Oona O'Neill and assistant, Harry Crocker. Crocker photographed the event for gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Chaplin had given exclusive rights to publicize news of the marriage in the hopes that she would write a more positive article about it than her rival, Hedda Hopper, who strongly disliked him. The elopement received a large amount of media attention due to the 36-year age gap between O'Neill and Chaplin, and because his ex-girlfriend, Joan Barry, had filed a paternity suit against him only two weeks earlier. Although Agnes had given the union her blessing, it cemented O'Neill's estrangement from her father, who
Hedda Hopper actor Sidney Poitier. While interviewing him, she asked if he could sing, because "so many of your people do". When he replied that he could not, she said: You're the first one I've ever met who says he can't sing. I've never known any of your people who couldn't sing. In 1963, Hopper complained in her column that three out of five Best Actor Oscar nominees were British and only two were American: The weather's so foul on that tight little isle that, to get in out of the rain, they all gather in theatres and practise Hamlet on each