on among actors, writers, directors, and producers. But in truth, the HCUA probe had uncovered undeniable evidence of the Communist Party’s subversive influence in Hollywood.

In the early 1920s, Will Hays was appointed head of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA). It was Hays who established the "moral clause" in films, which was to become the anathema of civil libertarians and studio heads alike. In 1930, with the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church, Hays actually presented a "Production Code" that banned some of the perceived immoralities in the films being produced in Hollywood. It was also in the early 1930s that the Legion of Decency was formed, under the direction of Joe Breen, West Coast representative of MPPDA. The Production Code Administration (PCA) was also created and Joe Breen became its director. Without the PCA’s approval a film could not be exhibited in any legitimate movie theatre in America. Overnight, Joseph Breen became one of the most powerful men in the film industry.

FDR’s New Deal socialism, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and the pain of the Great Depression brought on turbulent times. For some, allegiance to country conflicted with other commitments, and was compromised or abandoned altogether. Ours was a nation in the midst of crisis and it was dramatically reflected in the arts.

What started in June 1936 as the Anti-Nazi League — an anti-Hitler, pro-communist alliance — was transformed into something less acceptable to many people in the Hollywood community when in August 1939 Stalin and Hitler shocked Western Europe by signing a non-aggression treaty, a pact that Pravda announced as an "act of peace." A few days later the Nazis invaded Poland and eventually devastated much of Europe. Within a year, Stalin subjugated Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, and moved against Finland.

During this time there were many communists and fellow travelers at work in Hollywood as writers, producers, directors, and actors — people whose sympathy went beyond cocktail party rhetoric and found its way into many of the films coming out of Hollywood. The Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) and its many front groups were being closely monitored by the FBI and other agencies who suspected disloyalty to the United States. In coordination with the FBI, the HCUA was trying to determine to what extent communist propaganda existed and who was responsible for it.

When the Nazis attacked the USSR in June 1941, the vehement campaign to create a "Second Front" to defend Russia became a passion among the Hollywood elite. The brutality of Stalin against his own people was ignored, and defending the Russian "motherland" became the rage among the cocktail communists and Hollywood Reds. It was in this climate that the CPUSA held considerable influence in Hollywood.

While it is true that Charlie Chaplin’s membership in the CPUSA was never absolutely documented, he nevertheless worked diligently to thwart the objectives of the HCUA, and there is considerable evidence that he was a "concealed communist." He was identified as such by the managing editor of the Daily Worker, Louis Budenz.

In 1922, a secret convention of the top U.S. communists and their Moscow handlers was being held at a farm near Bridgman, Michigan, when it was raided by local, state, and federal authorities. Captured along with the participants were numerous documents detailing the communist plans for subversion and revolution in America. One of those in attendance was Communist Party leader William Z. Foster. Shortly before the Bridgman convention, Foster had been in Los Angeles, where he was the guest of honor at a reception given by Chaplin.

Many experts on communist tactics believe that Chaplin was not carried on the ordinary rolls, but was directly controlled by the Central Committee, without direct ties to the local Party organization in Hollywood.

In his films, speeches, associations, and personal life Chaplin certainly fit the profile of a "Party" man. As Kenneth S. Lynn points out in his brilliant book, Charlie Chaplin and His Times, on December 3rd, 1942 in a speech in New York sponsored by the "Arts to Russia" committee of Russian War Relief, Chaplin "told seven hundred guests that the American people were finally beginning to understand the Russian purges, and what a wonderful thing they were." This was the beginning of the end of America’s love affair with Chaplin. Ten years later he left the U.S. in exile and eventually moved to Switzerland to live out his last days, dying in 1977.

Tragic Encounter

It was the winter before Chaplin’s departure from his big house on the hill that Bill, my German Shepherd, and I were to play a dramatic part in Mr. Chaplin’s life.

It was late at night and raining. I was seven years old and asleep in my bed when I was awakened by the ringing of our doorbell. As a curious young lad I was not about to remain in bed when someone was at our door at such a late hour, especially when I heard voices of consternation. I recognized my parents’ voices, but there was someone else. As it turned out, the other person was Charlie Chaplin. He was explaining to my parents that there had been an accident — he had hit and killed my dog Bill with his car. I rushed downstairs and saw Bill on the front steps just beyond the open front door. To his credit, Chaplin had carried Bill’s lifeless body through the rain to deposit it on our front doorstep. Chaplin dutifully reported the sad news to my parents.

I was grief stricken and would not be consoled. I had never met our neighbor before, but I had seen him walking at times alone late at night in the neighborhood. Additionally, my father kept chickens on a part of our property, and it was my job not only to care for them but to gather the eggs they laid. My father had made arrangements to sell eggs to Charlie and other neighbors. Chaplin had benefited from my labor, I thought, and the thanks I received was that he had killed my best friend, Bill. I would not rest until my parents could explain how someone could take the life of my dog and not be punished. Charlie Chaplin was, indeed, the incarnation of the nefarious Dr. Pauli!

At my door that night was the last time I saw Mr. Chaplin. I was intent on retribution for his crime, heightened, no doubt, by all the gossip the neighborhood children had been spreading about him. I’m sure his reputation was not enhanced by what I had heard about him at home, and I was convinced that I was extremely lucky not to have been discovered by him lurking in the woods by his house.

All summer I anguished over what had happened to my dog. In September, I suppose, my parents read in the paper that as Charlie Chaplin was traveling to England he was told that he would be denied reentry into the United States. However, that is not what they told me.

I learned from them the real reason Chaplin was not allowed to come back to his house on Summit Drive, and it had nothing to do with his tax problems, his violations of the Mann Act, the paternity suit involving Joan Barry, the charges of moral turpitude, or his affiliations with the Communist Party.

No, these were not the reasons Charlie Chaplin was exiled for the rest of his life from the United States. I was finally placated when my parents, in their loving attempt to protect their son’s feelings and assuage his sorrow, told me that Mr. Chaplin would not be coming back to the neighborhood because he had killed my dog, Bill. Justice, I thought, had finally been wrought.

Mr. Ford is a talk-show host on radio station KIEV (870 AM) in Los Angeles, California.

[JaneTVFan]

Originally posted by JaneTVFan
Hey, I came across this article about Charlie Chaplin written by Glenn Ford's son, Peter. In it, he mentions Lucille Ball among others as guests at parties in his neighborhood in Beverly Hills in the 1940's. So maybe it is possible Lucy and Chaplin met. But this was still well before I Love Lucy. Incidentally, it was in 1972 that Chaplin returned to the United States after being in exile for about a quarter century. He came here to accept a special Oscar award.

A Boy, His Dog, and Charlie Chaplin
by Peter Ford

It was early in 1952, I was seven years old, and silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin lived around the corner from my family in a big house on Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, California.

Duh! I guess I should pay more attention to what I post. If Chaplin was in the United States in 1952, and returned in 1972, his exile was only 20 years, not a quarter century. And he obviously was still here at least for a short time after I Love Lucy went on the air.

[That Other Fan]

Thanks for the reply Janetvfan...I remember reading that at one time (during it's original run) "I Love Lucy" was just as if not more popular in european countries, garnering like 90% of all televisions at the time.

I know that Lucy did some interviews, and other promotional things in those countries (at least during the peak of ILL) which peaked my couresty about whether they ever met (or I guess I should now say photographed together....considering that article leads me to believe that they probably did meet...or at least new of each other)

Just something that kinda interested me


I know Lucy worked with Buster before (in a television special...I believe) but I think the general public would've been even more interested in a Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball pairing...well I would be atleast Not to take anything away from Buster Keaton

[SPLAIN]

Thanks for posting that Glenn Ford bio, i always go through all biographies to find any Lucy connection, you saved me one book to read! I too would have thought that Lucy who claimed to have met everybody she ever worshipped, would have seen him at a party, makes sense!

[JaneTVFan]

Originally posted by SPLAIN
Thanks for posting that Glenn Ford bio, i always go through all biographies to find any Lucy connection, you saved me one book to read! I too would have thought that Lucy who claimed to have met everybody she ever worshipped, would have seen him at a party, makes sense!

It actually wasn't any trouble. I got that article off the Internet doing a quick web search. I'm sure Glenn Ford is a nice person and probably has lived an interesting life, but like you, I don't think I'm interested enough in him to spend time reading his bio.

[SPLAIN]

Well, my connection here is he's from Canada. A super nice actor, a great dad, and a man who lived close enough to Lucy to have had some connection to her somewhere!