Today,16 April, marks the greatest comedian and entertainer Charlie Chaplin’s birthday, who had a predilection for young girls.
Chaplin suffered from severe abandonment issues developed from his upbringing, as his father left them when he was just a boy, and his mother had sold her body in order to support them. Accordingly, she had contracted syphilis, which caused her mental illness and dementia.
Chaplin once said of his family: “To gauge the morals of our family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water.”
Undoubtedly, his upbringing heavily influenced the success, and failure, of his future relationships. So, here is a list of the women who crossed the great comedian's path.
Mildred Harris
The Inferior Sex and For Husbands Only 16-year-old actress Mildred Harris was Chaplin’s first wife. They got married in 1918 after Harris believed she was pregnant, which was a false alarm. Later, she did give birth to Chaplin’s first child, who sadly only lived for three days.
Their marriage, which only lasted two years, initially proved fruitful for Harris, who increasingly received movie offers. Nonetheless, Chaplin was unsupportive and questioned her talent due to her young age. This behavior would manifest as a toxic pattern for Chaplin which led to their porce in1920.
Lita Grey
Chaplin met Lita Grey, his second wife, when she was just six and put her in his movies when she was 12. In 1924, when Grey screen tested for the Gold Rush, he allegedly told her, “When the time and place are right, we’re going to make love.”
She played the flirtatious angel in The Kid and one of Edna’s maids in The Idle Class, and started out as the leading lady for The Gold Rush.
Later, when he was 35 at the time, while Grey was just 15, she fell pregnant. Then, the pair got married and had two children, Charles Jr. and Sydney Earl.
This marriage also came to a bitter end in court, as Grey revealed Chaplin’s abusive measures to conceal their private affairs, including his demand for an abortion after the pregnancy.
The court battle ended with Grey profiting a whopping $100,000 per child, in addition to publicly defaming Chaplin as a manipulative playboy, which was the biggest public Hollywood scandal at the time.
Paulette Goddard
Chaplin’s third marriage which was to former child fashion model Paulette Goddard, who appeared in Modern Times and The Great Dictator, lasted from 1936 to 1942.
Their marriage lasted seven years before Chaplin’s jealousy drifted them apart. Goddard fed up with his attempts to control her career, so they split shortly after the 1940 premiere of their film, The Great Dictator. Unlike his former wives though, the porce was by all accounts, on amicable terms.
Joan Barry
One year before Chaplin and Goddard's seven-year marriage ended, he met starlet Joan Barry in New York. He was 52 and she was 21. The actor invited her to Los Angeles and paid for her ticket.
The comedian "made [Barry] available to other inpiduals for immoral purposes," which was in violation of the Mann Act, a law which prohibits the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of "debauchery," according to FBI documents. However, he was eventually exonerated for his actions.
Barry, who allegedly suffered from some type of mental illness, became increasingly erratic as her relationship with Chaplin deteriorated to the extent that she attempted to break into his home, even threatening him with a pistol.
Later, she claimed that he is the father of her daughter, Carol Ann. Chaplin denied and took a blood test to prove otherwise. The test disproved his paternity, though at that time, blood tests were not admissible in court. Nevertheless, the court ruled against Chaplin, ordering him to pay court fees, as well as the child support.
Oona O’Neill
Chaplin married Oona O’Neill in June 1943, calling meeting her "the happiest event of my life." She was the woman who finally managed to capture Chaplin’s heart, and it seems they both found their soul mates and true happiness in each other, despite the age-gap. O’Neill was only 18, and Chaplin was 53.
They met in 1942 when Chaplin considered her for a part in an unmade film, Shadow and Substance, and the pair became inseparable from then on.
O’Neill completely supported Chaplin throughout a particularly harrowing court case in the 1940’s and again when he was exiled from the U.S. in 1952.
Eventually, they settle in Switzerland together along with their eight children; Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette and Christopher.
The comic genius has hooked up with other girls such as; Barbara La Marr, Carole Landis, Claire Windsor, Edna Purviance, Georgia Hale, Hedy Lamarr, Lupe Vélez, Louise Brooks, Josephine Dunn, and many more.
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