Wheeler Dryden

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

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.

[edit] Biography

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 when he first learned from his father that the world famous Charlie Chaplin was his half brother. After several attempts, he reportedly got in touch with Charlie through actress Edna Purviance, and finally joined the Chaplin brothers and their mother in America in the 1920s. He later appeared in Stan Laurel's Mud and Sand and was the "other man" in the melodrama False Women. In 1928, he directed Syd Chaplin in A Little Bit of Fluff, and later, worked at the Chaplin Studios as Charlie's assistant director on his final Hollywood productions, The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux. He also appears in the supporting role of a doctor in Chaplin's last American film Limelight. After Chaplin left America for Switzerland in 1952, Dryden managed the winding down of Chaplin's Hollywood business affairs until 1954, when the studio was sold. He suffered from mental illness and reclusiveness in his final years, exacerbated by aggressive FBI inquiries into his brother's politics.

[edit] Family

Wheeler was married from 1938-1943 to Radio City Music Hall prima ballerina Alice Chapple (1911-2005), and they had a single child Spencer Dryden. Dryden took his son to LA jazz clubs in the 1950's, which inspired his musical ambitions as a jazz and rock drummer.