Word: chaplinitis
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Typical British Account. "The famous cinema comedian, Charles Chaplin, became the defendant in an action for divorce begun yesterday at Los Angeles, the centre of his motion picture activities in the States. Counsel for Mrs. Chaplin secured an injunction restraining him from disposing of his funds or property in California which are said to have a value...
...allegations filed by Mrs. Chaplin covered 42 pages of legal foolscap, and were at once printed and hawked about the city of Los Angeles at a shilling a copy...
...have read the London papers never so carefully last week, he read only half a dozen sentences about the cause célèbre precipitated last week by an 18-year-old girl who was studying to be a typist before she married Charles Spencer Chaplin, born at London in 1889, still a Briton...
What causes such ridiculous antics in the name of public morality? It Chaplin's films had in them anything which the strictest Puritan could object to, the municipal censors might be justified. But no evil that he does lives on the screen. His pictures are clean in addition to being funny. When "Searing Kisses", "Bachelor Husbands", and "The Gilded Bed" are allowed, it seems strangely paradoxical that Chaplin's off-stage actions should be considered subversive of popular morality...
Besides misleading and overwhelming newspaper publicity, the blame for the above-mentioned municipal ostracism can be laid to the prevailing inability to separate a man from his actions, to discriminate between the flower and the soil. Chaplin's films are, the really important thing about him, but they are barred because he is suspected of not being fit to teach Sunday School. Also symptomatic of the same disease working in a contrary direction is the public refusal to discriminate between Ty Cobb's batting average and his personal honesty...