| Mildred Harris | |
|---|---|
 Harris, c. 1918-20. |
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| Born | November 29, 1901 Cheyenne, Wyoming, U.S. |
| Died | July 20, 1944 (aged 42) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1912–1944 |
| Spouse(s) | Charlie Chaplin (1918–1920)[1 ] Everett Terrence McGovern (1924–1929) William P. Fleckenstein (1934–1944) |
Mildred Harris (November 29, 1901 – July 20, 1944) was an American actress of the silent film era. Born in Wyoming, she began her film career as a child actor in 1912 with the western, The Post Telegrapher. Numerous roles followed in films through the 1910s including two Oz films (1914) and Enoch Arden (1915). At the age of fifteen, she appeared as a harem girl in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916). Harris was a leading lady through the 1920s but her career waned with the "talkies". She was critically praised for No, No Nanette (1930), had a few bit parts in the early 1940s, and made her last appearance in Having A Wonderful Crime (1945).
She married Charlie Chaplin in October 1918, and the couple became the parents of a son in July 1919 who lived but three days. Following a 1920 divorce, she had a brief but highly publicized affair with the then Prince of Wales. She remarried twice after her divorce from Chaplin and became the mother of a son by her second husband. She died of pneumonia in 1944 and was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Harris made her first screen appearances at the age of eleven in the Francis Ford and Thomas H. Ince directed 1912 Western film short The Post Telegrapher then went on to play a variety of juvenile roles, including turns in the Oz film series produced by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum. She was a prominent child actor throughout the 1910s, often appearing opposite another juvenile actor, Paul Willis. She eventually graduated to leading lady assignments, working under the direction of such prominent filmmakers as Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith throughout the 1910s. In 1914, she was hired by The Oz Film Manufacturing Company to portray Fluff in The Magic Cloak of Oz and Button-Bright in His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz. Her contract was not signed until The Patchwork Girl of Oz was already in production and she did not, in spite of what some sources claim, appear in that film. In 1916, at the age of 15, Harris appeared in Griffith's colossal film epic Intolerance alongside another new teenaged Griffith protégé, Carol Dempster. The two young starlets were cast by Griffith as Babylonian harem girls. They can also been seen in Griffith's 1919 re-edit of the Babylon story from "Intolerance", The Fall of Babylon.
Harris appeared in Frank Capra's 1928 silent drama, The Power of the Press, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Jobyna Ralston. Decades later, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Harris enjoyed a prolific film career in the 1920s and achieved leading lady status opposite such renowned film actors as: Conrad Nagel, Milton Sills, Lionel Barrymore, Rod La Rocque and the Moore brothers, Owen and Tom. Like so many of her silent screen peers however, Harris found the transition to talkies rather difficult. Among her few memorable roles of the talkie era was her critically lauded performance in the 1930 film adaptation of the Broadway musical No, No Nanette, opposite ZaSu Pitts, Louise Fazenda and Lilyan Tashman.
Modern day audiences will remember Harris' parody of a temperamental and demanding movie starlet (a role she played in real life only several years earlier) in the Three Stooges comedy, Movie Maniacs. Harris' starlet is in the process of receiving a pedicure when Curly Howard, in an effort to light his cigar, strikes a match on the sole of her foot, startling her.
As the 1930s continued however, Harris' career slowed dramatically. Harris tried for a second act in vaudeville and burlesque, at one point she toured with the comic Phil Silvers. Harris continued to work in film in the early 1940s, largely through the kindness of her former director Cecil B. DeMille, who cast her in bit parts in 1942's Reap the Wild Wind, and 1944's The Story of Dr. Wassell. Her last film appearance was in the 1945 motion picture Having A Wonderful Crime, which was released posthumously.
Seventeen-year-old Harris met actor Charlie Chaplin in mid-1918. They dated and she came to believe she was pregnant by him. They married in a quiet ceremony on October 23, 1918 in Los Angeles, California. Chaplin wanted the marriage to work but they quarreled about her contract with Louis B. Mayer and her career (Chaplin may have felt threatened by a working wife). Chaplin felt she was not his intellectual equal, and, when their child died in July 1919 after three days of life,[2][3] they separated in the autumn of 1919. Chaplin moved to the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Harris tried to keep appearances up, believing a happy marriage was possible, but in 1920 she filed for divorce based on mental cruelty. Chaplin accused her of infidelity, and, though he wouldn't name her lover publicly, all Hollywood knew it was Alla Nazimova.[4] Harris denied rumors Chaplin had been physically violent, and divorce was granted in November 1920 with Harris receiving $100,000 in settlement and some community property.[1 ]
Following the divorce, Harris had a relationship of less than one year's duration with the Prince of Wales, (later King Edward VIII and, after his abdication, Duke of Windsor).[5] The ensuing publicity helped Harris's acting career, and Polly of the Storm Country was a modest success.
In 1924, Harris married Everett Terrence McGovern. The union lasted until November 26, 1929 when Harris filed for divorce in Los Angeles, California on grounds of desertion. The couple had one child, Everett Terrence McGovern, Jr. in 1925. In 1934 She married William P. Fleckenstein in Asheville, North Carolina. The couple remained married until Harris' death in 1944.
In 1944, Harris died unexpectedly of pneumonia at age 42 and was laid to rest at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
For her contribution as an actress in the motion picture industry, Harris was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6307 Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, California.
In 1992, Harris was portrayed by Ukrainian-born actress Milla Jovovich in the Charlie Chaplin biopic, Chaplin.
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   | Silent Era People - Silent Era : People : Actresses : Mildred Harris |
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