Virginia Cherrill lets Chaplin slow down without becoming solemn. Her quiet presence makes the romance in City Lights convincing, and we rate that contribution highly without claiming that her brief career was full of comparable performances.
Fi1m perspective
In City Lights (1931), Virginia Cherrill does not try to match Chaplin's energy. As the blind flower-seller, she gives him a quiet person to play towards, and the difference makes their scenes together work. Chaplin need not supply every feeling himself or keep a joke going simply to hold our attention. We found the romance moving because her stillness gives his tenderness time to register. It is an unobtrusive contribution that matters each time the film slows down.
It is tempting to credit Chaplin with every successful moment here, since he directs as well as playing the tramp. That misses the practical value of Cherrill's restraint: he has someone to address, rather than an audience within the scene waiting for his next bit of business. The pace sometimes slackens, and we would not defend every pause as necessary. But the flower-seller remains worth our attention when the jokes stop, which is why the quiet passages need not become solemn.
Her later career did not build steadily on that debut. The Brat (1931), directed by John Ford, gave her the role of Angela, while Delicious (1931) placed her alongside Janet Gaynor in a Gershwin musical. These were early sound films, and the move into speech did not bring comparable success. She also worked with James Mason in two British productions, ending with Troubled Waters (1936), her last film. It is a short filmography to set against a debut that remains the reason she is remembered.
We would be wary of using that limited later success to explain away what she does well for Chaplin. A performance can be exactly right for one film without proving that its actor could do everything, and there is no need to make extravagant claims on her behalf. Watch City Lights for the comedy, but give Cherrill a share of the attention.
Biography
Virginia Cherrill was an American actress. She is known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931). Born on a farm near Carthage, Illinois, she grew up in Chicago and attended schools there and in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She had no prior acting experience when she met Chaplin at a boxing match in Los Angeles and was cast in the film.
Cherrill appeared in several other films in the early 1930s, including Girls Demand Excitement (1931), The Brat (1931) and Delicious (1931). She retired from acting around 1936. She married four times, including to actor Cary Grant from 1934 to 1935 and to George Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey, from 1937 to 1946, after which she was styled Countess of Jersey. She later settled in Santa Barbara, California, where she died in 1996.
