George Dryden Wheeler Jr. (31 August 1892 – 30 September 1957), AKA Lee George Wheeler but known professionally as Wheeler Dryden, was an English-born American actor and film director. He was the son of Hannah Chaplin and music hall entertainer Leo Dryden, and younger half-brother of actors Sir Charlie and Sydney Chaplin.[1]
He moved to the United States in 1918, joining his mother and two half-brothers. He worked as an actor and director, sometimes assisting Charlie Chaplin. He was married for a short time to ballerina Anna Chapple and they had one child together, Spencer Dryden, who became a rock musician with several prominent American bands[2] and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[3]
Life and career
He was born as George Dryden Wheeler Jr. in London,[1] the youngest of three boys born to Hannah Hill Chaplin, and the son of Leo Dryden, a music hall entertainer. While George was an infant, his father removed him from his mentally troubled mother, who was committed to a mental asylum for a time. He grew up estranged from her and his two older half-brothers. Known as Wheeler, Dryden became an entertainer like his father. In 1915 he was touring India and the Far East as a Vaudeville comedian when his father first told him that the newly famous actor Charlie Chaplin was his half-brother.
At this point, Dryden (who adopted use of this as his surname) wrote several letters to Chaplin and his half-brother Sydney, but received no response from either of them. In 1917, he got in touch with Chaplin's lead actress, Edna Purviance, who is thought to have convinced Chaplin to recognise Dryden as his half-brother.[4][5]
He joined the Chaplin brothers and their mother in America in 1918.[6] After nearly two decades, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1936.
Later, he worked at the Chaplin Studios as Charlie's assistant director on The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux.[9][10] He also appears in the supporting roles of a doctor and a clown in Chaplin's last American film, Limelight (1952).[11][12]
After Charlie 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. In his final years, he suffered from mental illness and reclusiveness. His difficulties were exacerbated by aggressive FBI inquiries into his brother's politics, during the period of increasing anti-Communist actions by government and Hollywood studios in the US.
In 1938 Dryden married Alice Chapple (1911–2005), a prima ballerina of the Radio City Music Hall dancers.[14] They had a son Spencer Dryden before they divorced in 1943. Dryden took his son to Los Angeles jazz clubs during the 1950s, which inspired his musical ambitions as a jazz and rock drummer.[15] Spencer became a musician and played with Jefferson Airplane, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and other bands; he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.[16]
^Letter from Wheeler Dryden to Edna Purviance, imploring her to intercede on his behalf and encourage Charles Chaplin to acknowledge his half-brother: First page, second page and third page
^Passenger list of S.S. Siberia Maru, port of San Francisco, California, 15 December 1918. Ancestry.com. California Passenger and Crew Lists, 1893-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008.
^Robinson, David (14 March 1983). Chaplin, the Mirror of Opinion. Indiana University Press. p. 191 – via Internet Archive. Wheeler Dryden assistant to charles chaplin monsieur verdoux.
