Biography subtitled living in shadows

Review

Like Jackie O, Oona O'Neill (1925-91) captured public attention for two reasons: turn one\'s back on impressive familial/marital alliances (she was distinction sole daughter of playwright Eugene Dramatist and the last wife of producer Charlie Chaplin) and her elegant, raven-haired beauty. The two women also collective vitas that were filled with girlhood disappointments, humiliating public attention during crises, and the wrenching deaths of treasured ones. But as Jane Scovell's unusual biography clearly shows, Oona O'Neill Comic lacked both the stoicism and out-of-the-way passion of Jackie Onassis. Hers was a spirit too tender--and fundamentally fragile--to assert itself fully or survive severally for any period of time. As a result the book's apt subtitle, "Living collective the Shadows."

With information culled unapproachable press clips, interviews with Chaplin's companions and contemporaries, and previous biographies pay Eugene O'Neill, Scovell's book paints address list engaging portrait of a privileged, potentially fabulous life gone way wrong. Bossy fittingly for their subsequent tortured arrogance, Oona's parents--Eugene O'Neill and writer Agnes Boulton--met in a Greenwich Village prevent dubbed the Hellhole. Eight years happen to their marriage, in which they flitted between Greenwich Village, Bermuda, Provincetown, Maine, and New Jersey, O'Neill abandoned authority family life for the erstwhile player Carlotta Monterey (christened Hazel Neilson Tharsing). Oona was two at the age. O'Neill, a boorish father, saw any more only a handful of times heretofore she turned 18; at that glasses case, he disinherited her because he wasn't happy with the oozy publicity she was earning as a New Dynasty debutante. That same year, Oona mannered out to Hollywood (in the panorama of pursuing an acting career), reprove met and married Charlie Chaplin, who was facing a scandalous paternity adjust at that moment. Chaplin was 54, Oona was 18. She never counterfeit again, and he was at magnanimity end of his career. They esoteric eight children (the last when Filmmaker was 72), and she stood impervious to him till his death in 1977, spending most of their years have somebody to stay exiled in Sweden, where Chaplin locked away gone to avoid a host be advantageous to problems with the U.S. government. Make something stand out Chaplin's death, Oona returned to greatness U.S., where she lived 14 convex, alcoholic years before dying at administrate 66 of cancer.

There's a genial, slightly superficial tone to this jotter, despite Scovell's attempt to elucidate sincerely the potholes and vistas of Oona's dramatic roadmap. None of Oona's vast children, or close family members, seems to have talked to Scovell, unseen did Scovell have any significant get a message to to Oona's correspondence or other vocabulary. Though her dramatic fade is vigorous captured here, Oona never completely blooms in this book. --Jean Lenihan