AllMovie

Though at one time Lita Grey was an actress and appeared in a few films, she is most famous for being the second wife of Charlie Chaplin and the mother of his first two sons, Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. Much of that fame was built upon the scandals surrounding their union, particularly their sensational divorce. Born Lillita Louise MacMurray, she started working at Chaplin's studio at age 12. She was 14 when she made her film debut in his short The Idle Class (1921), playing one of the gauze-draped, flirtatious angels in a dream sequence. She also had a small role in his feature The Kid (1921). Petite and doe-eyed, the teenaged Grey was a great beauty and Chaplin, who was notorious for falling in love with very young women, couldn't resist. Unfortunately, his attentions resulted in Grey's pregnancy and for him, an unwanted second marriage. For the then 16-year-old Grey, it meant having to give up the leading lady role in {Chaplin's The Gold Rush. Though he apparently adored his young sons, his marriage to Grey was stormy and, in 1927, after four years, the couple underwent a bitter divorce. Though her film career ended before it had a chance to start, Grey did go on to have a stage career that lasted until her retirement in 1947. In 1951, she played a small role in the film The Devil's Sleep. In 1965, she published a sensationalistic account of her first marriage, My Life With Chaplin as a response to the comedian's recently published My Autobiography, in part because Chaplin refused to detail their marriage in his book.