I dunno, but I'd love to know the answer. I've been binge ~ watching Star Trek: Picard over on Amazon Prime for a while now, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Star Trek fan who reads Turtledove's works.
Would there be an equivalent to Charlie Chaplin in the TL ~ 191 universe, and, if so, what would his fate possibly be?
I am also curious if there might have been counterparts to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in the TL ~ 191 universe, and what would probably happen to them. In addition to enjoying Star Trek, I also enjoy Laurel and Hardy.
This is what I wrote about the analogues in TTL to Charles Chaplin, Stan Laurel, and the Hardy family, slightly edited.
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Charles Chaplin never became a prominent movie star and director in TTL. An early point of divergence from our world was Chaplin not joining Fred Karno’s comedy company; he never had the opportunity to tour the US as a performer. It was just as well, since US audiences in TTL’s 1900 would not have been particularly hospitable to a British entertainer. He did find steady work as a comedic performer in London theaters and music halls, while also improving his skills as a musician and composer.
Chaplin was in Britain when war broke out in 1914, and was eventually conscripted. He was wounded in action in 1916 and sent home. Any prospects he had once had as a public entertainer before the war were gone. However, Chaplin was able to find work in orchestras that accompanied silent movies. Eventually, he would find a place in the British film industry, such as it was, as a composer.
This career was cut short by the rise of the Silver Shirt regime. Although Chaplin had never been political in the activist sense of the word, he was well known in his own circles for having anti-war and internationalist views. This was enough for him to be blacklisted within the British film industry; it wasn’t long before he found himself in Australia as another exile, in Melbourne.
Chaplin discovered the hard way that there was not exactly a high demand in Australia for film composers. However, he was able to find relatively steady employment in orchestras and as a private musician. Chaplin is thought to be the real world inspiration for the recurring character of Aldershot, a down on his luck musician who appeared in several of Alfred Hitchcock’s Australian mysteries and thrillers.
Chaplin spent the rest of his life in Australia. His interwar film scores would later enjoy a renewed popularity in the 1990s among Australian fans of Fabrika-Punk music, which, as in Russia, was accompanied with a 1930s/1940s “dieselpunk” aesthetic, who used his scores, rearranged with modern instruments and styles, as a basis for what ultimately became Australian Fabrika-Punk’s New Old sound.
The analogue to Stan Laurel in TTL was Arthur Jefferson, born on a slightly different date in comparison to our world. As in our world, Jefferson had a natural talent for the theater, and eventually found success in the London music hall world in the years immediately prior to the First Great War. Unlike in our world, Jefferson never went to the United States with the Fred Karno Company.
Arthur Jefferson was in the United Kingdom when the First Great War began in 1914. He volunteered for the British Army, and was later killed in action on the Western Front in 1916.
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Oliver Hardy didn’t exist in TTL. His father, also named Oliver, served in the Confederate Army during the War of Secession. Unlike in our world, Hardy’s father wasn’t wounded, as the Battle of Antietam didn’t take place.
The Hardy family lived in Georgia throughout the existence of the CSA, with male members of the family serving in the Confederate military during the Second Mexican War, the First Great War, the Red Rebellion, and the Second Great War. In 1944, following the fall of the CSA, the Hardy family left for the Republic of Texas, rather than remain under US rule.
