Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comedic actor and film director. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid Classical Hollywood era of American cinema.
Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His working life in entertainment spanned over 65 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin co-founded United Artists in 1919.
In a review of the book Chaplin: A Life (2008), Martin Sieff writes: “Chaplin was not just ‘big’, he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the job. He was bigger than anybody. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most.”
Hetty Kelly was Chaplin’s “true” first love, a dancer with whom he “instantly” fell in love when she was fifteen and almost married when he was nineteen, in 1908. It is said Chaplin fell madly in love with her and asked her to marry him. When she refused, Chaplin suggested it would be best if they did not see each other again; he was reportedly crushed when she agreed. Years later, her memory would remain an obsession with Chaplin. He was devastated in 1921 when he learned that she had died of influenza during the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918.
Chaplin and his first major leading lady after Mabel Normand, Edna Purviance, were involved in a close romantic relationship during the production of his Essanay and Mutual films in 1916–1917. The romance seems to have ended by 1918, and Chaplin’s marriage to Mildred Harris in late 1918 ended any possibility of reconciliation. Purviance would continue as leading lady in Chaplin’s films until 1923, and would remain on Chaplin’s payroll until her death in 1958. She and Chaplin spoke warmly of one another for the rest of their lives.
On 23 October 1918, Chaplin, age 29, married the popular child-actress, Mildred Harris, who was 16.
Chaplin was involved in a very public relationship and engagement to the Polish actress Pola Negri in 1922–23, after she arrived in Hollywood to star in films.
In 1924, during the time he was involved with the underage Lita Grey, Chaplin was rumored to have had a fling with actress Marion Davies, companion of William Randolph Hearst. Davies and Chaplin were both present on Hearst’s yacht the weekend preceding the mysterious death of Thomas Harper Ince.
Chaplin first met Lita Grey during the filming of The Kid. Three years later, at age 35, he became involved with the then 16-year-old Grey during preparations for The Gold Rush in which she was to star as the female lead. They married on 26 November 1924, after she became pregnant (a development that resulted in her being removed from the cast of the film). They had two sons, the actors Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925–1968) and Sydney Earle Chaplin (1926–2009).
Lita Grey’s friend, Merna Kennedy was a dancer who Chaplin hired as the lead actress in The Circus (1928). It is rumored that the two had an affair during shooting. Grey used the rumored infidelity in her divorce proceedings.
Grey’s replacement on The Gold Rush was Georgia Hale. In the documentary series, Unknown Chaplin, (directed and written by film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill), Hale, in a 1980s interview states that she had idolized Chaplin since childhood and that the then-19-year-old actress and Chaplin began an affair that continued for several years, which she details in her memoir, Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups.
Then a chorine in the Ziegfeld Follies, Louise Brooks met Chaplin when he came to New York for the opening there of The Gold Rush. For two months in the summer of 1925, they cavorted together at the Ritz, and with film financier A.C.
May Reeves was originally hired to be Chaplin’s secretary on his 1931-1932 extended trip to Europe, dealing mostly with reading his personal correspondence. She worked only one morning, and then was introduced to Chaplin, who was instantly infatuated with her.
Chaplin and actress Paulette Goddard were involved in a romantic and professional relationship between 1932 and 1940, with Goddard living with Chaplin in his Beverly Hills home for most of this time.
In 1942 Chaplin had a brief affair with Joan Barry (1920-1996), whom he was considering for a starring role in a proposed film, but the relationship ended when she began harassing him and displaying signs of severe mental illness (not unlike his mother).
During Chaplin’s legal trouble over the Barry affair, he met Oona O’Neill, daughter of Eugene O’Neill, and married her on 16 June 1943. He was fifty-four; she had just turned eighteen. The elder O’Neill strongly disapproved of the engagement, and refused all contact with Oona after the marriage, up until his death in 1953.
