Trivia / A Woman of Paris

• Banned in China: On New Year's Day 1924, Edna Purviance was at a party with oil tycoon Courtland Dines and Mabel Normand when Normand's chauffeur, "defending Mabel Normand's honor" shot Dines with a gun owned by Normand. Dines refused to testify at the trial, and the chauffeur (Horace Greer, who was an escapee from a chain gang living under an assumed name) was found not guilty. As a result of Purviance's arms-length relationship to this scandal, this film was banned in several US cities.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, unknown. Box office, $634,000. This was Chaplin's first real failure, as audiences weren't prepared for him making a serious film. It's been speculated that the film would have made money if he'd taken his name off it.
• California Doubling: Set in France, obviously, but filmed entirely in California. The exterior of Marie's Parisian apartment building is actually Ansonia Apartments in Los Angeles, and even after a century, the location is still recognizable to◊ how it appeared in the movie◊.
• Creator's Oddball: Charlie Chaplin always directed comedies, starring himself, except for this, a dramatic film about a tragic romance in which he appears only in a brief Creator Cameo.
• Missing Episode: The film's box office failure was painful for Chaplin, and after its initial release it was not seen by the public for over fifty years. Chaplin reissued the edited film with a new musical score—replacing the original score by Louis F. Gottschalk—in 1976, a year before his death. His new composition is credited as the final completed work of his 75-year career.
• Playing Against Type: Charlie Chaplin directing a drama about a tragic romance that he isn't even in.
• Working Title: Destiny and Public Opinion.
• Write What You Know: The film was inspired by Chaplin's brief 1922 romance with Peggy Hopkins Joyce, whose stories of her romantic adventures in Europe provided the framework of the screenplay.

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