Originally published on 2/11/25

Charlie Chaplin was a silent film star of the early 20th century who is best known for his iconic mustache, cane, comedic timing and “Little Tramp” character. Additionally, he helped cofound the United Artists Corporation with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. And if that wasn’t enough, Chaplin was also a man with many marriages and children—4 and 11 of each, respectively. Below, we dive deep into each of his marriages and find out how his wives contributed to the silent film star become one of Hollywood’s most renowned actors. 

Mildred Harris (1918 to 1920) 

Mildred Harris was a silent film star born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1901. She was also Chaplin’s first wife. 

At the time of their initial meeting, Harris was 16 and Chaplin was 29, and the only reason they got married in 1918 was because they believed that she was pregnant. Following the wedding, the couple learned that the scare was nothing more than a false alarm, but they nonetheless decided to give their marriage a shot anyway. 

“Mildred was a pretty thing—not breathtaking [or] overly bright, but she had a way about her that made me think I could do something for her, educate her, wake her up. I tried, and she seemed willing [but] it didn’t work,” Chaplin said. “I was very fond of her, and we got married.” 

“For a while, I kept hoping she wouldn’t let go of her youth—the spirit of youth, the spirit of being gay and forever incorruptible—but she lost it. She turned out to be as selfish and cynical as a brawling fishwife.”

In July 1919, Harris and Chaplin welcomed a son, who tragically died three days later. According to records he was never officially named and the couple referred to him simply as “The Little Mouse,” though other sources say he was bornNorman Spencer Chaplin. The tragedy rocked their marriage, because from then on, the couple lived apart and eventually got divorced in November 1920. Harris claimed that Chaplin was mentally cruel to her, whereas he claimed she cheated on him. 

“It [was] hard to be the wife of a genius. I did not always understand him and felt inferior to him,” Harris said. “He was short-tempered, impatient and treated me like a cretin. Yet I still admire him. He could have taught me so much.”

Following their divorce, Harris was given $100,000—about 2,303,686 today—and some community property. She went on to marry twice more before passing away in 1944 from pneumonia. She was 43 years old. 

Lita Grey (1924 to 1927) 

In 1924, Chaplin married another actress, Lita Grey, née Lillita Louise MacMurray, in Mexico. She was 16 at the time of the ceremony while he was 35. 

The couple welcomed two children together in May 1925 and March 1926. They then divorced in 1927, with Grey claiming that Chaplin tried to convince her to have an illegal abortion after she became pregnant with their first child before they were wed. It is believed that this child was the reason the two got married in the first place, and at the time of the pregnancy announcement, Grey was only 15 years old and was filming The Gold Rush (1925) alongside Chaplin.

Prior to their marriage, Chaplin and Grey had met several times before, including once when she was 6. They then reunited in 1921 when he was casting for The Kid—a role that Grey got. 

After their divorce was finalized, Grey received a $825,000—about $14,710,403 today—settlement—which was believed to be the largest amount given to any woman at that point in time—and went on to raise her two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr and Sydney, alone. She died in 1995 from cancer at age 87 and was the only wife Chaplin didn’t mention in his biography. 

However, her own biography, entitled Wife of the Life of the Party: A Memoir, was published three years after her death. It was co-written by Jeffrey Vance with her son Sydney’s help. 

Paulette Goddard (1936 to 1942) 

When socialite and actress Paulette Goddard, née Marion Levy, was 25 years old, she married Chaplin, who was 22 years her senior. At the time of their marriage, the couple had already been dating for four years and were believed to be living together. 

Over the course of their marriage, Goddard did star in two of Chaplin’s films entitled Modern Times (1936)—which was his last ever silent film—and The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first ever “talkie” and is a dark satire inspired by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. 

In 1942, the pair divorced after Goddard went down to Mexico to get the official paperwork, and it is widely believed to have been amicable. However, in 1952, their marriage and divorce were called into question after The United States Department of Justice ordered immigration agents to investigate if moral turpitude was involved. This came about after Chaplin refused to comment on the marriage, even though Goddard claimed they tied the knot in Canton, Chin, in 1936.  

In this investigation, The United States Department of Justice also claimed that Chaplin—who was born in London, England—never became an official United States citizen, and if he were to return from his trip abroad, he should be detained. It was later revealed that this all happened around the same time Chaplin was accused of being a communist sympathizer after many people across the country voiced their disdain for his interest in younger women. 

Oona O’Neill (1943 to 1977) 

Chaplin’s fourth, final and longest marriage was to Oona O’Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill. They two met when she auditioned for a role in a film of his that never got made, and they married a month after she turned 18. Chaplin was 53 at the time and already had two kids. 

Following their marriage, he continued to act while she stayed home to raise their eight children between the years of 1944 and 1962. 

“For the last twenty years, I have known what happiness means,” Chaplin wrote in his 1964 memoir My Autobiography. “I have the good fortune to be married to a wonderful wife. I wish I could write more about this, but it involves love, and perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.”

During their marriage, though, Chaplin was exiled from the United States, and so the pair had to move their kids and their lives to Switzerland, where they remained until the actor died from a stroke on Christmas Day in 1977. He was 88 at the time. 

“He is my world,” O’Neill said in 1960. “I’ve never seen or lived anything else.”

She died in 1991 at age 66 from pancreatic cancer. 

Link to original: https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/celebrities/charlie-chaplins-wives-the-4-women-he-married