page_title: Oona O'Neill
section_title: Early life (1925–1942)
hierarchical_section_title: Oona O'Neill / Biography / Early life (1925–1942)
caption_attribution_description: English: "Spithead", in Warwick, Bermuda, was the 18th Century home of Bermudian merchant and privateer Hezekiah Frith, and in the 20th Century was the home of Eugene O'Neill and his family, passing after his death, to his Bermudian-born daughter, Oona Chaplin, with a large surrounding estate, subsequently called the Chaplin Estate.
context_page_description: Oona O'Neill Chaplin, Lady Chaplin was an actress who became a British citizen after renouncing her American citizenship. She was the daughter of American playwright Eugene O'Neill and English-born writer Agnes Boulton, and the fourth and last wife of English actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.
  O'Neill's parents divorced when she was four years old, after which she was raised by her mother in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and rarely saw her father. She first came to the public eye during her time at the Brearley School in New York City between 1940 and 1942, when she was photographed attending fashionable nightclubs with her friends Carol Marcus and Gloria Vanderbilt. In 1942, she received a large amount of media attention after she was chosen as "The Number One Debutante" of the 1942–1943 season at the Stork Club. Soon after, she decided to pursue a career in acting and, after small roles in two stage productions, headed for Hollywood.
  In Hollywood, O'Neill was introduced to Chaplin, who considered her for a film role. The film was never made, but O'Neill and Chaplin began a romantic relationship and married in June 1943, a month after she had turned 18.
context_section_description: Oona O'Neill was born on 14 May 1925 in Bermuda, where her parents had relocated six months before her birth in the hopes that it would be a good place to write during the winter. She had an older brother, Shane Rudraighe O'Neill (1919–1977). Both of her parents also had children from previous relationships, Eugene O'Neill Jr. and Barbara Burton, but they did not live with the family and O'Neill saw them only occasionally during her childhood.
  O'Neill's early childhood was spent between Bermuda —where the family spent winters and in 1926 purchased a house, Spithead (originally the home of privateer Hezekiah Frith)— and various places on the East Coast of the United States. Her parents' marriage had been for a long time strained by Eugene's alcoholism, and started to disintegrate after he had an affair with actress Carlotta Monterey while they were living in Belgrade, Maine, in the summer of 1926. He rekindled his romance with Monterey during a trip to New York in the early autumn of 1927, and after a brief return to Bermuda, separated from Agnes in November. Agnes and the children stayed in Bermuda until the following summer, when they moved to her parents' old house in West Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Agnes was granted a divorce in Reno, Nevada in July 1929, and three weeks later, Eugene married Monterey in France.
  After the divorce, O'Neill's childhood was mostly spent living with her mother and brother in West Point Pleasant and occasionally at Spithead, in which Agnes had a lifetime interest. Although the divorce had granted joint custody, she seldom saw her father, and mainly communicated with him through letters, which were usually answered by Monterey.
  O'Neill first attended a Catholic convent school, but it was deemed unsuitable for her, and she was then enrolled at the Ocean Road Public School in Point Pleasant. According to the divorce settlement both children were to attend top boarding schools from the age of 13 and, in 1938, O'Neill was sent to study at the Warrenton Country School in Warrenton, Virginia. Agnes did not find the school satisfactory, and had her transferred to the Brearley School in New York for her sophomore year in 1940.
  At Brearley, O'Neill became a close friend of Carol Marcus, and through her was introduced to Gloria Vanderbilt and Truman Capote. Although still underage, the group often spent time at popular nightclubs, and began to appear in the society pages of magazines. During this time, O'Neill dated newspaper cartoonist Peter Arno and the still unknown author J. D. Salinger. In April 1942, during her senior year at Brearley, she was crowned as "The Number One Debutante" of the 1942–1943 season at the Stork Club. The event gained a large amount of publicity around the country, and she received offers from film studios and modeling agencies. The publicity infuriated her father, who used his contacts in Hollywood to prevent her from signing a film contract.
  After graduating from Brearley, O'Neill declined an offer for a place to study at Vassar College and instead chose to pursue an acting career, despite her father's resistance. She made her debut in a small supporting role in a production of Pal Joey at the Maplewood Theatre in New Jersey in July 1942. The production was a flop and was cancelled after a two-week run. Later that summer, O'Neill travelled to California with Carol Marcus, who was due to marry author William Saroyan. During the trip, O'Neill briefly appeared in a production of Saroyan's play, The Time of Your Life, in San Francisco and unsuccessfully attempted to meet her father, who was living nearby.
caption: Spithead, O'Neill's childhood home in Bermuda. It was built in the 19th century by privateer Hezekiah Frith.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2011:10:12 20:35:25", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "9648", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7739", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:10:12 20:35:25", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:10:12 20:35:25", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "9", "EXIF ApertureValue": "43/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "72", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "72", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "72", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "9506", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}