Charlie Chaplin was a violent child molester

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Although the British actor and director was beloved for his slapstick comedy, Charlie Chaplin was a selfish, raging megalomaniac who treated his children and teenage wives with relentless cruelty.

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This assessment is often trotted out in biographies, an attempt to depict Chaplin as a womanizer-turned-wholesome-husband; he was always preciously looking to his young wife for her opinion or help, both on set and in life! While this may be true, their marriage was also plagued by Chaplin's exacting standards, outbursts, raging temper, and cruelty towards his children. According to Jane Scovell's Oona: Living in the Shadows, the actress Joan Collins said that O'Neill "catered" to her fatherly husband with "an almost geishalike deference." And according to Marlon Brando's autobiography, Chaplin treated Sydney, one of the sons he fathered with Grey, "cruelly." When Brando and Sydney, also an actor, worked with Chaplin on the 1967 film A Countess from Hong Kong, Brando writes that Chaplin humiliated his son in front of Brando and the rest of the cast; Sydney told Brando that his father "treated all his children this way." Brando was also on the receiving end of Chaplin's ire. "In front of the whole cast Chaplin berated me, embarrassing me, telling me that I had no sense of professional ethics and that I was a disgrace to my profession," Brando wrote. His mistake? Arriving on set 15 minutes late.

In other words, while more critical biographers paint the picture of an arrogant genius who manipulated those around him with no remorse, Brando is slightly more blunt. "Chaplin," he writes, "was probably the most sadistic man I'd ever met."

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