Sir Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin was knighted at Buckingham Palace on this day to become Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE. He was 85 at the time and had to be pushed in a wheelchair to meet the Queen who performed the ceremony. Fans of the British-born comic actor had been pressing for such recognition over many years, but controversy in his past life kept Charlie off the roll of honour. Foreign Office papers from 1956, which were kept secret until 2002, revealed that the silent screen star’s knighthood had been shelved partly because he was considered to be a communist sympathiser. Officials in his adopted home of the United States certainly thought so. Questions about his political allegiances began in the 1940s and continued until 1952 when his US visa was revoked. He then went to live in Switzerland where he spent the rest of his days. It was his personal life that also raised eyebrows among the Establishment in Britain. Charlie was known to have had affairs with a number of actresses...