By 1918, Charlie Chaplin was producing his own films, and making films that are still considered classics today, like "The Kid." Unfortunately, this is also when Chaplin's darkest side emerged. He began serially seducing young girls.
According to Vice, Mildred Harris was barely 16 when Chaplin met her, and at best an emerging starlet when Chaplin was the biggest star of all. He seduced her, thought he'd gotten her pregnant, and arranged a hasty marriage. When he found out the pregnancy wasn't real, he got her pregnant for real and then divorced her.
Maybe it was his father's inspiration, but Chaplin's next love would be even darker. He first met Lita Grey (above) when she was a 12-year-old child star in 1920, and spent the next few years doting on her, keeping her in his orbit until she was finally of age — maybe. In 2015 the Times of London claimed Grey was 15 when Chaplin seduced her, instead of the widely reported 16. Either way, he got her pregnant, married her, impregnated her again, and abandoned her in 1927.
There were other scandals in Chaplin's love life, too. The 1924 shooting death of producer Thomas Ince on William Randolph Hearst's yacht was rumored to be the result of Hearst trying to kill Chaplin for seducing his wife but accidentally shooting the wrong man. In a taste of things to come, Biography claims these seductions and salacious rumors would later see Chaplin banned from several states.
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