Paris and Hollywood, March 1927 / Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey

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Get the full scan of this magazine here!

A fresh scan up today from my raws with edits from the ever-excellent McCoy of a pulp-sized magazine from 1927 full of scandal, gossip, and movie and broadway news. The name lends a continental air, and there is a bit of content in here also regarding the glitterati of Europe and fun examination of the Europan vamp set aside the American Flapper. The magazine is published on slick paper with a section of leaves printed on a thicker stock with a nice green-toned ink. I'm told this is Fawcett's first film magazine. There's a nice movie magazine bibliography here that lists this magazines evolution as:

So This is Paris (March 1925) title changed to
Paris and Hollywood (April 1926) title changed to
Paris and Hollywood Screen Secrets (1928) title changed to
Screen Secrets (April 1928) title changed to
Screen Play Secrets (April 1930) title changed to
Screen Play (October 1931)

Leading off this issue is the scandal of the day, Charlie Chaplin's messy divorce from his second wife, Lita Grey. Chaplin married Grey when she became pregnant during the filming of The Gold Rush. He had known her for years (he married his first wife, also mentioned in the article at 16 as well) and the marriage was quite the scandal, from what I understand something of a shotgun wedding in Mexico. Upon their return to Hollywood, Lita and her calculating mother moved in with Chaplin and began to re-order his household, all the while taking many notes on Chaplin's purported abuses, dalliances, and sexual preferences that would make help make up Lita's argument for divorce and a record-setting divorce settlement. This material would also be leaked by Lita's lawyers in a 42 page pamphlet called Complaint by Lita Grey which this article mentioned and which would make a very nice scan if anyone out there happens to have a copy.

I'll go ahead and post images for the entire Chaplin article and then get on with the rest of the magazine.


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Really, it's hard to decipher what went on here, but it sure is spicy. On the one hand you've got Chaplin who is no doubt (to use Kenneth Anger's term from Hollywood Babylon) a chickenhawk. And a womanizer. On the other hand you have a calculating mother and participating daughter out to drive Charlie mad and take him for all he's worth. Chaplin says the whole thing aged him 10 years, and I don't doubt it.

But on to the rest of the magazine. Contents!





Samples. Flappers vs. Vamps. Go Flappers!


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The green-inked sections of pictures of Hollywood stars are full of nice cheesecake photos. The inclusion of the word "Paris" in the title probably cued readers in that there were some girlie photographs in here. Indeed, I'd like to see the earlier incarnation of the mag "So This is Paris" to see if it actually includes Hollywood material. The title may have begun as more of a fashion/photo sort of magazine and morphed with changing tastes. Anyways, some photos from the sections "Our Gallery of Hollywood Babes" and "Filmland Femininity""

There's a funny article in here commenting on the use of bathing beauties in the cinema and their soaring popularity. Lest the editors look too condescendingly at the practice, they've included these bathers.







Cheers and enjoy. Thanks again to McCoy for his editing work, a splendid job. Next stop on scan-o-vision, 1936, Movies in Story Form, Zoe Mozert, Carole Lombard, and more. All aboard.