Burn Hollywood Burn

 

chaplinheadline 

October 14, 1927
Glendale

burnbaby!Pajamarino!  Everybody loves pajamarino!  Everybody, except, perhaps, Mr. Charles Chaplin.

Pajamarino, that time-honored tradition of frat boys garbing themselves in…pajamas!  And thereafter lighting everything they can get their hands on on fire.  And there’s something in there about football, and probably a booze-fueled orgy of rape and vandalism, but definitely football.

towerofpowerWhich is all fine and good, yet again, Mr. Chaplin would disagree, in that he showed up for work this morning ready to get to work on his new picture The Circus.  But two crucial props were missing…the circus wagons.  He and his crew of fifty were held up—at Chaplin’s expense—as deputy sheriffs set about searching for the missing things.  

They were located, finally, down on Moore Field at UCLA, apparently absconded with by the aforementioned Greeks of Occidental, who’d thrown them into the giant tower of chopped-up orphanages and dug-up caskets and whatnot ready for that night’s postgame bonfire.  

So Chaplin’s people pulled the wagons off and back to Glendale, the rest of the kindling was sent that night aflame to hell, the pajama-clad ran amok, and all was right with the world.

pajamarino

We’ve come for your circus wagons. 

ahearseisahearse 

Don’t Get Mad, Get Everything

Aug. 22, 1927
chaplindivorce1 Hollywood divorces may be ugly today, but the dissolution of the legal bonds between Charlie Chaplin and his child bride, Lita Grey, may have been nastier than K-Fed and Britney, Alec and Kim, and Loni and Burt put together.

After divorce proceedings that had dragged on for nearly a year, Chaplin and Grey settled out of court today for the staggering sum of nearly $1 million ($11,971,200 USD 2007).  $625,000 went to Lita, $200,000 was used to set up trust funds for the couple’s two babies, and the rest went towards assorted legal and court fees.  She lost the house, but got custody of the children.  It was, in 1927, the largest divorce settlement ever paid in California history.

Lita was only 18, but she was either exceptionally shrewd or exceptionally wronged.

Wed in Mexico in November 1924, Lita moved out almost exactly two years later.  However, the marriage was in trouble quite literally from the beginning.

chaplindivorce2In her nearly 50-page formal complaint against Chaplin, Grey leveled the following accusations:  he’d forced her to have sex with him before they were married; he’d told her to get an abortion when he discovered she was pregnant; on their way back to Los Angeles after their wedding, he told her, “This marriage won’t last long.  I’ll make you so — sick of me that you won’t want to live with me”; accused her of forcing him into marriage; had an affair with a prominent motion picture actress; told her she was stupid; encouraged her to commit suicide; only took her out 3-4 times during the first two months of their marriage “for the sake of appearances”; left her alone on Christmas while he went out and got drunk; threatened her life twice with a loaded revolver; and since their separation, had only given her $27 for milk for the babies.

Apparently, Chaplin decided the money was worth his peace of mind – he didn’t even show up in court.  Earlier in the year, Chaplin had filed a cross-complaint that denied many of Grey’s charges, and accused her of excessive partying, relationships with other men, and negligent parenting; however, this complaint was dismissed at the time of the settlement.

Showroom New

March 24, 1927
Los Angeles
babyfarm
Investigators from the State Board of Pharmacy began traversing the city today, in search of physicians who illegally supplied narcotizing agents to Miss Minnie Hines.  It seems that while under the spell of narcotics, Miss Hines develops a “maternity complex” which requires the purchase of infants.  When her mind clears some days later, it then becomes necessary to farm them out again.  Adding complexity to the case is the fact that due to her dope-addled brain, she rarely recollects the homes where she obtained or disposed of the babies.  She is currently under Narcosan treatment for her affliction.

Ms. Hines was arrested March 9th when she attempted to buy a baby at Pasadena hospital, and attempted to escape by putting pillows under her clothes and pretending she was an expectant mother.  Hines, 26, of Long Beach, has farmed out three of her own children (ages eighteen months to twelve years) and an estimated ten others.  Babies, incidentally, generally run between sixty and one hundred dollars ($700-$1,169 USD 2007).

litachaplinIn other baby news:  local actress Lita Grey Chaplin today dropped her renewed bid for temporary alimony for herself and her two toddlers in an attempt to force her husband, one Charles Chaplin, into court.  (Mr. Chaplin had impregnated Lita Grey when she was 16, he 35, resulting in a marriage and sensationally scandalous divorce which, when finalized in August of 1927, cost Chaplin $825,000 [$9,648,650 USD 2007].)

According to Charlie’s biographer Joyce Milton, the 1924 marriage was the inspiration of Nabokov’s Lolita.