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 Hopper's public image was her fondness for wearing extravagant hats, for which the Internal Revenue Service gave her a $5,000 annual tax credit as a work expense. During the Second World War, the Nazis used photographs of Hopper in her extravagant hats for propaganda, as a symbol of "American decadence". She made a $250,000 annual salary, which enabled her to live an extravagant lifestyle and maintain a mansion in Beverly Hills, which she described as "the house that fear built". After Hopper printed a story about an extramarital affair between Joseph Cotten and Deanna Durbin, Cotten ran into Hopper at