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Oona, Living in the Shadows: A Biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin Posters
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List Price: $25.00Price: $1.90 You Save: $23.10 (92%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9780446517300
ISBN: 0446517305
Label: Warner Books
Manufacturer: Warner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 354
Publication Date: 1998-11
Publisher: Warner Books
Sales Rank: 1222296
Studio: Warner Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Her father, the only American playwright to receive a Nobel Prize, was a chronic alcoholic. When she was a child, her father deserted her; when she turned 18, he disinherited her. Her older half-brother, a Pulitzer Prize-winning classical scholar, and her younger brother, a drug addict, each committed suicide. A product of New York society, she was accepted at Vassar, but chose instead to seek an acting career in Hollywood. There she met her future;and only; husband. He was the comic genius of motion pictures and 36 years her senior. She was America's darling. Why did she give up everything to marry a much older man? Did she stifle herself? Were her children good to her? Were there other men? And, most crucial, how did she escape the family curse of alcoholism and mental illness? This in-depth biography sheds light on a truly fascinating woman and the many extraordinary people whose lives touched upon hers.Other books about fascinating women in the public eye have sold well, most notably Life of the Party (Little, Brown, 1994), which has more than 100,000 hardcover and over 150,000 paperback (Warner, 1995) copies in print, and the New York Times bestseller, Slim (Warner, 1990).Five years of research went into the writing of the first major biography of Oona Chaplin, including interviews with some of Oona's closest friends and colleagues. Includes two 8-page photo inserts.
Amazon.com Review:
Like Jackie O, Oona O'Neill (1925-91) captured public attention for two reasons: her impressive familial/marital alliances (she was the sole daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill and the last wife of filmmaker Charlie Chaplin) and her elegant, raven-haired beauty. The two women also shared vitas that were filled with childhood disappointments, humiliating public attention during crises, and the wrenching deaths of loved ones. But as Jane Scovell's new biography clearly shows, Oona O'Neill Chaplin lacked both the stoicism and personal passion of Jackie Onassis. Hers was a spirit too tender--and fundamentally fragile--to assert itself fully or survive independently for any period of time. Hence the book's apt subtitle, "Living in the Shadows."
With information culled from press clips, interviews with Chaplin's friends and contemporaries, and previous biographies of Eugene O'Neill, Scovell's book paints an engaging portrait of a privileged, potentially fabulous life gone way wrong. Most fittingly for their subsequent tortured relationship, Oona's parents--Eugene O'Neill and writer Agnes Boulton--met in a Greenwich Village bar dubbed the Hellhole. Eight years into their marriage, in which they flitted between Greenwich Village, Bermuda, Provincetown, Maine, and New Jersey, O'Neill abandoned the family life for the erstwhile actress Carlotta Monterey (christened Hazel Neilson Tharsing). Oona was two at the time. O'Neill, a boorish father, saw her only a handful of times before she turned 18; at that point, he disinherited her because he wasn't happy with the oozy publicity she was earning as a New York debutante. That same year, Oona moved out to Hollywood (in the hopes of pursuing an acting career), and met and married Charlie Chaplin, who was facing a scandalous paternity suit at that moment. Chaplin was 54, Oona was 18. She never worked again, and he was at the end of his career. They had eight children (the last when Chaplin was 72), and she stood by him till his death in 1977, spending most of their years together exiled in Sweden, where Chaplin had gone to avoid a host of problems with the U.S. government. After Chaplin's death, Oona returned to the U.S., where she lived 14 depressed, alcoholic years before dying at age 66 of cancer.
There's a breezy, slightly superficial tone to this book, despite Scovell's attempt to elucidate fully the potholes and vistas of Oona's dramatic roadmap. None of Oona's eight children, or close family members, seems to have talked to Scovell, nor did Scovell have any significant access to Oona's correspondence or other writing. Though her dramatic fade is well captured here, Oona never completely blooms in this book. --Jean Lenihan
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
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 ... Read More
Rating:  -
I really like Oona O'Neill Chaplin. What a wonderful woman she was! This book quotes person after person who knew her, from all periods of her life. They say that Oona was a woman who radiated a sort of grace, who had an innate elegance that set her apart, but who did not lose a down-to-earth quality, who loved to fuss over her brood of children, who literally basked in having babies and loved having her children around her (she had eight children altogether), who possessed a radiant and fragile ... Read More
Rating: -
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. ... Read More
Rating:  -
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.
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Rating: -
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.
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