Customer Reviews

Oona, Living in the Shadows: A Biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin

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Being very interested in the life of cinematic genius Charlie Chaplin, and knowing what a difficult person he could be, I became interested in the one woman who stuck by him and adored him until his death, then mourned him for years after. However, this book was a disappointment and lacked a great deal of information about it's subject, Oona. Scovell also made too many assumptions, and forced her own opinion under the guise of psychology and lacked the objectivity which one expects in a well written biography.
The book opened with droning on and on about her family geneology, which bored me to tears, but I read on, expecting to soon read about Oona, which never happened. With the exception of brief information about Oona here and there, the book focused on Eugene O'Neil, and Chaplin himself (even worse, some of the "facts" written about Chaplin were false). Sadly, Oona was left out of her own biography.
This book was somewhat of a painful read and lacked professionalism from it's author.

The subject matter is, needless to say, very interesting. But the book reads like it is written by someone whose entire literary education centered on cheap romance novels. The author doesn't seem to have any access to any of Oona's friends or family while researching this book. Almost all of her historical data seem to have been hearsay and 2nd hand. Remarkable and unfortunate on the author's part.

This supposed biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin spends much of its time discussing Eugene O'Neill and Charlie Chaplin. Certainly Oona lived in the shadow of Charlie, but she doesn't emerge as a person in this biography. The book is poorly written. Too much repetition of points made, some really silly sentences of superficial statement. And no depth. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read because of the people and the lives narrated.

I've been facinated with Oona Chaplin ever since I read Jerry Epstein's biography of Charlie Chaplin. It was clear that he was very much in love with her, and there's no question why. From Scovell's biography we come off with the impression that Oona O'Neill Chaplin was a smart, funny lovely woman who loved Charlie Chaplin with her whole heart. When he died, her heart broke and never could be mended. Scovell paints such a sympathetic portrait of her that we want to travel back in time and tell her. "It's going to be okay! You're going to get through this!" Unfortuatly, we can't-but thanks to Scovell's wonderful biography, we can see who hid in the shadows of her father and husband most of her life.

As one begins this book, which starts with fairly lengthy backgrounds on the O'Neill and Boulton families, it seems that one is on the way to learning as much about Oona O'Neill Chaplin as her forebears. This is not the case. I came away knowing her life only superficially. More detail is devoted to Eugene O'Neill and Charles Chaplin (both written about exhaustively elsewhere), but who was Oona?

All I derived from this term-paper-like bio were the surface details of Oona's life: she had a chaotic childhood, she went to good schools, she evolved into a Cafe Society glamour queen by her mid-teens. She decided to become a movie star and moved to LA. She made a very poor screen test before being introduced to Charlie Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin, at 54, was taken by the lush 17-year-old. They married shortly thereafter, just as she turned 18. Eight children, an exile from the U.S. and millions of dollars and accolades later, Chaplin died. Oona, who apparently had already begun drinking, became a confirmed alcoholic and, eventually, a recluse. She died in her mid-60's of pancreatic cancer. This much can as easily be learned on Wikipedia or via Google.

I have long been interested in this woman, first observed as a girlhood friend of Carol Marcus Matthau in her book. The name alone is intriguing, and the story behind is is just as fascinating. One feels a bit let down after reading this book to think of how abandoned she must have felt in her girlhood, and how saved she was to have found Charlie Chaplin. Never having developed herself as an individual, it was not surprising to read that her life virtually fell apart after her husband's death. The reality is that marriage to him was her life, and when he was finished, so was she. I got the impression she was happy enough to have it end that way, although it is sad all the same for the reader. A very interesting story.

Abandoned by her father, Eugene O'Neill, Oona transformed this hurt into love and care for her much older husband, Charlie Chaplin. This book details her life, and gives us great insight into what family, fame,love and loyalty mean in this century. While not known for any traditional arts, such as acting or writing (though, it is clear from this biography that she may have been successful in either form), Oona's art was her life itself; her ability to deal with a father who rejected her, a sibling she looked up to but could not help, and a husband to whom she devoted herself to as he lived out his life in a time when the world was rapidly changing.

The writing is clear and without pretension. Ms. Scovell realizes that Oona was a complex person and conveys that to the reader. Throughout the book, the nature of Oona O'Neill Chaplin is always apparent --- a tribute to a well-researched biography.

While I desperately wanted to like this book and was tremendously excited by the topic, I find it difficult to write nice things about the book. While the book has many handsome pictures, I find it difficult to pass other compliments. It would seem difficult to write a biography of somebody while avoiding talking about that person's life, yet Jane Scovell has managed to do just that.

The life of Oona O'Neill had a tragic beginning as she was largely abandon by her father, Eugene O'Neill. The author of "Oona" manages to spend much of the early chapters focusing on the evolution of the O'Neill family. There is no substantial writing on the life of Oona until she meets Charlie Chaplin. Yet even these chapters focus largely on people other than Oona. While Oona did live in the shadow of her husband, why write a biography if you can not present facts about the main character.

It is also quite clear that Scovell is not a fan of Charlie Chaplin. Chapter 9 seems larely devoted to bringing Charlie Chaplin's character into question. While Sir Charles Chaplin was far from a model citizen, this fact would not be a logical choice on which to focus the book. In this Chapter 9, the author suggests Chaplin slept with 2000 women. Endnote 6 reveals her source to be a not so famous historian named Milton Berle. Her source is a comedian with little documentation suggests Charlie has any significant dealings. In this same chapter she uses a letter from Oona's former love interest J.D. Salinger to further debase the actor's legacy. I am not certain what place a scorned lover's opinion has in a focused biography other than to raise character questions. Perhaps the most absurd statement of the book is made on page 173 in which another book is sited as evidence that the United States government had no interest for prosecuting Chaplin for being a communist, but "the government was more upset about his morality ...". The idea that he would have been welcomed back to the country if he agreed to be interviewed not seems proposterous, but it avoids the point of his exile entirely.

With such obvious inaccuracies, it is hard to give credit for much else that Scovell writes. When Scovell does devote her writing to Oona in the waning pages of the book after Charlie's death, it is only to write of her alcholism and love interests like a tabloid photographer. This book seems targeted to exploit the legacy of Oona Chaplin and her husband.

Oona O'Neill Chaplain was an occasional interest to me. Her name (which, I believe is pronounced Owna), her playwright father, Eugene; and her startling marriage to Charlie Chaplin, 38-years her senior made a curiously exotic package. Once that marriage took place, it seemed like she had fallen off the face of the earth occasionally emerging to be photographed with a flock of handsome children within a backdrop of the Swiss Alps.

Ms. Scovell has great respect for her subject, fairly objective but a little too much the apologist for the reclusive Oona to come to life. The book holds few surprises. It is not a shock to learn Oona had a fairly unhappy childhood with a distant mother and a hard-drinking, volcanic tempered, totally selfish father. I was mildly astonished that Oona was a determined, stubborn, even slightly wild teenager who went to the best schools and was actually Debutante of the Year. Her father disowned her when she married, never to speak to her again though she tried as long as he lived to make amends.

After her lively beginning, it is as if her life's goal had been reached by marrying Charlie, and she could now retreat into invisibility behind the enormous shield of Charlie's egoism. True, she had all those children but seems not so much a mother as a child producer. She enjoyed being pregnant, but didn't seem to take much interest after they arrived. There is a certain kind of woman, Ethel Kennedy comes to mind, that takes enormous pleasure in bringing children into the world as if this affirms their husband's masculinity. I think this was also the attraction for Oona Chaplin.

When Charlie died at a great age, Oona had left over life to live. She drank heavily and was dead of pancreatic cancer fourteen years later. I suspect the drinking was a problem before Charlie died, as he was invalided for many years preceding his death. This surely must have been difficult for Oona who had gone from child bride to caretaker without a serene maturity in between.

Ms. Scovell gets the most that she can out of the material available. Oona O'Neill Chaplin was what our computerized society would call a WYSIWIG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). She drifted through life in the towering shadow of the fame and renown that only belonged to her father and husband.

I have often wondered what happened to Oona after Charlie's death. This was a great idea for a book. The book was in excellent condition. I plan to teach a course on Chaplin and I needed this book for my research.