Lita Grey Chaplin’s greatest contribution to pop culture is not her two published memoirs or even her divorce complaint so scandalous that it was published and sold in 1927. Instead, it’s her name: Lita served as the root for Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the most famous underage sex symbol this side of Brooke Shields in her Calvin Klein jeans.   Though she was divorced from Charlie Chaplin by 19 and lived until the age of 87, Lita’s life was inexorably bound to her first husband and the father of her two sons—even as Charlie himself pointedly never mentioned her once in his own autobiography. Maybe he was still fuming over that divorce settlement, which came out to $8.9 million in 2020 dollars. Or maybe it was the rumor that Lita was ready to name several movie stars with whom Charlie had affairs during their marriage if he didn’t pony up the money. Either way, Lita was the one who returned to their short-lived marriage over and over again, even as she publicly, ruefully wondered how she managed to spend most of her settlement within a few years.   Just how scandalous was their divorce? Well let’s just say that at a time when “copulation in someone’s mouth” was illegal in the state of California, Lita’s claims against Charlie could have landed him in prison for quite a while. And the public couldn’t get enough of Lita and the Little Tramp’s sex life, something Lita would later capitalize on in a highly sensationalized first memoir, My Life With Chaplin.”  Logo: Jessica Balaschak | Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/american-scandals/support