Virginia Cherrill

Virginia Cherrill was born in Carthage, Illinois, in 1908 and raised in Chicago society with no acting training when Charlie Chaplin cast her, largely on the strength of her looks, as the blind flower girl in City Lights (1931). Her performance, opposite Chaplin's Tramp, is among the most celebrated of the silent era, anchoring one of the most emotionally direct closing scenes in American film. Chaplin reportedly clashed with her repeatedly during the extended shoot and at one point fired and rehired her. Cherrill made only a handful of further films, including The Brat (1931) and the British production Troubled Waters (1936), before effectively leaving the profession. Her most significant later public role came through marriage: she became Cary Grant's first wife, the two marrying on 9 February 1934. The marriage was brief and difficult; during it, Grant made what was reported at the time as an apparent suicide attempt, an episode covered in the contemporary press, and he later described the period of the marriage as among the unhappiest of his life. Cherrill and Grant divorced on 26 March 1935. Cherrill went on to marry three more times, most notably the Earl of Jersey, George Child Villiers, becoming Countess of Jersey and moving permanently into English aristocratic life, well away from Hollywood. She died in Santa Barbara, California, in 1996. Her screen legacy rests almost entirely on City Lights, one performance sufficient to secure her a permanent place in film history independent of her marriage to Grant.