Chaplin, Oona, 1925-1991

Oona O'Neill, Lady Chaplin (14 May 1925 – 27 September 1991) was a British actress, the daughter of Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill and English-born writer Agnes Boulton, and the fourth and last wife of actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. Oona O'Neill was born on 14 May 1925 in the British colony of Bermuda, From San Francisco, O'Neill headed to Los Angeles, where her mother and stepfather were living.[25] She soon found herself a film agent, Minna Wallace, and made her first and only screentest, for Eugene Frenke's The Girl From Leningrad.[25] In October 1942, Wallace introduced her to Charlie Chaplin, who was looking for a lead actress for his next project, an adaptation of the play Shadow and Substance.[25] Chaplin found O'Neill beautiful but at 17, too young for the role.[26] However, due to her and Wallace's persistence, he agreed to give O'Neill a film contract.[26]

Shadow and Substance was shelved in December 1942, but the relationship between O'Neill and Chaplin soon developed from professional to romantic.[26] On 16 June 1943, a month after O'Neill had turned 18, they eloped and married in a civil service in Carpinteria.[27] Following Chaplin's death, O'Neill divided her time between Switzerland and New York.[39] She appeared in the supporting role of an alcoholic mother in the film Broken English (1981) as a favor to the film's producer, Bert Schneider, but otherwise avoided publicity.[40] According to unofficial biographer Jane Scovell and ex-daughter-in-law Patrice Chaplin, O'Neill was an alcoholic and became almost a recluse after returning permanently to Manoir de Ban in the late 1980s.[41] She died on 27 September 1991 at the age of 66 of pancreatic cancer in Corsier-sur-Vevey, and was buried next to her husband in the village cemetery. In her last will, O'Neill, who was a prolific writer of diaries and letters during her life, ordered that all her writings be destroyed, and never published.[42]