Chaplin's lifestyle held back knighthood for 20 years

Records show Charlie Chaplin's knighthood was blocked for nearly 20 years because of his lifestyle and several "grave moral charges".

The findings come in documents released by the Public Records Office.

They say that in the US, where he lived for 42 years, he was reviled as a "communist sympathiser" and for a series of other "grave charges".

By 1956, when he was originally considered for a knighthood, the US public had "taken exception" to his two marriages to 16-year-old girls.

In April 1953 the US Internal Revenue Service announced that Chaplin owed $1.1 million in back taxes. He was effectively barred from the US as officials declared the case against him "pretty good", the document said.

Chaplin had not taken US citizenship and was seen as ungrateful for the prosperity that his successful career in the US had bestowed upon him.

It was only after Canadian Fergus Horsburgh wrote to the Queen in January 1972 urging an honour for him that a knighthood became likely.

It followed Chaplin's name being put forward by "highly reputable, indeed distinguished sources" the previous year. Chaplin had also been considered but rejected for an honour in 1969.

During that time an award for Chaplin was shelved because it could only proceed if "the Queen would be prepared to overlook the charges against him," a US official told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Protocol Department.

Mr Horsburgh's letter to the Queen said: "I respectfully suggest that the time has come to let bygones be bygones... Not only would this give pleasure to Charlie, but it would delight millions in and out of the English-speaking world."