Wife of the Life of the Party is the memoir of the late Lita Grey
Chaplin (1908-1995), the only one of Chaplin's wives to have written an
account of life with Chaplin. Her memoir is an extraordinary Hollywood
story of someone who was there from the very beginning. Born Lillita
Louise MacMurray in Hollywood, she began her career at twelve with the
Charlie Chaplin Film Company, when Chaplin selected her to appear with
him as the flirting angel in The Kid. When she was fifteen, Chaplin
signed her as the leading lady in The Gold Rush and changed her name to
Lita Grey. She was forced to leave the production when, at the age of
sixteen, she became pregnant with Chaplin's child. She married Chaplin
in Empalme, Mexico in November 1924. The Chaplins stayed together for
two years. Lita bore Chaplin two sons: Charles Chaplin, Jr. and Sydney
Chaplin. In November 1926, after Lita discovered that Chaplin was having
an affair with Merna Kennedy (Lita's best friend, whom she had persuaded
Chaplin to hire as the leading lady in The Circus), Lita left Chaplin
and filed for divorce. It was one of the first divorce cases to receive
a public airing. The divorce complaint ran a staggering 42 pages and fed
scandal with its revelations about the private life of Charles Chaplin.
Lita's divorce settlement of $825,000 was the largest in American
history at the time. Lita authorized the publication of another
biography, My Life with Chaplin, in 1966. The book was mainly the
creation of her co-author, Morton Cooper, who re-wrote her manuscript.
Lita was never happy with the many inaccuracies and distortions of that
book. Wife of the Life of the Party is not to be seen as a supplement to
her early book, but rather Lita's own version of her life, told for the
first time.
