MILDRED HARRIS

Mildred Harris was an actress mostly from 1914 to 1930. She started in movies at the age of 12, and she became quite successful in the late 1910s. She married Charlie Chaplin in 1918, when she was 17 and he was 29. They had a baby, but it was born with many birth defects and only lived three days. She made a few movies while they were married, where she was billed as "Mildred Harris Chaplin", but their marriage only lasted three years. She next had an affair with the Prince of Wales, and after that ended, she introduced him to Wallis Simpson, leading to their legendary romance. Part of her success was that she looked like an innocent young girl (and that surely was part of Charlie Chaplin's attraction to her), and she was once nicknamed "Innocent Mildred Harris". But when sound movies began (and she aged), her career severely declined. She passed away in 1944, following an unsuccessful operation, and she was only 42.