Pie Throwing Foreplay and Sex
Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) was the silent film era’s most famous star, and one of the silver screen’s all time greats. However, in addition to being a pioneer who revolutionized acting and comedy, Chaplin was also a sexual deviant who liked ’em young. Young enough to cause scandal, derail his career, and get him de facto deported from the US.
The English comic actor was Harvey Weinstein before there was a Harvey Weinstein, and Chaplin probably pioneered the “casting couch”, whereby powerful Hollywood figures extracted sexual favors from actresses during auditions. He used caption cards during auditions to prompt aspiring actresses into increasingly suggestive poses, until they stood naked before him, or just about.
Chaplin’s kinks went beyond the typical quid pro quo sexual harassment, however, as he seems to have been into some… unusual stuff. Chaplain had a thing for pies – and not just as comedic props and gags. After getting actresses to strip off their clothes during auditions, Chaplin would grope them in exaggerated ways on the couch. Then, having worked himself up by getting them to do a strip tease, followed by a groping session, he would stand them naked against a wall, and… throw pies at them.
It was not just Charlie Chaplain. In the days when throwing pies was a standard gag popularized by the English actor, and then even more so by the Three Stooges and early cartoons, pie throwing took on erotic aspects for some people. It was popular enough that some brothels stocked up on pies, and had prostitutes who specialized in throwing them at clients or having clients throw pies at them.
Chaplain was also into orgies, and liked to organize them with his friend and fellow comedic film star, Fatty Arbuckle. The historic record does not shed much light on whether pie throwing featured heavily in those orgies. But given Chaplain’s tastes, and the fact that both Chaplain’s and Fatty Arbuckle’s movies were full of pie throwing, one can reasonably speculate that there was probably a lot of pie throwing going on. Those orgies came to a screeching halt, however, in the aftermath of a scandal that rocked the country in 1921, when Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping a woman to death. He was tried for murder, and although acquitted, the Chaplin-Arbuckle orgy parties never resumed.