October 23, 2012

Mildred Harris' Own Story

I was browsing the Fulton History website a few weeks ago and came across a series of articles written by Mildred Harris & published in the Syracuse Journal between Jan. 31st-Feb. 8th, 1927.  I had never heard of this memoir and was excited to read it because so little had been written about their life together. There are several factual errors, including her own wedding date. I doubt Mildred actually wrote this piece, it seems to be more of an "as told to" account to me. However there were a lot of similarities between her story and Charlie's second wife, Lita Grey's account, including his moodiness and staying away for long periods of time. At times I felt like I was reading Lita's book.  Of course, Mildred's pregnancy before the marriage is not mentioned. To hear her tell it, they got married because they were deeply in love. I was also surprised by the story of their very first meeting, which took place in a bookstore, not a party at Sam Goldwyn's. Given the date, I'm sure this was published to coincide with Charlie's divorce from Lita, which was a big news story at the time.

I created a pdf of the articles, you can click here to read them.


8 comments:

  1. I can't get the pdf to work. :(

    Phil

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  2. Mildred Harris is in my family tree and I was so excited to see this article! I need to figure out how she ended up being born in Wyoming when most of the other family was in NY.

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    1. I read an article about her once that said her father worked for the railroad (I think) and didn't stay in one place very long.

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  3. While researching the Chaplin Archives book, I also came across these articles, and they were published almost side-by-side with accounts of the Lita Grey divorce in the same papers.

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