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"Then I had the chauffeur drive her back to Hollywood Boulevard and let her out where I picked her up." Chaplin turned then to Laurette. "And would you believe it, the following night she found her way back to my home and begged to be let in? Of course I had the servants turn her out." He gave another sad sigh. "When will girls like that learn to know when I'm through?" he said peevishly.
One didn't.
In 1942, after I'd become a columnist, a girl walked into my office. I'd never seen her before; nor had I ever seen anyone as hysterical. From her wild eyes, I knew she was on the borderline of something desperate. With no beating about the bush, she said, "I think I'm pregnant. I'm not certain, but I do know I'm at the end of my resources."
"Why did you come to me?" I asked.
"I had no one else to turn to, and because of a story you wrote about Charlie Chaplin's leading ladies more than a year ago."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Joan Barry," she replied.
Then a light dawned. She had been chosen for the lead in Charlie's picture Shadow and Substance, then he changed his mind and she was out.
I remembered what I had written.
This is for just one girl in Hollywood. I don't know who you are; you haven't been discovered yet. But I can tell you there's a luscious package waiting for you labeled "fame." Charlie Chaplin will be sending it over whenever he's ready. I think you should know what's in it. You'll be that girl chosen by Chaplin to play the top feminine role in Shadow and Substance. It's your chance, the opportunity of a lifetime. You can say farewell to that one-room apartment with a day bed in one corner and a cookstove in the other. You'll be living in a rosy dreamworld of shining limousines, sables, and exploding flash bulbs.
You'll be somebody. All that will be in your tinseled package.
I went down the line of her predecessors, finishing up with the story of Myrna Kennedy, a youngster hardly out of pigtails, busy with her schoolbooks when the Chaplin chance came along. After
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