Joan Barry (American actress)

Born Mary Louise Gribble on May 24, 1920,{{rp|197}} in Detroit, Michigan, to James Alfred Gribble and Gertrude Elizabeth McLaren. The Gribble family moved to New York City before June 1925. James Gribble worked as a machinist in Detroit, and as car salesman in New York. Another daughter, Agnes, was born in 1923. James died by suicide on December 10, 1927. Gertrude later married a man named John Barry. Barry went to California in 1938 to pursue an acting career.{{cite book|last=Maland|first=Charles J.|title=Chaplin and American Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/chaplinamericanc0000mala|url-access=registration|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1989|location = Princeton, NJ|isbn=0-691-02860-5}}{{rp|197}}

Barry, 21 years old, began an affair with established director Charlie Chaplin, aged 52 years, in the summer of 1941;{{cite news|title=Mann & Woman|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850389,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080117060249/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850389,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 17, 2008|quote=Auburn-haired Joan Barry, 24, who wandered from her native Detroit to New York to Hollywood in pursuit of a theatrical career, became a Chaplin protegee in the summer of 1941. She fitted into a familiar pattern. Chaplin signed her to a $75-a-week contract, began training her for a part in a projected picture. Two weeks after the contract was signed she became his mistress. Throughout the summer and autumn, Miss Barry testified last week, she visited the ardent actor five or six times a week. By midwinter her visits were down to "maybe three times a week". By late summer of 1942, Charlie Chaplin had decided that she was unsuited for his movie. Her contract ended.|magazine=Time|date=April 3, 1944|accessdate=August 21, 2007}} Chaplin had his studio sign Barry at $75 a week (${{Inflation|US|75|1941|r=-1|fmt=c}} today) with possibility of extension, and came to consider her for the starring role in Shadow and Substance, a film proposed for 1942.{{cite web|last=Weissman|first=Steven|author-link=Steven Weissman|title=Fatal Attraction: Joan Barry|work=Chaplin: A Life|year=2008|publisher=Arcade Publishing|location=New York City|url=http://www.chaplinalife.com/photo_essays/38.html|accessdate=July 27, 2009}} Chaplin spoke highly of her acting abilities; Chaplin biographer David Robinson writes in Chaplin: A Life of "Chaplin's sincerity in believing that he could make Joan Barry into an actress…. [as] she had ‘all the qualities of a new Maude Adams' and told his sons, ‘She has a quality, an ethereal something that's truly marvelous…a talent as great as any I've seen in my whole life.” {{cite book | first=David| last = Robinson |author-link1= David Robinson (film critic) | date = 1986 | orig-year = 1985 | title = Chaplin: His Life and Art | location = London, England | publisher = Paladin | isbn = 0586085440 }}{{rp|512}} Other sources, including FBI case records and Chaplin autobiographical writings, indicate the young actress to have had talent at her craft, as well as emotional swings and periods of erratic behavior. According to Chaplin and some Chaplin biographers the relationship ended with Barry's harassing him and displaying signs of the mental illness which would, in later life, lead to her commitment. Barry was accused of stalking Chaplin, and had even broken into his home on several occasions.{{cite book |last1=Tveten |first1=Michael |title=Biology Stories: 50 Stories for Teaching and Learning Biology |date=2020 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |location=Lanham, Maryland|pages=97 |isbn=9781475856941 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aaz0DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22joan+barry%22+stalking+chaplin&pg=PA97 |access-date=6 December 2021}} Other sources suggest that after a concerted effort by Chaplin and his studio to prepare Barry for the lead in Shadows, including orthodontic work and participation at the Max Reinhardt Workshop for acting, Chaplin lost his patience with Barry as an actress after she repeatedly missed classes and developed a drinking problem.{{cite book |last1=Gehring |first1=Wes D. |title=Movie Comedians of the 1950s: Defining a New Era of Big Screen Comedy |date=2016 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, North Carolina|pages=49 |isbn=9780786499960 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3e97DQAAQBAJ&dq=%22joan+barry%22+chaplin+%22shadow%22&pg=PA49 |access-date=6 December 2021}}

FBI case files and other records recorded two terminated pregnancies during the affair.{{cite web|first=Adam|last=Sweeting|url=https://theartsdesk.com/film/real-charlie-chaplin-review-not-revealing-its-title-suggests|title=The Real Charlie Chaplin review - not as revealing as its title suggests|website=The Arts Desk|date=16 February 2022|accessdate=18 May 2022}} After Barry gave birth to a girl, Carol Ann, on October 2, 1943,{{rp|205f}} her mother filed a paternity suit against Chaplin. The suit proceeded to trial, and despite blood tests which showed Chaplin was not the father, Barry's attorney, Joseph Scott, succeeded in arguing that the tests were inadmissible.{{cite book|first=Charles J.|last=Maland|date=1989|title=Chaplin and American Culture|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=Princeton, New Jersey|isbn=978-0-691-02860-6|pages=205–206|quote=Carol Ann's blood group was B, Barry's was A, and Chaplin's was O. In California at this time, blood tests were not accepted as evidence in legal trials.}} Chaplin was ordered to support the child until her 21st birthday.{{cite news|first=Martin|last=Chilton|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/perverted-degenerate-indecent-acts-charlie-chaplin-original/|title='Perverted, degenerate and indecent acts': Charlie Chaplin and the original A-list divorce scandal|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|date=25 July 2020|accessdate=17 May 2022}}

Federal prosecutors brought Mann Act charges against Chaplin related to Barry in 1944, of which he was acquitted.

Barry married Russell Seck, a railway clerk, in 1946. The couple had two sons, Russell and Stephen.{{cite news |title=Joan Barry Rift Denied |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/524576193/?terms=%22Joan%20Barry%22%20%22Russell%20Seck%22&match=1 |access-date=8 June 2022 |publisher=Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph |date=12 May 1948 |pages=3}} The boys moved to Ohio with their father in 1952.{{Citation needed|date=September 2023}}

The following year, when she was 33, Time noted that Barry was "admitted to Patton State Hospital... after she was found walking the streets barefoot, carrying a pair of baby sandals and a child's ring, and murmuring: 'This is magic'."{{cite news|title=Just Like the Movies|magazine=Time|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,858217,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080117060251/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,858217,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 17, 2008|quote=Another Chaplin ex-protegee, 33-year-old Joan Barry, who won a 1946 paternity suit against the comedian, was admitted to Patton State Hospital (for the mentally ill) after she was found walking the streets barefoot, carrying a pair of baby sandals and a child's ring, and murmuring: "This is magic".|date=August 17, 1953|accessdate=August 21, 2007}} After her mother was committed, Carol Ann went to live with a legally appointed guardian and changed her name.{{Citation needed |date=December 2021}} She continued to receive monthly payments from Chaplin until her 21st birthday.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

In Richard Attenborough's film Chaplin (1992), she is played by Nancy Travis.{{cite book |last1=Dlugos |first1=J. Michael |title=Mr. Mikey's Video Views; Volume One |date=2000 |pages=46 |isbn=9781552123164 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3hTV8v2Ueq8C&dq=%22Nancy+Travis%22+%22chaplin%22&pg=PA46 |access-date=8 June 2022}}{{cite book |last1=Gifford |first1=Denis |title=British Film Catalogue: Two Volume Set – The Fiction Film/The Non-Fiction Film |date=April 2016 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781317740629 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FszeCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Nancy+Travis%22+%22chaplin%22&pg=PT2557 |access-date=8 June 2022}}

She is featured as a character in Wieland Schwanebeck's play [https://www.felix-bloch-erben.de/index.php5/pid/4647/stueck/Slapstick/Action/showPlay/fbe/101/ Slapstick] (2021), a comedy based on the encounter between Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin that led to the film Monsieur Verdoux (1947).{{cite web|first=Haus|last=Zittau|url=https://www.theaterkompass.de/beitraege/gerhart-hauptmann-theater-goerlitz-zittau-charlie-chaplin-trifft-orson-welles-in-der-urauffuehrung-von-wieland-schwanebecks-slapstick-55817|title=Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz-Zittau: Charlie Chaplin trifft Orson Welles in der Uraufführung von Wieland Schwanebecks "Slapstick"|website=Theaterkompass|date=October 16, 2021|accessdate=May 18, 2022|language=German}}

{{Reflist}}

• [http://notesonafilm.com/joan-barry-article/ Joan Barry: The Most (In)famous Actress to Never Appear on Screen]
• [http://vault.fbi.gov/charlie-chaplin/charlie-chaplin-part-01-of-10/view#document/p1 Charlie Chaplin FBI FOIA Case File]

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Category:1920 births

Category:2007 deaths

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:21st-century American women

Category:Actresses from California

Category:Actresses from Detroit

Category:American film actresses