Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard: A Fascinating Hollywood Love Story
Discover the captivating love story of Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard—an iconic Hollywood romance full of charm, mystery, and passion.
“Mr. Chaplin, I have been married, I am divorced. I want to meet and get along with the greatest actor in Hollywood, and that is you.”
That is how Paulette Goddard appeared in Chaplin’s life. “Right away, she showed me her honesty. She told me exactly what she was up to!” said the great creator of the character Charlie Chaplin.
Paulette Goddard claimed to have been born on June 3, 1911, but there are rumors that she was born in 1905. The daughter of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, she suffered with the end of her parents’ marriage and bounced from school to school throughout her childhood. She even worked in the fields. Things improved when her mother became the mistress of a wealthy man. It was he who got his stepdaughter an audition to become a Ziegfeld Folies performer. She was only 14 years old.
Among the legends about Paulette Goddard, there is one that says she worked as a “bait” for a professional con man. She traveled on transatlantic ships and, pretending to be a poor and naive little girl, she would trick men into taking big bets. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. once asked her if this was true, and the actress, smiling, admitted that it was. “He was a nice guy. He was the prince of gamblers. The Robin Hood of gamblers. He stole from the rich and gave it to me!”
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Always chewing gum, she was known to her friends as “Sugar”. Interestingly, she made her film debut in a short film “The Fat and the Skinny” (Berth Maks), but abandoned her plans to be an actress during the period in which she met and married the heir Edgar James. It took only two years for her to return to Hollywood , now rich and driving a powerful convertible.
After two unsuccessful marriages, Chaplin soon became involved with Paulette Goddard. But when he learned that she was divorced and now had a lot of money, he was reassured about the relationship. Perhaps she really liked him and not his money!
Paulette Goddard was a fun girl who talked a lot, played tennis like no one else and made Chaplin forget his worries. A few days after meeting her, he convinced her to change her hair color: “You look better as a brunette”, to which she replied, resignedly: “Life would be much easier for a blonde, because I didn’t have to talk, just walk…”. Even so, she left her hair its natural color, brown.
They became a regular cruise ship couple. A few weeks after meeting, they were already living together. He also began to shape her, hiring an etiquette and art teacher. Paulette Goddard began reading classics, art books, history, learned to speak French and Spanish, and began collecting art objects. He bought out her contract and began preparing a film for them to star in together, Modern Times.
For Modern Times, Paulette Goddard arrived at the studio dressed like a diva: with makeup and manicured nails. When he saw her in her orphan’s clothes (her role in the film), Chaplin was not shy or pitiful and ruined her entire hairstyle, rubbing a little powder on her face to give the impression that she was dirty. Paulette Goddard did not like it one bit. The two would also work together on The Great Dictator.
Soon, she also won over Chaplin’s friends, his sons Junior and Sydney Earle, and convinced the comedian to see them more often. The four of them went to picnics, parties and outings together. She bought them toys and looked like one of them when they played. It was thanks to her that Chaplin was finally able to start acting and being a father to the boys.
Rumors began to spread that they were about to get married, but they were soon replaced by rumors that they had gotten married on board a ship. After much gossip, they announced their marriage. Paulette Goddard did her best to make the relationship work. According to Sidney Chaplin, “he has a rather grumpy nature, and her good humor helped him a lot.” But her patience soon ran out: betrayed at every turn, she was not going to wait. She went on the attack and also found her own lovers. He seemed to know about the affairs, but pretended to ignore them. The two began to play a game of deception.
Despite living together for almost 10 years, the two never formalized their relationship: “ When they thought we weren’t married, we were living together. And when they thought we were, we had already separated,” she said.
After the separation, they remained friends. And he even admitted that, of all the women he had been involved with up until then, Paulette Goddard was the only one who truly loved him. She went on to marry twice more, to Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque, with whom she stayed until his death. Interestingly, she lived her last years in Switzerland and was a neighbor of none other than Charles Chaplin, now married to Oona O’Neill.
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