Oona O'Neill

Oona O'Neill (May 14, 1925 - september 7, 1991) was the daughter of Nobel and Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, and his second wife, actress Agnes Boulton.

"Oona" (the Irish form of her mother's name "Agnes"), was born while her parents were living in Bermuda, and during a period of heavy drinking by Eugene O'Neill.

Two years old when her father left the family to pursue a relationship with actress Carlotta Monterey (who became his third wife), Oona and her brother, Shane (born in 1919), saw the playwright infrequently afterward.

Oona spent part of her childhood in her mother's family's rambling Victorian house in the town of Point Pleasant, which overlooks the shores of New Jersey. She later attended the exclusive Brearley School for Girls in Manhatten, and in 1942 was named "Debutante of the Year" (asked by a reporter whether she considered herself to be "lace curtain" Irish or "shanty" Irish, she replied, "Shanty Irish!").

In 1941, the exquisite sixteen-year-old became romantically involved with 22-year-old author J.D. Salinger and briefly embarked on an acting career on the New York stage. The relationship with Salinger ended to his great disappointment, however, when she met Charlie Chaplin, having done a screen test for a him.

Despite a thirty-six-year difference in their ages, Chaplin and Oona became inseparable, and were married in a simple ceremony in Carpinteria, California, on June 16, 1943, when he was 54 and she was 18. According to author Jane Scovell (Oona Living in the Shadows: A Biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin), Salinger sent her "a scathing, scatological letter describing in disgusting detail his version of the Chaplins' wedding night." For his part, Eugene O'Neill (who was only a year older than the four times married, British-born actor/director), was so outraged by the union that he cut his daughter out of his life, refusing all attempts (by her) at a reconciliation. He subsequently disinherited his son Shane, disapproving of his addiction to heroin and other drugs; Eugene O'Neill Jr. -- born during O'Neill's first marriage to Kathleen Jenkins -- suffered from alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1950, at the age of 40.

While attending the London premiere of his film "Monsieur Verdeux in September, 1952, Chaplin was accused of "communist sympathies" and "immoral" behaviour, and barred re-entry into the United States. Because of the exorbitant tax laws in England, the family (which by then included four children, Geraldine, Michael, Josephine and Vicky), was forced to relocate to Vevey, Switzerland. (But not before Oona had returned to the United States by herself, surrepticiously collecting all of Chaplin's assests -- which were chiefly in safe deposit boxes -- even as the authorities were questioning those who knew him. She later talked about sewing $1,000 bills into the lining of her mink coat, while Chaplin waited nervously in Switzerland, terrified lest she be detained before managing to leave the country. In this way, Oona was instrumental in saving the Chaplin fortune. (As an additional gesture of support for her husband, she renounced her American citizenship, becoming a British citizen).

Oona and Chaplin were married for thirty-four years, and had eight children: three sons (the youngest of whom was born when Chaplin was 73), and five daughters, including the actress Geraldine Chaplin (born in 1944).

In March, 1975, Chaplin was knighted, and Oona become Lady Chaplin. Wheelchair-bound in his last years (after suffering a series of strokes), Chaplin died on Christmas Day morning in 1977, at the age of 88.

After many years of being continuously on call to her aging husband (her tasks were once described as being akin to those of a "duty nurse") Oona, who had given up the promise of an acting career when she married Chaplin, was unable to forge a new life without him, increasingly seeking oblivion in the O'Neill "family curse" of alcoholism. She died of pancreatic cancer on September 7, 1991, at the age of 66.