The silent-film pioneer and iconic “Little Tramp” shared sons Charles Spencer Chaplin III (May 5, 1925) and Sydney Earl Chaplin (March 30, 1926) with second wife Lita Grey and then had eight children with fourth wife Oona O’Neill, who was 18 when she married the 54-year-old in 1943 (much to her playwright father Eugene O’Neill‘s consternation).
The pair would remain together until Chaplin’s death in 1977 at 88, welcoming Geraldine Leigh (July 31, 1944), Michael John (March 7, 1946), Josephine Hannah (March 28, 1949), Victoria Agnes (May 19, 1951), Eugene Anthony (Aug. 23, 1953), Jane Cecil (May 1957), Annette Emily (December 1959) and Christopher James (July 8, 1962).
Chaplin was 73 when Christopher was born.
Geraldine played her own paternal grandmother, Hannah Chaplin (who had three sons by as many fathers), in the 1992 biopic Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular legend. “There was no rule that we weren’t allowed to see other movies, but the movies that were shown in our house were Charlie Chaplin movies,” she recalled to the Baltimore Sun at the time. “And one didn’t talk of other comedians like Laurel and Hardy. I think he did it because he was very insecure and couldn’t bear that someone else’s film might be good.”
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