Joan Barry (American actress)

Early life

Barry was born May 24, 1920, as Mary Louise Gribble in Detroit, Michigan, to James A. and Gertrude E. Gribble. The Gribble family moved to New York City before June 1925. Her father worked as a machinist in Detroit, and as car salesman in New York. Barry's parents had another child, a girl named Agnes who was born in 1923. Her father committed suicide on December 10, 1927. Her mother married a man named John Berry. Barry went to California in 1938 to pursue an acting career.

Chaplin affair and aftermath

Barry, 22 years old, began an affair with established Director Charlie Chaplin, aged 52 years, in the summer of 1941; Chaplin had his Studio sign Barry at $75 a week with possibility of extension, and came to consider her for the starring role in Shadows and Substance, a film proposed for 1942. Barry's initial contract was not associated with Shadows, but won Chaplin's favour for the part following an "excellent private reading." Indeed, Chaplin spoke highly of her acting abilities, as David Robinson captures in his biography, where he notes "Chaplin’s sincerity in believing that he could make Joan Barry into an actress…. [as] she had ‘all the qualities of a new Maude Adams’ and told his sons, ‘She has a quality, an ethereal something that’s truly marvelous…a talent as great as any I’ve seen in my whole life.” Other sources, including FBI case records and Chaplin autobiographical writings, indicate the young actress to have had both talent at her craft, emotional swings, and periods of erratic behavior. According to Chaplin and some Chaplin biographers the relationship ended with Barry's harassing him and displaying signs of the mental illness which would, in later life lead to her commitment. Other sources suggest that after a concerted effort by Chaplin and his studio to prepare Barry for the lead in Shadows (after Chaplin's purchase of the rights)—efforts that included orthodontic work and participation at the Max Reinhardt Workshop for acting—Chaplin's interest in Barry as an actress and partner dissolved when efforts to produce the movie stalled.

FBI case files and other records would record two terminated pregnancies during the affair, initially slated to have occurred in New York City, but both eventually being performed by the same L.A. physician. After having a live-born child, a girl, Carol Ann, on October 2, 1943, Barry's mother, who had custody of the child, filed a paternity suit against Chaplin. The suit proceeded to trial, and despite blood tests which showed Chaplin was not the father, Barry's attorney, Joseph Scott, succeeded in arguing that the tests were inadmissible. Chaplin was ordered to support the child, which he did until the child's 21st birthday. Chaplin's second wife, Lita Grey, who was divorced from Chaplin in a bitter, highly public legal proceeding in 1927, would later assert that Chaplin had paid government officials to tamper with the blood test results, further stating that "there is no doubt that she [Carol Ann] was his child", although she could not possibly have known 'without a doubt' that Barry did not sleep with other men.

Federal prosecutors brought Mann Act charges against Chaplin related to Barry in 1944, of which he was acquitted.

Personal life

Barry married Russell Seck, a railroad clerk, in 1946, and gave birth to a son, Russell, in 1947 (died, Spokane, Washington, 2013) and a further son Stephen in 1948. The boys moved to Ohio with their father in 1952. Stephen Seck would remember Joan Barry as “very gifted, a talented singer who worked hard to support us [he, his brother, Russell, and his half-sister, Carol Ann]. We were never neglected in any way.”

The following year, at age 33, Time magazine noted that Barry was "admitted to Patton State Hospital... after she was found walking the streets barefoot, carrying a pair of baby sandals and a child's ring, and murmuring: 'This is magic'." After her mother was committed, Carol Ann went to live with a legally appointed guardian and changed her name. She continued to receive monthly payments from Chaplin until her 21st birthday.