George Wheeler Dryden (August 31, 1892 in London – September 30, 1957 in Los Angeles) was an English actor and film director, the son of Hannah Chaplin and music hall entertainer Leo Dryden and thus the half brother of Charles and Sydney Chaplin. He was also the father of rock musician Spencer Dryden.
Dryden was the youngest of Hannah Chaplin's children, and his father Leo removed him from his mentally troubled mother as an infant. He was touring...
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George Wheeler Dryden (August 31, 1892 in London – September 30, 1957 in Los Angeles) was an English actor and film director, the son of Hannah Chaplin and music hall entertainer Leo Dryden and thus the half brother of Charles and Sydney Chaplin. He was also the father of rock musician Spencer Dryden.
Dryden was the youngest of Hannah Chaplin's children, and his father Leo removed him from his mentally troubled mother as an infant. He was touring India and the Far East as a vaudeville comedian in 1915 when he first learned from his father that the newly famous Charlie Chaplin was his half brother.
At this point, he wrote several letters to Chaplin and his half-brother Sydney but got ignored by both of them. In 1917, he got in touch with Chaplin's lead actress Edna Purviance who likely convinced Chaplin to recognize him as his relative. He then joined the Chaplin brothers and their mother in America in 1918, and became a U.S. citizen in 1936.
He later appeared in Stan Laurel's Mud and...
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