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A link with Charlie
If you were to ask someone what connection Charlie Chaplin had with Yorkshire, perhaps the most obvious answer would be that the comedian and Hollywood star appeared at Leeds City Varieties.
But the actor was managed by his older half-brother Sydney, an actor in his own right whose wife, Minnie Gilbert, had family in Yorkshire.
That connection has prompted a US professor and Sydney's biographer to organise a trip to Leeds to meet Minnie's relatives.
Retired tailor Irvine Gilbert, 71, of Highmoor Close, Moortown, Leeds, is Minnie's great nephew because she was his grandfather's sister.
Mr Gilbert said: "I read something in a paper about two years ago saying Charlie Chaplin's daughter Geraldine was looking for her family history and I came across some old pictures and it made me think that maybe I should let her know she has a little bit of family here in Yorkshire.
"I have pictures of Minnie from around 1914, she would have been in her late 20s then. When Charlie Chaplin died, my father wrote a letter to his wife Oona and she wrote back to say thank you. I still have the envelope with her hand-writing on it and the postmark March 6, 1978."
Mr Gilbert, who has two children, went to Harehills Secondary School and left at 15 to become a tailor, which he did for most of his life.
Lisa Stein, Assistant Professor of English, at Ohio University, Zanesville, who is writing the first biography of Sydney Chaplin, said she was pleasantly surprised to learn of the Yorkshire link. She plans to meet Mr Gilbert in November.
She said: "Sydney was a silent film comedian in his own right, having starred in a very popular production of Charley's Aunt in 1925 that made him a household name at that time. He was one of the important early businessman that made Hollywood and the American film industry what it is today and was certainly working behind the scenes at the Chaplin studios to make Charlie a famous and wealthy man.
"I've learned in doing my research that family members pop up when you least expect them and it's always wonderful. My initial response was pure joy. In the course of this research I have become fond of Minnie and want to know much more about her, but she's a bit of a mystery."
Minnie Chaplin appeared in a number of films, among them Gussle Rivals Jonah, Gussle's Backward Way, Lover's Lost Control, A Submarine Pirate and A Dog's Life.
It is known that Syd and Minnie performed together with Fred Karno, the stage comedian credited with inventing the custard pie-in-the-face gag and who also worked with Charlie Chaplin during his early career.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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