Charlie Chaplin's Body was Stolen - March 2, 1978

This week (March 2 – 8) in crime history – Charlie Chaplin’s body was stolen (March 2, 1978); Congress banned sending obscene material through the mail (March 3, 1873); LAPD officers are videotaped beating Rodney King (March 3, 1991); Louis “Lepke” Buchalter was executed (March 4, 1944); Martha Stewart was released from prison (March 4, 2005); Jim Morrison was charged with lewd conduct in Miami (March 5, 1969;); Trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg began (March 6, 1951); Defense rested in the trial of Andrea Yates (March 7, 2002); Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez “The Lonely Hearts Killers” were executed (March 8, 1951); Old west outlaw and bank robber, Emmett Dalton was sentenced to life in prison (March 8, 1893)

Highlighted Story of the Week -

On March 2, 1978, two men steal the corpse of silent film actor Charlie Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland. A comic actor who was perhaps most famous for his alter ego, the Little Tramp, Chaplin was also a respected filmmaker whose career spanned Hollywood’s silent film era and the momentous transition to “talkies” in the late 1920s.

After Chaplin’s widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, police began monitoring her phone and watching 200 phone kiosks in the region. Oona had refused to pay the ransom, saying that her husband would have thought the demand was preposterous. The callers later made threats against her two youngest children. Oona Chaplin was Charlie’s fourth wife and the daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill. She and Chaplin were married in 1943, when she was 18 and he was 54; they had eight children together. The family had settled in Switzerland in 1952 after Chaplin was accused of being a Communist sympathizer.

After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics, Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria. On May 17 they led authorities to Chaplin’s body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from the Chaplin family’s home in Corsier. Political refugees from Eastern Europe, Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin’s body in an attempt to solve their financial problems. Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. As he told it, he was inspired by a similar crime that he had read about in an Italian newspaper. Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime. As for Chaplin, his family reburied his body in a concrete grave to prevent future theft attempts.

Check back every Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author of six nonfiction books that includes Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California. Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the following link:

 

 

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First Academy Award Ceremony was Held - 1929

What happened on this date in Hollywood history – May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards ceremony is held. The awards banquet took place in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Some 270 people attended, and tickets cost $5 each. After a long dinner, complete with numerous speeches, Douglas Fairbanks, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which had been formed in 1927, handed out 15 awards in a five-minute ceremony. The awards presentation was somewhat anticlimactic compared to today’s Academy Award ceremonies, as the winners had already been announced in February. 

In 1929, movies were just making the transition from silent films to talkies, but all the nominated films were without sound. For the only time in Academy history, Best Picture honors were split into two categories: Best Picture - Unique and Artistic Production, and Best Picture - Production. The winner in the first category was F.W. Murnau’s romantic drama Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, starring George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor. William Wellman’s film Wings, set in the World War I-era and starring Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen, won in the second category. Other winners of the night included the German actor Emil Jannings as Best Actor for two films, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh; and Gaynor as Best Actress. She had received three of the five nominations in the category, and was honored for all three roles, in Sunrise, Seventh Heaven and Street Angel. The Academy also presented an honorary award to Charles Chaplin; it would be the only honor the great actor and filmmaker would receive from the organization until 1972, when he accept another honorary award. Starting with the following year’s awards, the Academy began releasing the names of the winners to the press on the night of the awards ceremony to preserve some suspense. That practice ended in 1940, after the Los Angeles Times published the results in its evening edition, which meant they were revealed before the ceremony. The Academy then instituted a system of sealed envelopes, which remains in use today.

 

 

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that includes Fade to Black Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1927-1950. The was awarded a silver medal at the 2011 Readers Favorite International Book Awards in Miami and was also the 2013 winner of the Beverly Hills Book Awards. Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com for more details about his books. To order Fade to Black click on the Amazon link below.

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Charlie Chaplin was Born - 1889

On this date in Hollywood history - April 16, 1889, Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin was born in London, England. Chaplin was one of the most financially successful stars of early Hollywood, was introduced to the stage when he was five. The son of London music hall entertainers, young Chaplin was watching a show starring his mother when her voice cracked. He was quickly shuffled onto the stage to finish the act. Chaplin’s father died when Chaplin was a toddler, and when his mother had a nervous breakdown Chaplin and his older half-brother, Sydney, roamed London, where they danced on the streets and collected pennies in a hat. They eventually went to an orphanage and joined the Eight Lancashire Lads, a children’s dance troupe. When Chaplin was 17, he developed his comedic skills with the help of Fred Karno’s company, for which his half-brother had already become a popular comedian. Soon, Chaplin’s bowler hat, out-turned feet, mustache and walking cane became his trademark. Chaplin refined what would soon become his legacy, the character Charlie the Tramp. A masterful silent film actor who could elicit both laughter and tears from his audiences, Chaplin resisted the arrival of sound in movies. Indeed, in his first film that featured sound (City Lights in 1931), he only used music. His first true sound film was 1940’s The Great Dictator, in which he mocked fascism. Chaplin was a founding member of United Artists Corporation in 1919 along with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and director D.W. Griffith. Chaplin was married four times, his fourth wife, Oona O’Neill, who was 18 when she married the 54-year-old actor, was the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill. Though he had lived in the United States for 42 years, Chaplin never became a U.S. citizen. A vocal pacifist, Chaplin was accused of communist ties, which he denied. Nevertheless, in 1952, immigration officials prevented Chaplin and his wife from re-entering the United States after a foreign tour. The couple did not return to the United States for 20 years; instead they settled in Switzerland with their eight children. Chaplin returned to America 1972 to accept a special Academy Award for “the incalculable effect he has had on making motion pictures the art for and of this century.” He died in 1977.

 

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that include the award winning Fade to Black Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1929-1950 (2011, Schiffer). The book was awarded a SILVER MEDAL in the 2011 Readers Favorite Best Books Awards and was the 2013 WINNER of the Beverly Hills Books Awards. For more information about the author visit his website – www.michaelthomasbarry.com

His book can be purchased at Amazon through the following link:

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Pola Negri

Who was born on this date:

Actress Pola Negri was born on December 31, 1899 (although the date and year are in dispute) in Poland. She received fame through femme fatale roles from the silent era through the 1940s. Her Polish film debut was in 1914s, Slave to Her Senses and also appeared in a variety of films made by the Warsaw film industry, including Room No. 13, His Last Gesture, Students,  and The Wife.

Negri ended up becoming one of the most popular Hollywood actresses of the era, and certainly the richest woman of the film industry at the time. Negri's first two Hollywood films were Bella Donna (1923) and The Cheat (1923). Initially Paramount utilized Negri as a mysterious European femme fatale, as they did with their other major actress Gloria Swanson, and staged an ongoing feud between the two actresses. Film credits include Forbidden Paradise (1924), Woman of the World (1925), Hotel Imperial (1927), Barbed Wire (1927), and The Woman from Moscow (1928), after which she temporarily retired from movies. This turned out to be a short lived retirement, Negri returned to Hollywood in 1931 to begin filming her first talking film, A Woman Commands (1932). The film itself was poorly received, but Negri sang the song "Paradise" in the film, and the song was a hit and for many years was considered to be a standard.  

She made headlines and gossip columns with a string of celebrity love affairs with stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. Negri met Rudolph Valentino at a costume party held by Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon, and was Valentino's lover until his death in 1926. Negri caused a media sensation at his New York funeral in August 24, 1926, at which she "fainted" several times, and arranged for a large floral arrangement, which spelled out "P-O-L-A", to be placed on Valentino's coffin. The press dismissed her actions as a publicity stunt. At the time of his death and for the remainder of her life, Negri would state that Valentino was the love of her life.

Negri came out of retirement once to appear in the Walt Disney’s, The Moon-Spinners (1964). She spent the remainder of her years largely out of the public eye. Pola Negri died on August 1, 1987 from pneumonia; however she was also suffering from a brain tumor (for which she had refused treatment). Negri was interred in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.