Virginia Cherrill

Born: 1908-04-12

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Virginia Cherrill (April 12, 1908 - November 14, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931). She married an English earl in the 1940s, and is also known as Virginia Child-Villiers, Countess of Jersey. Virginia Cherrill was born on a farm in rural Carthage, Illinois, to James E. and Blanche (née Wilcox) Cherrill. She was a Chicago society girl with no thoughts of a film career when she went to Hollywood for a visit and met Charlie Chaplin when he sat next to her at a boxing match. He had failed to find the girl he wanted for his film but decided she would do and cast her in City Lights in which she gave the performance for which she is remembered, although her working relationship with Chaplin on the film was often strained. As indicated in the documentary Unknown Chaplin, Cherrill was in fact fired from the film at one point and Chaplin planned to refilm all her scenes with Georgia Hale, but ultimately realized too much money had already been spent on the picture; as Cherrill recalls in the documentary, close friend Marion Davies suggested Cherrill hold out for more money when Chaplin asked her to return to the film, and she did. She appeared in a few other films subsequently, including the 1931 Gershwin musical Delicious with Janet Gaynor, but gave up her movie career in 1936 after Troubled Waters. Cherrill married four times; her second husband was actor Cary Grant (from 1934 to 1935), and her third was George Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (from 1937 to 1946). Her longest marriage was to Florian Martini, with whom she lived in Santa Barbara, California from 1948 until her death at age 88; she had no children. She is a part of stars of Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1545 Vine Street. Description above from the Wikipedia article Virginia Cherrill   licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.


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City Lights

as A Blind Girl
Released: 1931-02-06

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a...

Movie page

Becoming Cary Grant

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2017-05-23

For the first time one of Hollywood's greatest stars tells his own story, in his own words. From...

Movie page

Cary Grant: A Class Apart

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2004-06-01

Documentary that explores the life and career of leading man Cary Grant through film clips and...

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The Nuisance

as Miss Rutherford
Released: 1933-06-03

Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a...

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Girls Demand Excitement

as Joan Madison
Released: 1931-02-08

Peter Brooks is a hard-working, hard-up college student whose dislike of women attending college...

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Delicious

as Diana Van Bergh
Released: 1931-12-27

A comic group of Europeans coming to the USA have romantic and immigration troubles.

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The Brat

as Angela
Released: 1931-08-23

A society novelist brings a brash young chorus girl home in order to study her for inspiration...

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Fast Workers

as Virginia
Released: 1933-03-10

Gunner and Bucker are friends who work as riveters. Whenever Bucker gets the urge to marry,...

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Charlie Chan's Greatest Case

as Barbara Winterslip
Released: 1933-09-14

When a good-for-nothing man named Dan is stabbed to death and his arm broken, Charlie Chan is on...

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What Price Crime

as Sandra Worthington
Released: 1935-05-27

Thieves break into a warehouse that stores guns, steal them and kill the night watchman. An...

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Late Extra

as Janet Graham
Released: 1935-11-19

A newspaper reporter sets out to track down the murderer of a policeman.

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He Couldn't Take It

as Eleanor Rogers
Released: 1933-12-15

Jimmy Kelly, who can't hold on to a job because of his hot temper, finds his calling as a...

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White Heat

as Lucille Cheney
Released: 1934-12-30

In this melodrama filmed on location in Hawaii, a sugar plantation manager finds himself falling...

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The Air Circus

as Extra (uncredited)
Released: 1928-09-29

Two eager young pilots at flight school compete over their flight instructor's aviatrix sister.

Movie page

Unknown Chaplin

as Self
First aired: 1983-01-05

A documentary series examining the film making methods and techniques of Charles Chaplin....

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