RSS Feed
February 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
James Slack, Home Affairs Editor
Last updated at 12:39 AM on 17th February 2012
Mystery: Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp
When his comic genius became an international phenomenon, it was a source of great pride back home in England.
But it seems Charlie Chaplin may not have been English at all – but a Frenchman with the alias Israel Thornstein.
The startling claims are made in MI5 papers released for the first time today.
Classified files reveal how the Security Service was baffled to find there were no records of Chaplin’s supposed birth in South London.
The puzzle emerged when the U.S. authorities asked MI5 to look into his background after he left America in 1952 under a cloud of suspicion over his alleged communist links.
He is believed to have been born on April 16, 1889, in East Street, Walworth – four days before the birth of Adolf Hitler, whom he lampooned in his classic 1940 film The Great Dictator.
But, after scouring the files at Somerset House in London for his birth certificate, MI5 concluded: ‘It would seem that Chaplin was either not born in this country or that his name at birth was other than those mentioned.’
They also examined intelligence that Chaplin may have used the alias ‘Israel Thornstein’, but could find no trace under that name either.
Scotland Yard’s Special Branch added to the intrigue by passing on a tip from a source who claimed the actor was born near Fontainebleau, just south of Paris.
A police memo to MI5 noted: ‘There may or may not be some truth in this, but in view of the fact that no documentary proof has been obtained that Chaplin was born in the United Kingdom, it may well be that he was in fact born in France.’
MI6, the foreign intelligence service, investigated further but found no trace of Chaplin’s birth in either Fontainebleau or nearby Melun, leaving his place of birth an enduring mystery.
One possibility raised by the files, released by the National Archives, was that Chaplin could even be of Russian origin. This was based on claims that he had talked of ‘going back to Russia’.
A Frenchman, moi? Charlie Chaplin in the 1947 black comedy Monsieur Verdoux
Officials wrote: ‘This might refer to paying another visit, or it might denote his origin as Russia.
‘Towards the end of the last century large numbers of Jews fled westward from Russian pogroms. If Chaplin is a Jew, he might thus have been a member of a refugee family’.
However, John Marriott, then head of MI5’s counter- subversion branch, was not convinced that the absence of a birth certificate was a matter of concern.
He wrote: ‘It is curious that we can find no record of Chaplin’s birth, but I scarcely think that this is of any security significance.’
Aged 12: Charlie Chaplin in 1901. It was always thought that he was born in Walworth in south London
Having escaped grinding poverty to launch a career in British music halls, Chaplin moved to the U.S. in 1910 and made a series of hugely successful films in Hollywood, such as the Little Tramp.
But in the early 1950s, when Washington was in the grip of McCarthyist paranoia about Soviet infiltration, he was reviled in the U.S. as a communist sympathiser.
There was further controversy about his two marriages to 16-year-old girls, failure to take American citizenship, and claims he fathered an illegitimate child and owed $2million in back taxes.
Chaplin and his family sailed to Britain in 1952 for the premiere of his film Limelight. While he was out of the U.S., attorney-general James McGranery announced he would deny the actor a re-entry permit because of his alleged Soviet connections.
Honoured: Charlie Chaplin proudly shows the insignia of Commandeur of the Legion of Honour, which was given to him at the opening of the 25th International Cannes film festival
MI5 officers carried out investigations but were unable to confirm any of the Americans’ suspicions about Chaplin, who died in 1977, making ‘financial and/or cultural contributions’ to the communist movement, or ever travelling to the Soviet Union.
A note sent to the intelligence agency’s East Africa liaison officer ahead of a safari holiday Chaplin took in Kenya in 1958 shows MI5 was unimpressed by Washington’s claims about alleged communist links.
It stated: ‘We have no substantial information of our own against Chaplin, and we are not satisfied that there are reliable grounds for regarding him as a security risk.
‘His name has, of course, been exploited in the interests of communism as one of the victims of “McCarthyism”…
‘It may be that Chaplin is a communist sympathiser, but on the information before us he would appear to be no more than a “progressive” or radical.’
Last year, a letter emerged offering a different clue to his birthplace. Written to Chaplin in the 1970s, and kept in a drawer by the actor, it claims he was born on the ‘Black Patch’ near Birmingham in a gipsy caravan.
Chaplin’s MI5 files will be free to download from www.national archives.gov.uk for a month.
Share this article:
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
