Born this day: Music Hall star Leo Dryden (George Dryden Wheeler, 1863-1939).
Dryden was quite a well known performer in his day, nicknamed “The Kipling of the Halls” on account of his repertoire of patriotic and sentimental ballads. There is also an extant cylinder recording of him singing his most popular song “The Miner’s Dream of Home” which he recorded in 1898. It has been used on the soundtracks of several films including The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947) and The Entertainer (1960). He also appeared in one silent movie The Lady of the Lake (1928).
Dryden would be pretty well known to music hall buffs to this day, but nowadays he’s best known for something else: breaking up Charlie Chaplin’s parents. While Chaplin was a small boy and his father Charles Chaplin Sr, a music hall performer himself, was out on the road, Chaplin’s mother Lily Harley had an affair with Dryden, resulting in a baby: Wheeler Dryden. Chaplin Sr. was a rake and a drunkard himself so he was probably only too glad for an excuse to be rid of his responsibilities; he left his wife and child. Dryden also took his own son away from Harley, and raised him himself. And Chaplin’s mother went slowly crazy. In later years, Wheeler Dryden looked up his famous half-brother and went to work for him. Meanwhile, with music hall dying out, Leo Dryden was out of work and was eventually reduced to singing for coppers in the streets — pretty much like something out of one of his own songs.
To find out more about vaudeville and music hall history and performers like Leo Dryden consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. For more on silent comedy and the Chaplin family please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com
(Travalanche) 