Charlie Chaplin was a communist?
Britain's spies foiled plots and cracked Nazi codes, but were unable to solve the mystery of Charlie Chaplin's birth.
Although the entertainer is celebrated as one of London's most famous sons, newly declassified files reveal that Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence service found no records to back up Chaplin's claim that he was born in the city on April 16, 1889.
The previously secret file, released Friday by Britain's National Archives, shows that MI5 investigated the silent film star in the 1950s at the request of U.S. authorities, who had long suspected him of communist sympathies. MI5 historian Christopher Andrew said the FBI's red-hating chief, J. Edgar Hoover, privately denounced Chaplin as "one of Hollywood's parlor Bolsheviks."
In 1953, the U.S. government did not allow the comedian to return to the U.S. for his political views, although he denied his sympathy for the communist ideology.
Then Charlie Chaplin settled in Switzerland, where he died at 77.
