Chaplin’s Girl, by Miranda Seymour
Love Child, by Allegra Huston
Virginia Cherrill was an exceptionally pretty young woman when she turned up in Los Angeles in the late 1920s, looking for fun and adventure. Here Charlie Chap- lin spotted her, in the front row at a boxing match, and invited her to star in his forthcoming movie, City Lights. Still considered among his greatest films, it gave Cherrill the chance to captivate audiences with her portrayal of the blind flower girl. It wasn’t long before she met the young Cary Grant, who followed her to England, begging her to marry him. ‘Endearing, gorgeous and elegant, the Grants made a magnificent couple’, writes Miranda Seymour.
Grant was her second husband, but not her last. Cherrill wasn’t much of an actress and her career dwindled: she preferred travel and a life of leisure. She romanced the Maharaja of Jaipur, married the Earl of Jersey and only settled down after her fourth marriage, to a dashing but impoverished Polish airman. ‘She led a life that was dictated by the strokes of good fortune that befell a beautiful woman possessed of unique charm’.
As these quotes from the book make clear, Miranda Seymour thoroughly approves of her subject. The reader may not altogether agree with this rose-tinted account. It is clear that Virginia Cherrill was good-natured, nice looking and unpretentious; that she loved animals and jokes; was a kind and loyal friend. Students of Charlie Chaplin’s life will recall that the famous scene from City Lights, where the tramp first encounters the flower girl, required 342 takes. Seymour puts this down to Chaplin’s obsessive nature and considers it churlish of Chaplin to have sacked Cherrill for such minor misdemeanours as taking long lunchbreaks and not appearing on set (he later reinstated her).
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