We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
75
one of the most famous men in the world. Chaplin, as always, had found her classic beauty irresistible, and then was delighted by her intelligence and her witty malice. She was as young and lovely as Mildred Harris and Lita Grey had been: but already, at nineteen, she had her share of the sophistication of Pola Negri. Robert Florey's description of her as "la trepidante et delicieuse Paulette" is very apt.
Shortly after their first meeting, they set out together on a cruise of the South Seas. It was during this period that they were secretly married at sea, on June 1st, 1933. It is not very clear why the marriage was kept secret, but certainly as late as April, 1936, Paulette Goddard was referred to as Chaplin's fiancee.
As soon as Chaplin returned to Hollywood after his romantic interlude, the gossips were busy speculating over his next film. All were agreed that Paulette Goddard would be the central figure in it. Her patrician beauty was exceptionally photogenic, and she was palpably eager to enter films. It was certain that Chaplin would enjoy making her into an artist; and he found for her the ideal role in the girl waif of Modern Times. Here was no forlorn orphan, but a piquant gamine in rebellion against the conditions that had created her outcast state, a foil to Charlie, and his complement.
Modern Times is in effect the meeting place of Chaplin's past torment and present felicity. Storm and strife had matured him, and brought to a head his feeling for the under-dog and the dispossessed : it had crystallized his hatred and contempt for what he had always believed to be the greatest evil of our times — the industrialization of the people. On the other hand, he came to the making of this film after a long period of rest and relaxation, and at the beginning of a marriage that was, in its first years, rapturously happy. These factors gave the film its overtones of radiant good humour. However serious its satire, Modern Times glows with a joyousness that radiates from every scene. The film bore every sign of Chaplin's maturity. It was an ironic indictment of the slavery of the machine, and a defence of individuality. It was also Chaplin's happiest film.
One immediate result of the release of Modern Times was to add another group to the list of Chaplin's persecutors. A whole section of American society had risen against him for moral reasons, because of his two marriages with young girls, and the subsequent "scandalous" divorces from them: and because of the constant stream of women whose names were associated with his. Another and conservative section were suspicious of his political convictions, claiming to see in his public statements and in his films an open avowal of communist sympathies, or worse. Following Modern Times, the moralists and the