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Lita Grey — second marriage and divorce 203
Production on "The Circus" having been stopped, the studio was closed, and Chaplin fled with Kono to New York where he stayed at the home of Nathan Burkan, his New York attorney. Lita's battery of attorneys was headed by her uncle. With all his property seized, the future of his nearly finished production in doubt, and accusations against him a daily news feature, Chaplin was further burdened by a government process for income-tax shortages totaling §1,133,000. (He blamed his aids and four years later was fully paid up.)
Lita Grey's charges went on: that Chaplin had said the marriage was one of compulsion; that he had said he did not believe in marriage; that he had handed her a loaded revolver in her bedroom suggesting "there is one way to end it all"; that, on another occasion, he had threatened her with a revolver; that he had called her "a little Mexican gold-digger"; that he had read to her from books on distasteful subjects. She further charged him with "abnormal, unnatural, indecent acts" and "conduct tending to undermine, demoralize and distort the plaintiff's character in unnatural ways" (New York Times, January 11,
!927)
"During the first month of their marriage" — so ran her complaint — she "was made aware that the defendant was spending a great deal of time in company with a certain prominent motion-picture actress. The plaintiff asked her husband if this were true and he bluntly and boastingly said, 'Yes, it is true and I am in love with her and I don't care who knows it. I am going to see her when I want to and whether you like it or not. I don't love you and I am only living with you because I had to marry you.' "
Lita was ready to name, it was announced, no less than "five prominent motion-picture actresses" who had "publicly and privately" associated with Chaplin. Lita even dragged in Merna Kennedy, her childhood friend, whom