(Book Talk) When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law

DATE: Thursday, March 20, 2025 

TIME: 6:00 p.m.

PLACE:
Room W220
New York Law School
185 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013

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In the 1940s, Charlie Chaplin jumped to the front pages of newspapers with a series of trials involving a young protégé named Joan Barry. She claimed he was the father of her daughter. He claimed she was a gun-toting stalker. J. Edgar Hoover saw a chance to silence the outspoken liberal actor.

The result was Chaplin’s prosecution and eventual exile from the United States, an upheaval in U.S. paternity laws, and an early glimpse of powerful movie men behaving badly with women long before the #MeToo Movement. 

In her latest book, NYLS Adjunct Professor Diane Kiesel, a CNN and MSNBC legal contributor and retired New York Supreme Court Judge, examines the trials, asking whether Chaplin was unfairly persecuted for his left-leaning political beliefs, or if he should have been held more accountable for his treatment of Barry and other women in his life.