Oona O'Neill

Oona, Lady Chaplin (née O'Neill) (May 13, 1925 – September 27, 1991) was the daughter of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill and writer Agnes Boulton, and the wife of British actor, director and producer Charlie Chaplin.

Oona was born while her parents were living in Bermuda, during a period of heavy drinking by Eugene O'Neill. She was two years old when he left the family for actress Carlotta Monterey who became his third wife. Oona and her brother Shane (born in 1919) rarely saw him afterward.

Oona spent her summers in the Boulton family's rambling Victorian house in Point Pleasant, New Jersey; the rest of the year she lived in Manhattan with her mother where she attended the Brearley School. In 1942, seventeen-year-old Oona 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!" Deciding to pursue an acting career instead of attending Vassar, she got a part in a stock company stage production of Pal Joey and formed close friendships with Carol Grace Saroyan and Gloria Vanderbilt, later chronicled by Aram Saroyan in the book Trio: Portrait of an Intimate Friendship.

Oona dated cartoonist Peter Arno, director Orson Welles, and author J. D. Salinger. To Salinger's disappointment, however, their relationship ended when she met Charlie Chaplin, after having been suggested to him for a part in one of his films. Despite the 36-year age difference, Chaplin wrote in his autobiography that he was instantly smitten by Oona's "luminous beauty and sequestered charm."

Despite his own neglect as a father, Eugene O'Neill was outraged at the news of his daughter's affair with Chaplin and refused to give his consent so that she could marry him before her eighteenth birthday. After their marriage in June 1943, he cut Oona out of his life, refusing her attempts at a reconciliation. According to her biographer Jane Scovell, playwright Clifford Odets "saw something vindictive in O'Neill's behaviour and thought that O'Neill could not forgive Oona perhaps because he had abandoned her." Her half-brother, Eugene O'Neill Jr., was the son of a woman to whom his father had reneged on a promise to marry before attaining success as a writer; the younger O'Neill later suffered from alcoholism and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40. Oona's brother Shane became a heroin addict and moved into the family home in Bermuda, Spithead, with his new wife, where he supported himself by selling off the furnishings. He was disowned by his father before also committing suicide (by jumping out a window) a number of years later.

When Oona saw Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds, where he portrayed her estranged father, she wrote him a letter saying "Thanks to you, I now can love my father". Nicholson has said that "that is the best compliment I ever got".

Chaplin and Oona maintained a close and clearly co-dependent relationship for 35 years. Because he was the age of her father (who had abandoned her) and also an internationally renowned figure, there was clearly a paternal father figure aspect to their relationship. For her part, she provided the demanding Chaplin with unquestioned loyalty and support as his public popularity was eroding and later as his health failed due to aging in his last years.

While attending the London premiere of his film Limelight in September 1952, Chaplin was accused of "Communist sympathies" and barred re-entry into the United States. Because of the tax laws in England, the family (which by then included four children), was forced to relocate to Switzerland. Oona bravely returned to the United States by herself to close their California house and to surreptitiously collect all of Chaplin's assets from safe deposit boxes, even as the FBI was questioning the members of their staff. She later admitted to sewing $1,000 bills into the lining of her mink coat, thereby saving the Chaplin fortune. Oona renounced her American citizenship shortly after returning to Europe. She and Chaplin settled permanently with their family in Vevey, Switzerland, where they spent the majority of their thirty-five year marriage, visited by Hollywood friends.

They had eight children: actress Geraldine Chaplin (born on July 31, 1944, who married Spanish film director Carlos Saura); Michael (born March 7, 1946); Josephine (born March 28, 1949, mother of Julien Ronet b. 1980 by Maurice Ronet); Victoria (born May 19, 1951, married to Jean-Baptiste Thieree, parents of Aurelie and James b. May 2, 1974, in Lausanne); Eugene Anthony (born on August 23, 1953); Jane (born May 23, 1957, unmarried); Annette (born December 3, 1959, unmarried); and Christopher (born on July 6, 1962, when his father was seventy-three, who is not married). Despite his large family, the demanding and temperamental Chaplin insisted on being put first, often to the detriment of the children who were sent off to boarding schools at the age of ten. Most rebelled in various ways as they grew older, but all retained a loving relationship with Oona until reaching adulthood.

In March 1975, three years after briefly returning to the United States to receive a special Academy Award, Chaplin was knighted. His health declined rapidly afterwards, however, and he died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of eighty-eight.

Following Chaplin's death, Oona moved to New York where she attempted to build a life of her own. But after years of being continually on call to an aging husband (her tasks on his behalf 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 was 18 - could not find the emotional resources to do so. She retreated to the manor in Switzerland where she became a recluse, seeking oblivion in alcohol, the O'Neill family curse. She ultimately died of pancreatic cancer on September 27, 1991, in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.

Geraldine thought very highly of her mother, and when she was cast in Doctor Zhivago (1965), she decided to base her performance as the title character's wife on her mother, whom she described as "a woman who was willing to give her life to an artist."

In 2006, Chaplin's granddaughter, model and actress Kiera Chaplin (daughter of Eugene Chaplin), visited Tao House, where her maternal great-grandfather lived. She has announced that she would like to play her grandmother in a film. The same year, daughter Jane Chaplin announced that she had written a memoir entitled "Seventeen Minutes with my Father," which she said would not be easy on her mother.

Oona was a fan of Arsenal FC (The club that Charlie had supported all his life) and described their 1989 League Championship victory as 'One of the greatest moments of my life.'

References

• Chaplin, Patrice: Hidden Star (written by her ex-daughter-in-law)
• Saroyan, Aram: Trio (details the friendship between Oona O'Neill, Saroyan's mother Carol Saroyan, and Gloria Vanderbilt)
• Matthau, Carol: Among the Porcupines
• Scovell, Jane: Oona: Living in the Shadows