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 Best Actor. The rumor was untrue, but Hopper joked that she wished she had thought of it. Screenwriter Jay Bernstein related that when he told Hedda that because of her extreme conservatism many people in Hollywood privately called her a Nazi, the gossip columnist began to cry and replied: "Jay, all I've ever tried to be is a good American." Hopper was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Hollywood blacklist, using her 35 million strong readership to destroy the careers of those in the entertainment industry whom she suspected of being Communists, having Communist sympathies, being